My Response to Steem-Engine/Hive-Engine Migration Plans
I was writing a comment to @aggroed's latest post in which he laid out some of the plans and concerns over the Hive-Engine migration for tribes and it got longer than I expected, so here's a blog post:
First of all, let me just express some gratitude to @aggroed and Steem-Engine. I truly appreciate what they've done for me and for this community. Creating a tribe supercharged my steem hive journey and I know that it did the same for hundreds of other long-time community members.
With that said, I still have an issue with repaying for the same services rendered. If there was something unique about the "new" services offered by Hive-Engine, then I would happily pay for them.
I would gladly pay for the following:
- Marketplace integration (new feature)
- Airdrop of tribe tokens from Steem to Hive stakeholders (service rendered, manual labor required)
- Eon's work on scotbot/condenser interface (for new features added, not for the same features cloned to Hive)
- etc. etc.
Paying for things like enable staking, enable delegation, etc. doesn't make sense to me - honestly, I didn't even like paying 1000 ENG for each of these the first time around (especially considering that I had to do it for 3 tokens - LEOM, LEOMM and LEO). It's a literal flip of the proverbial switch and has no marginal cost for each additional usage -- i.e. if 1 tribe owner does it, it has the same cost to Hive-Engine as if 1000 tribe owners do it.
Charging for the first go around to cover the development costs of those features makes sense, but charging us again for "passing go" doesn't sit well with me -- we're moving to a nearly identical chain and I don't believe that the cost to "re-develop" these services is the same as when Steem-Engine first created them.
I want to support Hive-Engine and the work that goes into its creation and ongoing maintenance, but repaying for services that I've already paid for is more like a donation than a sale.
The Steem-Engine Restaurant
Another analogy for this is that we (tribe owners) came to eat at the Steem-Engine restaurant. We sat down at our table and ordered our food.
Halfway through our meal, you (the chef/owner) came to us and said "would you like to stay at your current table (Steem), which has a few bugs underneath the tablecloth or would you like to move to a new table over there which is fresh, bug-free and likely 'safer' than your current table?"
I say "yes, let's move over there. All my friends prefer tables over there anyways. I wish we could've just sat down at that table orginally."
Then you say "ok, we can move you over to that table, but we're going to need you to pay again for all the food you just ordered and aren't finished with yet. We'll comp you for a small portion of the meal, but its up to you to buy all of the same food again.
We can actually re-use the majority of ingredients that are currently on your table and just re-make the meal, but you're going to have to pay nearly full price at the new table. Alternatively, you could just stay at your current table (despite its obvious issues) and you can eat the rest of the meal that you already paid for, for free.
Would you still like to move?"
In regards to LEO more specifically, I would have to pay for token creation, enable staking, enable delegation on the LEO token itself and then all 3 of those again for both LEOM and LEOMM.
That ~4,300 HIVE won't break my bank, but I feel like I'm buying the same food twice (also worth mentioning is the ENG that I have purchased and staked, which I would now have to unstake on Steem, sell and then buy BEE at a 10x premium).
I don't mean this as an attack or disrespect in any way. As I said at the beginning, what Agg and Steem-Engine did for me and many others has my deepest gratitude. Paying 4,300 HIVE for these same features wouldn't kill me, this is just how I feel about having to purchase the same thing twice.
Looking forward to Wednesday's meeting at 1PM EST. I hope we get a good discussion rolling.
I feel you, I wonder what's the WHY...not a good long term business move on his part, like you said, it's the principle, not the expense.
I really feel for those who purchased Eng token at a certain price and the price went down and for them waiting for the price to climb up. In trading, we lose and we gain at times.
I must comment aggroed for doing a great job on the steamengine also. It is worth complimenting him for
I fully support your feelings. It’s a little to much if it’s not well justified IMO.
I'm not happy with it either. I bought a truckload of all sorts of coins when everyone was selling their goods for Steem to get some Hive.
I get where you are coming from. You shouldn't have to pay for the same mean twice. It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
This doesn’t feel like an attack at all. You are stating some very valid points and voicing your opinion. I agree with you.
I especially like the Steem Engine Restaurant explanation.
If possible, a full table switch should be at least cheap or free? What do you say?
I think that a table switch before the food arrives should always be free. But since the food was already on the table, I can understand why switching to a new table would cost a very slight fee. Definitely not full price though.
I am sure you are only expressing what many of the other tribe owners are already thinking.
A more important question is how far are we from SMTs?
I got a message on discord from someone who is on Steem talking about how they are moving forward with them on that blockchain.
I guess it is a race to see who can produce them first.
This is what I was wondering about too. I understand there are still certain stability, optimization and other fixes that need to be done on Hive, but what's the next step? Is there any work being done on SMTs?
This message was written by guest waivio_pacificgifts, and is available at www.waivio.com
SMTs on STEEM will never arrive, that is my bet. For the TRON Foundation that might have been one of the main reasons to mingle in, they don’t want STEEM to do that. In their eyes, ‚TrON is the tokenizer of the web 3.0‘. I mean... it’s their main slogan :D
Wow this is a really bad look for SteemEngine.
I had no idea this was going on.
Steem is not a viable option and they need to provide migration for free.
Or else they're going to lose a lot of credibility going forward.
You are right, full migration should be an option from that point of view. But 💯 free...? Nothing is free in the Business IT sector.
This really should be a case to case consideration, because it seems to include legal problems. Otherwise the positions might stay frozen forever.
The service has already been paid for.
This is the argument being made.
This all unjustified fees is shaking my confidence on hive. Migration was based on "principle" or whether it was motivated by "greed"?
Aggy and the Engine Devs as far as I can tell, did not push for the fork. They had this situation in mind all the time probably.
So 99% that’s not the case.
Appreciate this man.
And I agree with you 100%.
I know they are a business and have fees and costs...No issue at all paying for things, I just don't wanna get charged twice for something I have spent the better part of 6 months working my tail on.
I'm a huge supporter of tribes and everything it brings to the table for HIVE. Just wanna see us (the tribes) get out of this without being double dipped.
When it comes down to it, many tribe owners may not be able to afford the costs to "port over" at this time. It all depends upon the front end costs plus the costs to stake the Hive equivalent of Eng.
He's got a business to run, but the business only exists because the community (us) bought into his vision in the form of ENG, EM miners and tribes. Now he's basically asking us to pay for passing go just because we're reformatting onto an identical chain. It doesn't make business sense to do that to your "customers" and more importantly to the community backing all of it.
I also don't believe the numbers as represented. Nor do I believe the legal issues. Of course, both are out of my purview, but I have a hard time believing those projections.
Also, how much does SE bring in via the STEEM->STEEMP gateway? How much would they bring in under the guise of the HIVE->HIVEP gateway?
Our usage of tribes/tokenization is what drives demand for STEEM-->STEEMP conversions and thus, a 1% fee on all of that going to SE.
There is a huge lack of understanding how important the tribe tokens are to people and how many have a user experience (over all) that is at least in part connected with the SE tokens.
Some of us have real money in for paid development, marketing, websites, etc.
I don't plan on repeating the same mistakes again.
Very well written.
I also bought some Leo Miner and they are kinda doomed now. ~FeelsBadMan~
But I don’t blame anyone but the TRON Foundation.
Leo miner's are safe ;)
Luckily, we have the code to run that on our own regardless of what SE does. As long as the LEO token exists in one place or another, the miners can generate it based on the # of miner tokens owned.
In that case.. I might need to buy some more.
lol. I can guarantee that LEO and all the people who have bought into the vision of Steemleo (and now LeoFinance) are not going to get left behind. No matter what happens with SE.
4,300 Hive is just the sitting fee for the new table. To remain seated in that table you'll need to purchase 1 BEE for each feature you utilize per each user of your dapp. This means that you'll need to give up 4300 Hive to move but then you'd still need to buy at least 1/BEE for each user you plan to support. That's where the real hidden cost is.
For SPORTS, this would mean we'll need the initial few thousand for the set up but then we'll need to convert over 8,000 staked ENG to BEE at a fraction of the original exchange value. This move would cost our tribe thousands of dollars.
I really wish we had an update on when HMT would be released. I know @howo was able to begin testing before the Sun ordeal. I just wish I could know if HMT might appear to make this a moot point.
Please , anybody clarify my doubts
why Eng to Bee?
if u sell Eng who will buy ?
Steemengine moving to Hiveeng then if anybody buy Eng what they do with it?
what happen if steemengine have to stay on both chains ,one for Eng for steem and new one Bee for hive ,because of the fees for tribes move on to hive and they dont want to pay for it or they stay where they are.
if steemengine migration for free on hive blockchain,why tribes have to buy bee ?
they have Eng then why hiveengine creating Bee ,tribes can use eng on hiveengine ?
I feel sorry for the token owners like you who had a lot invested and many customers.
It's the depression of ENG that got me most. All those posts saying it would be good to keep. I personnally didn't have any except right at the beginning when I confused it with steemp.
I understand airdrops couldn't happen for legal reasons, but discounts to move over should be provided. At this point waiting for HMT (and safer 2nd layer solutions) may make the most sense.
A lot of those tokens were community driven and experimental, there is no way they will migrate at full cost. We have all suffered and are continuing to suffer.
Cheer up! Good things are coming...
Appreciate your point of view on it. A lot of token owners have spent countless hours and a lot of hard earned $$ on their tokens and tribes.
I won't be paying for any additional costs to Steem-Engine unless they provide something of additional value. At this point, we've suffered losses of both time and money at the hands of SE and their support has been non-existent. Personally, I staked a bunch of ENG under the presumption that it was going to be a requirement for operating a Tribe in the long-run.
We all bought into @aggroed's vision for SE and now he's basically telling us to pay up for things we've already bought or we are shit out of luck. Steem is a dead chain in the eyes of 90% of this community. Hive is everything now
Nice analogy. Wont break my bank either, but it's still expensive to pay for the same meal. Like you, I'm appreciate of all the work done, and I'm happy to pay a small gratuity for the work done to migrate, but it doesn't seem right. See you at the meeting.