Hi, I'm aggroed. I'm a long standing witness on the chain, CEO of Splinterlands, which is the number one blockchain game in the world, and Director of Hive-Engine an exchange built on top of Hive. I have help from Privex to run a full RPC, I run a Seed node with extra plugins so that Splinterlands can handle all of it's own calls and replay quickly in the event of a crisis, and I have multiple witness nodes I operate. I founded the Minnow Support Project, it does a lot of voting to help new users with Hive I've helped raise and delegate. I helped design and fund Hive-Keychain, and I do a lot of community building and networking.

HF 25

Now that Hard Fork 24 is mostly behind us I wanted to throw out some thoughts on what to focus on next for the Layer 1. The lingering things I think we need to worry about are account creation, continued lean improvements for nodes, and delegation pools.

These changes are meant to enable the Layer 2 apps to form here and use Hive as a giant, public, easy to handle, web development friendly hard drive for their applications. That might not sound incredibly sexy, but it's a utility that can power this blockchain into large scale use and possibly get the HIVE token out of the shitter. What we need are people, and people will come if there's apps they want to use. If we want apps we need to make it as easy for Apps to form here.

What do apps need?

Mass account creation
Plenty of bandwidth
Inexpensive to operate
App developer Documentation

Apps need people, and people need accounts and band width. I think Hive development should focus on making the account creation as robust as possible and strive to make it use as little state as possible to allow for maximum growth. This could involve lite accounts that are nothing more than keypairs or improving account sign up so that it can expand massively and ensuring it doesn't strain the system.

We should be able to talk to a group with an existing app with an existing community and talk through how we could bring their thousands or millions of users here, have the app continue to function, and how the blockchain will handle that additional traffic.

In regards to bandwidth I think it's pretty non-contentious to suggest that we need delegation pools. An app can keep using it's Hive Power as intended for social promotion, but delegate the resource credit pool to allow users and players to access the tools and games even if those users are new to crypto.

Lastly, if we're going to get apps to develop here or board here there needs to be a focus on making sure all the libraries are easily accessible, readable, code is up to date, and as many examples are given in as many ways as possible.

Things to avoid on the layer 1

I think smart contract platforms will all inevitably fail. Human ingenuity is a greater force than a set of nodes. When you open up a platform to smart contracts everywhere I think you end up with projects that can't scale. So, I would suggest avoiding as much of that as possible on the Layer 1. Keep it simple down there. Put all the business logic on the layer 2 and allow the Layer 1 to scale as much as possible without any processing burdens being placed on it.

We have 3 second block times. It's a really nice speed for apps. Users don't freak out if something takes 3 seconds. It also doesn't take forever if you want your app to confirm from 1 or 2 blocks back from the head block to avoid mini forks that happen.

What I don't think we should do is make any layer 1 smart contract stuff.

Now I can already hear the haters. "Aggroed, you stupid fuck, you greedy piece of shit shill, who the fuck is going to trust you here. You operate Hive-Engine you fucker. Clearly you're biased as fuck you little shit."

Ok, first off, that kind of talk is hateful and I'd appreciate if you could calm your tits a little and speak to me professionally. Secondly, if people want to make alternatives to Hive-Engine I'll wish them well all day. It's not about no-competition to Hive-Engine. It's about not putting stuff that doesn't belong on Layer 1 on the Layer 1.

The layer 1 has to be as lightweight as possible. We have 3 second blocktimes, which means if we start adding a ton of processing at the layer 1 that's bad. Processing could slow block production such that they take more than 3 seconds, which is bad for the chain, bad for the apps, and a bad user experience.

So, I'd welcome other projects making FTs, NFTs, and smart contracts on the layer 2. I just don't want them on the Layer 1. It's my obvious preference that people work on decentralizing Hive-Engine and building stuff on top of that. I've been at this for 2-3 years now, and I'm not hanging out on the Layer 2 by accident. The layer 2 is the best place to build a business, and that's ultimately what the dapps are going to be.

I guess my point is that whatever else happens on the Layer 1 I suggest the goal be to keep it as lightweight as possible. I don't need a hard drive that can do backflips. I just need the damn thing to store info as well as possible. If you really want to get fancy we can try getting some P2P on Hive Mind or figuring out how to enable additional side chains on there.

Just, if the goal is to make Hive a great place for apps, let's not fuck up the one technical thing that we really have going for us and kill the fast, steady, free, and scalable block production by throwing a crap ton of smart contracts into the layer 1.

Anyway, I'm getting off my soapbox. Thanks for your consideration, kindly vote my witness if you think he projects I work on add value to Hive, and stay frosty. I'm seeing a ton of phishing scam stuff these days. It's a bullish sign, but something to be wary of.