Hive is a censorship-resistant base layer chain, complete with a DAO. The SPK network's goal is to fill some gaps Hive is missing at the moment. For the SPK Network, I'm just a contributor, happy to do my part to see this thing get off the ground.
The SPK Network could have been easily funded by a few larger stakeholders, but in the spirit of web 3, it's the story that matters the most. 10 years from now, having the ability to say the SPK Network was a community-funded task, no VCs, no large investors, just a grassroots movement funded by a community would be immensely important. You can't buy that script, it's a story for the books, and it's one I really want to be able to tell. Every other project is trying to fund infrastructure solutions with community funding, and we can prove that is possible on Hive. Since this project comes with no premine and a fair mining access to all Hivers, it makes for a great birth to combine community funding with a fair launch token.
I've supported many DAO proposals in the past, but this is the first time I've been willing to back it with my name and am willing to ensure the funds of the proposal are paid out; Matt & I see to it the funds are secure.
To address some points related to PPY and why we think they are a good fit to help build the SPK network:
We looked everywhere for developers capable, we have come close to hiring a few that could, even former a steemit core dev, but we could not find anyone capable of building the entire scope.
When trying to find someone who could build the entire scope, it quickly became evident at the cost, IE 100k just for "HMTs" that did a fraction of what we needed them to and would take a fair amount of time on its own, let alone the entire scope needed.
PPY team has the skills necessary; Bobinson is a well known, highly skilled developer lead. PPY team can do the entire scope at a fraction of the cost. This is because they are firstly giving Hive a great discount on the work being done. On top of this, they are matching the $ paid by Hive, meaning the task has been quoted at a discount of 100k, but they are charging only 50k for the work.
PPY/HIVE are both originally forks of BTS code; they share the same graphene technology. It is important to have innovation in graphene, as a rising tide raises all ships. PPY is a decentralized gateway focused chain, where Hive is a text-based app-building-focused chain. It would be great to have teams with resources that can help improve the overall graphene ecosystem.
PPY, being a lower used chain, gives the flexibility to make changes in a real time environment. We can build and tweak this thing in real-time while simultaneously improving a sister chain to Hive.
Long term support from the PPY team will only benefit Hive in the long run. Currently, Hive does not have a core team dedicated to cross chain communication; having a well funded graphene development team will only serve to benefit graphene technology as a whole.
Hive Sons is the first-ever graphene cross-chain bridge created. History is being made, Hive Sons code works now, and that was one of the hardest parts of this entire scope, and it's already done.
Lots of the work needed for the token system is easily built on PPY, lots of the code they wanted to work on anyway, this means the work can be done much quicker and more securely than starting from scratch.
We will be providing infrastructure to helping run PPY nodes for sidechains. Since running a node is so cheap and the utility ad is so great, we hope to see others want to provide support as well.
Important answers by SPK network contributors.
Why PPY?:
PPY infrastructure and witness count:
▶️ 3Speak