TL;DR - Hive-Engine is looking for help to get our P2P system and new off-the-shelf smart contracts launched.

Dan recently put out a video on 3speak and a blog on hive. It was recapped here by taskmaster. Dan's looking to make use of a decentralized layer 2 for communities and video. His plan involves fungible tokens and non-fungible tokens. As it turns out... I have a lot of that built.

Hive-Engine is a smart contract platform that lives on the layer 2. It's an opensource backend that anyone can connect into. It's deterministic in the sense that first people post on Hive and then the information gets poured into Hive-Engine after it's been arranged by the Hive witnesses. In that sense the entire thing is built on a blockchain, but what it lacks is a peer to peer system that ensures it continues to function that exact way.

This isn't trivial and it shouldn't be taken lightly. Look no further back than a few days ago when the Wrapped token approach got hacked and people lost substantial amounts of money. Even though Hive-Engine is still small in a lot of ways the consequences and seriousness of this endeavor are very high. Given the stakes are high and the available manpower is low we're calling on the community to help.

Decentralization

While I can make the argument that Hive-Engine is secured by the layer 1 blockchain, it's never satisfactory enough as an answer to the hardcore decentralize everything fanatics. Turns out I agree enough with the sentiment enough that many moons ago I contracted @harpagon, the original creator of steem-engine and hive-engine to build a P2P system. We got pretty far, but the thing fizzled out. I have code to do this, but it needs bug testing, a test net, and likely some tweaks along the way.

So, the good news is that I'm already pretty far along with what Dan and segments of the community are asking for, but the bad news is that with Hive at 15 cents and a very rigorous business logic roadmap I don't have wiggle room to get over the hump. Add on top of that we have accumlated some techincal debt, especially with our account history setup, and it's unclear how we're going to get it all done any time soon without some help.

That's where you, the community, can come into help. I'm asking the Hive Community to help us to further decentralize the backend of hive-engine, assist Dan with getting his project fully decentralized, and make this thing as robust as possible with many off the shelf no-code smart contracts that users can deploy.

Core Developers

You can find three key links to our smart contract platform here:

https://github.com/hive-engine/steemsmartcontracts/blob/hive-engine/contracts/witnesses.js

https://github.com/hive-engine/steemsmartcontracts/tree/hive-engine/contracts

https://github.com/hive-engine/steemsmartcontracts/tree/hive-engine

https://github.com/hive-engine/steemsmartcontracts/blob/hive-engine/plugins/P2P.js

There are still some bugs that need to be worked out, but the code is written and now needs testing and refining. We're looking for you to help us.

Smart Contract Developers

I've asked @cryptomancer to prep a document that's a step by step guide for how to write and test functional smart contracts on the hive-engine backend.

I'm a little bit of a heretic. I think that all fully open smart contract platforms are doomed to clog and fail. Human inginuity is far more powerful than a single node or set of them. So, what I'd like to see happen is we create a dozen or more off-the-shelf smart contracts and users can daisy chain them together to make games and applications. If it's more than the basics it can live in their app rather than on Hive-Engine itself.

Here are some of the smart contracts we already have operating:
Fungible Token
Non-Fungible Token
Mining (first live production starts 10/12/2020 at 7pm eastern)

Here are some sample things we'd like to add to the backend:
Pack Manager (design and open packs)
Uniswap style liquidity pools
BTC Markets (trade vs BTC)
ETH and ERC20 CTC integration
Bid Market for NFTs
NFT influenced Mining
Governance Smart Contract
Auction Smart Contract
DAO
Payment/Delegation Smart Contract
NFT influenced Payment/Delegation Smart Contracts
Witness/Voted Pay smart contract
Updates to the Account History

In the coming days we'll have a document that can guide this development undertaking and we'll put a list of the off the shelf contracts that we're targeting.

What does this approach allow?

The goal is user acquisition. To do that we need apps to join build here and collect users. To do that we need to make it as easy as humanly possible to launch an app from this platform. We want off the shelf smart-contracts that allow people with vision, sweat equity, some social media hustle, and a strong will to succeed to build great apps here with very few barriers and massive cost savings compared to other places.

Overarching Plan

If others can step up to help get business logic smart contracts done then I have some ability to move cryptomancer to oversee the P2P system improvements. To encourage folks to contribute I'll try to put together BEE and potentially other bounties as well to get these contracts constructed. Part of the P2P system will involve additional tokens potentially being part of the governance/witness system. So, if you're a tribe owner or game operator it may make sense for you to join and learn some big picture ideas of how projects can contribute to governance on Hive-Engine.

Meeting Place

To start let's gather in the Decentralize Hive-Engine Discord. This is a room specifically to help build out Hive-Engine with a particular focus on the P2P and smart contract development.

What are the stakes and who benefits?

At stake are the funds of many projects and companies. At stake is the ability for groups to easily create applications here using off the shelf, no-code, smart contracts. At stake is the ability to make a decentralized layer 2 that many groups can latch on to and benefit from.

And who benefits? We all do. If we can turn Hive-Engine into a first in class layer 2 experience then we have a great shot to tokenize the web, power applications, bring in real users, and grow this chain. If you can code javascript smart contracts we definately need you there, if you think you can help us organize or support this event we'd love for you to partake. Just come hear us out and we'll go from there.

Please join us in Discord on, and let's make this layer 2 a bad ass place to build. We'll get an actual live meeting going soon.

One last small note

This is a business server with a very discrete objective of decentralizing the node into a P2P system and increasing the number of smart contracts available. This isn't a place to stir up shit or make power plays. You can do those in the general Engine discord server. This is a specific area with a specific agenda. If you can't behave in a professional manner we'll show you the door.