Etherium's Kryptonite is HIVE's Superpower

Much has been written about ETH2 and how it is going to transform one of the major downsides of crypto, but there is an aspect we could be doing more in the Hive community to differentiate with until ETH2 comes along.

What am I referring to?

Of course, the headline improvement that ETH2 brings is a massive reduction in energy use and therefore environmental impact.

Ethereum 2.0 (ETH2) is an upgrade to the Ethereum network that aims to improve the network's security and scalability. This upgrade involves Ethereum shifting their current mining model to a staking model.

Part of the achievement comes from Proof of Stake versus the currently compute expensive methods. Debates aside, it's going to happen but has already been delayed.

A less discussed aspect due to the attention the energy consumption aspect receives is the reduction of computing resources allows for faster and lower-cost transactions.

It's a Gas!

Unlike many in this space, I have been focusing more on the technology side than the trading and collecting side, which has meant I write and read to blockchains a lot more than a regular person.

This has made me super sensitive to any friction in that process.

While ETH is the poster-child for blockchain you can BUILD upon - a utility blockchain in a way, I believe HIVE is actually better placed.

Yes, HIVE has some unfair advantages because it is so small in comparison, but ever since the ETH community started collecting and trading cartoon animals, we have seen the weaknesses and felt the downsides.

To give one clear example, I bought my name as a .eth domain.

During the registration process, the price doubled, meaning I didn't have enough ETH in my wallet to finish the transaction and it stalled.

Go ahead and check the price of your name right now.

The registration itself is only $5 if your name is not rare - 5+ characters (up to any length), like getting any regular name.

But check out the estimated gas fees. Yep, and yet people still think blockchain ecommerce using ETH v1 should be a thing!

Woah on Web 3

OK so my transaction did go through after a live chat with customer service and pumping more liquidity into my wallet. Job done ... right?

Not so fast!

Every time you use anything on the ETH blockchain you need to pay for the gas fees.

How about saving my profile?

$56.71 frakkin' dollars!

Every time you hit save!

Not only that, the calculation required for estimating how much something is going to cost is so convoluted.

You see, even though there is a base cost, plus tip, you don't know how many actual calculations the blockchain will need to work with. If something is very involved, your already too-high $8 minimum fee will be multiplied!

Python Code for example GAS PRICE

Say you wanted to keep track of gas prices. You could do something like this:

r = requests.get("https://pro-api.coinmarketcap.com/v1/cryptocurrency/quotes/latest?symbol=eth&convert=USD", headers=headers) 
 
eth = r.json()['data']['ETH']['quote']['USD']['price'] 
 
url="https://ethgasstation.info/api/ethgasAPI.json?api-key=YOUR-KEY" 
 
r = requests.get(url) 
 
data = r.json() 
dollars = data['fast']<em>(data['average']/10)</em>0.000000001 <em> eth 
print(data['average']/10,"Gwei", "\n\nBase Price Eg. "+str(round(dollars</em>10,2)) ) 
print("\n\nAverage wait: ", data['avgWait'],"minutes") 

But the problem here is we are estimating based on 100 Gwei because unless you know how convoluted your transaction or the block you are working with, you can't guess at what the actual variables are going to be.

(I would love someone to share an accurate algorithm with me - I am still learning!)

Enter HIVE

When learning to code for the ETH blockchain we use test networks because you would need to be extremely wealthy indeed to learn iteratively (and make mistakes) on the main net.

Even so, we use Faucets to get fake ETH because everything we do still needs to simulate the awful process of getting anything done on the network.

On HIVE though I have been able to experiment and rapidly learn without any concerns.

HIVE is fast and doesn't beat you in the nuts with fees. It's a one-two punch of awesome!

But even if we did have HIVE fees, we can "mine" the currency by contributing to the community, we don't HAVE to buy liquid coins to play with it.

So What?

We need to be telling more people about the advantages of building on HIVE. It's not just fees or even speed, but the whole ecosystem.

From the easy single-signon access of the Hive Keychain through to amazing API libraries, everything is here. We just need more people to know about it.