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This is the #95th edition of the "Week through Adrian's Lenses" weekly Hive and crypto news roundup.
Let's see what we have for this week. We cover:
Hive
- Holozing
- Distriator
- Blocktrades
- Keychain Store
- INLEO
- AIOHA
- Splinterlands
- Exode
- HPUD
- Story
- Spam Bots
Crypto
- overview
- Sharia
Week on Hive
13 of 31 tracked posts made it to this week's issue of the "Week on Hive" roundup.
In the Spotlight
Holozing Added Two New Achievements and Tweaked Collection Rewards Accordingly
Holozing has definitely been in the center of attention lately on Hive with their launch of the Alpha Energy Vials last week, and the addition of two new achievements this week. This is good, because it's needed to build up some excitement on Hive again, and price, which is usually the catalyst for that, doesn't help for now with that. It's also a little premature for the impatient ones, because the soonest we will see the launch of the gameplay will be in Q1 next year, when Beta will be released (but before that there will be a public playable alpha, we will see when).
Regarding the two new achievements and more, I'll be selfish and link my own post from this week on this topic. There is a link to the official announcement there, and Acid made several comments with information people could find useful.
Marketing / Awareness / Branding
Distriator Monthly Report
I thought this is an interesting report to share for those who haven't seen it.
Almost 1,300 HBD have been claimed in almost 650 claims in October. That's an average claim of roughly 2 HBD, at a basic math. If I remember well, a claim is 25-65% of the purchase price? Not serious money for developed countries, but can make a difference in the countries with economic issues. They are funded from the reward pool, through beneficiaries set to Distriator on posts with proof of purchase.
By far the leading business where Distriator has been used was Hato Grill Supermercado from Sucre, Venezuela, with 318.5 HBD claimed.
The majority of businesses in Top 10 are from Sucre from what I could figure out, with 2 I could recognize from other places: "The Kingdom" from Poland, and Grand Options from Nigeria (I think it's from Aba city, where 17 businesses have been onboarded so far).
I also checked out the Distriator website and looks like an impressive 367 businesses have been listed already.
Governance / Development / Dapps / Education
Blocktrades Update on the User Interfaces of New dApps
Dan published this week an update oriented specifically on the UI of the dApps they have been developing. He included screenshots.
One important piece of information, in my opinion, is that one of the UI devs from Blocktrades team will be moved to 
They published a DHF proposal related to the work they intend to take on from the Blocktrades team, which can be consulted.
Keychain Store Added New Features
Two new features were added to the Keychain Store App, used by at least 65 brick-and-mortar stores, as we are announced by the team.
There is now a currency conversion option, meaning a business could use Keychain Store to issue an invoice in EUR, for example, and the app would automatically convert those in the currency in which payments are made, using the Coingecko API to make the conversion.
The second feature added is an option to pay an invoice for someone else. You would share your invoice with someone via messaging apps, and they would pay it in your place (obviously, it is meant to share the invoice with someone who you know would pay for it).
I'm thinking it can be used if someone makes purchases for someone else, for example (you send them the invoice for what you purchased for them), or if someone doesn't have enough liquid funds to pay for the invoice, in which case, they could pay back the person helping them later, when they have the liquid funds.
INLEO Looking for Partnerships with Meme Communities
One argument Khal brought for this new direction they are pursuing, was that meme communities are very active and positive. I wouldn't know about that, but that sounds correct during the bull market, particularly when we are expecting the last phases of it. But would it be the same during the bear market or are they more likely to be one-cycle projects and at the end their communities disintegrate or move on to other memes? Just a question...
There will also be a significant investment by Inleo in the joining meme tokens. Seems like a buy-and-hold, while their community is active in Inleo.
I'm rather biased on this topic, but I hope it works out well for Inleo and for Hive. Khal said all meme communities' leaders they proposed this partnership to are willing to join.
You can check out details from the Growing Inleo recording.
AIOHA Updates from 
In his witness update post,
Games
Splinterlands Launched the Auction House
A new system of delivering a new exclusive promo card has been released by Splinterlands. Only 100 of the first max level promo card that will be delivered this way (Heloise the Hollow) will ever exist and she has impressive stats, maybe except the health, since she is a taunter. But she has other abilities that compensate, plus a monstrous attack.
For 100 days, one of them will be auctioned every day, starting on November 6th.
This is obviously not a system for the little or even the average guys and gals in Splinterlands. I won't even try. It is mainly targeting the whales. But them spending massive amounts of DEC to outbid each other (and they will) is good for everyone.
In the future, they should add mint numbers to these cards. That will increase the price on certain popular mints (like the first one, top 3, top 10, etc.) or those with special meaning to the bidder (favorite number, number of favorite player, date of birth, age, etc.).
Exode Updates
We've seen regular Exode development updates published on Hive recently, which is always nice to see about a game or any project on Hive.
Another one came this week mentioning some community articles and then describing what they've been up to for development, mainly the Contract Delivery Service, and two other things that appear to be reorganizing the UI for better UX (including adding player guides to the UI).
Another post from this week reminds players to get a Starbase Shop before they go out of mint.
Communities / Meetups
Today is HIVE Powerup Day (HPUD)
This is a community-sparked initiative that has its origins on the legacy chain, but found a new life on Hive. Basically, Hivers are urged to power up some HIVE on the 1st of every month, to celebrate the chain and show our continued support for it.
Some will power up more than others. Some power up regularly, others choose this day to make significant powerups. Everyone has their own strategy.
But from my experience in recent years, participating in these events (HPUD is not the only one) increases the cohesion and positivity inside the community. You also receive a badge from HiveBuzz if you power up at least 10 HP.
I powered up on two of my accounts, a total of 110 HIVE.
Love Finds a Way...
I was impressed by a story of two people who found each other through Hive... In the space where chasing pumps, moons, and memes is the loudest rhetoric, two people who found love definitely stand out.
Spam Bot Farm Identified
One cold follows one hot.
Recently, evidence about plagiarism and spam surfaced in different communities on Hive. They were quickly linked to an impressive roughly 17k bot farm. They seem to be linked to Splinterlands playing accounts. That shows how big of an issue Splinterlands had with bot farms, and not talking about individual players running bots, but about networks of tens of thousands of accounts. In my opinion, the fact that they surfaced trying to farm content on Hive shows that things aren't working out as they used to for them in Splinterlands. That may be an encouraging sign, even though now there is this infestation on Hive we have to deal with. Here are more details.
Week in the Crypto World
5 Days until the Wait is Over?
Rhetorically, many have a lot invested in the presidential election day in the US. That's 5 days from now. Personally, I just want it gone already, so we can move on.
However, if we look beyond this fixed date with its rather symbolic significance, we see major moves happening, that don't give two cents about who will be in the Oval Office.
Inflows to BlackRock's IBIT reached a new daily ATH on October 30th after 7 months, and 13 days of consecutive higher inflows than outflows.
Microstrategy also announced a plan to buy 42bn USD worth of BTC, over a period of 3 years, half by selling stock and half by raising fixed-rate-baring capital. Note that the roughly 252k BTC they have so far are worth around 18bn USD, so even with an aggressive estimate of price increase for BTC, they are still aiming to buy other impressive amounts of Bitcoin.
If we count in other recent positioning of other major players (Coinbase to integrate VISA Direct, Stripe Purchases Stablecoin Platform Bridge for 1.1bn USD, the news I highlight below too), looks like big movements are anticipated soon, and not the kind that would discourage a bull run.
Hmm, who says October wasn't, in fact, Uptober? Sure, people invested in most alts could say that...
Cryptocurrency and the Islamic World
Crypto already has a pretty good adoption in countries where Islam is the dominant religion, but it looks like there is a new trend these days from different crypto projects to become Sharia-compliant. From my understanding, Sharia represents the various interpretations of the Islamic Law, which sometimes are quite divergent in different aspects.
Bybit is a CEX that now offers Sharia-compliant accounts, or as they call them, Islamic Accounts.
This may seem like something related to religious believes, but in this case, it has to do with finance. I was ignorant about many of these aspects (and probably still am), but what I learned from a video was that in Sharia yield is prohibited, that's why Islamic banks don't work like most other banks in the world.
There's a lot to talk about here, and I don't have the expertise to do it, but basically, crypto projects seek this compliance with Sharia to have a higher adoption in the Islamic countries, where people already have proven to be quite open to this space anyway.
List of Older "Week through Adrian's Lenses" posts
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It's a good way to pick what interests you.