The Hive.Loans Idea
Many months ago before starting the Hive.Loans development the idea was fleshed out with a few users on here and myself as I'd had the initial idea but was completely unsure of the feasibility of it all. Once it was determined the basis of "account as collateral" would in-fact work given the plethora of operations available to users here on the HIVE blockchain secondary thoughts began to surface in my own mind on how to make the idea better:
"Can we make this FULLY decentralized in time?"
"Will it be possible to make this so everyone can run a lending site of their own?"
"Can support for multiple token types such as Hive-Engine and SMTs be baked in?"
"Is it possible to create a truly decentralized side chain to operate the lending?"
After enough time to think about all of these things the answer that came back for all of the above questions was a resounding YES.. Although the exact details of it all had yet to be worked out in my head.. I knew I could do decentralized websites via IPFS hosting on multiple nodes to ensure the website / front end would be not limited to being served on one server, which solved the front end decentralization issue.. But what about the back end stuff? How would it be possible to make a decentralized back end to operate all the contract code and whatnot that ultimately drove the functionality of the website? The answer came from a place I didn't honestly expect.
Bringing Solidity Smart Contracts via Decentralized EVM
While up until recently I was basically 100% against Ethereum for various reasons, the realization that condemning such a useful technology and all of its components due to my own beliefs was brought to the forefront of my mind and after working my way through why I didn't like Ethereum it was decided that I don't necessarily have to like ETH in order to take advantage of the incredible technology under it's hood which is the Ethereum Virtual Machine or EVM. With EVM you can run smart contracts written in a number of different languages which are then compiled down to Web Assembly bytecodes and then can be run on the EVM stack for all to see. One neat feature of the Ethereum chain I didn't realize up until a few days ago was that a person could effectively set up a private EVM instance (sort of like Binance Chain BnB) and use that to run smart contracts on. With even further research into this thing it was discovered that even though the EVM chain was "private" it could be run on multiple nodes, thus implementing proper decentralization into the mix.
With all of this now discovered my mind quickly put all of the parts together and came up with a solution not only for how to properly decentralize the Hive.Loans back end contract stuff.. But also on how to bring proper decentralization and smart contract capability to a HIVE sidechain which will come in the form of a heavily modified private EVM instance that will eventually operate as a PoW sidechain that uses HIVE instead of ETH for gas fees, with the majority of the HIVE gas fees being paid out to miners who help calculate the functions on the EVM stack. Using this method not only will the Hive.Loans back end be hosted on various nodes thus providing proper decentralization of the contracts but also bringing proper "DeFi" and smart contracts to the HIVE blockchain via the Hive.Loans EVM Side-Chain.
This will allow for ANY Ethereum smart contract code to be ported over to the Hive.Loans smart contract capable EVM instance as well as bring fourth the ability for the Hive.Loans chain to host things like ERC-20 tokens, Ethereum like NFT offers and full support for basically anything that Ethereum can do being ported onto HIVE. If Binance exchange can run a centralized private EVM chain and have it's price go up and over $200 a token there... Imagine the future price of HIVE if we were, as a community, able to offer the same capability of Ethereum and it's EVM for 1/1000th of the price of the original Ethereum network but with HIVE being used as gas? Right though? That is a hell of an exciting concept and one that most certainly will be the focus of Hive.Loans development.
Future Decentralization of the Hive.Loans Chain
While hopefully included in the v1.0.0 release of Hive.Loans which is aimed to launch around mid April, the total decentralization of the the Hive.Loans project and the implementation of the Hive.Loans EVM sidechain are something that is coming to HIVE here in the upcoming months. I'm currently working on getting a non-decentralized proof of concept built and tested to release regardless of the EVM side chain getting released just so we have something to lend on regardless of the progress of the Hive.Loans Private EVM Chain but the ultimate goal is to have Hive.Loans run most of it's back end stuff regarding contracts on the Hive.Loans EVM chain.
A ton of work still needs to be done to make this a reality and I'm not 100% sure I'll have all of the parts in place and working by mid April to facilitate this but that is the goal. To have a 100% decentralized open-sourced lending platform with tribe owners running their own Hive.Loans instance featuring their token and an EVM node to help bolster decentralization. Given that the Hive.Loans EVM chain will likely end up some form of Proof of Work it might also be possible in the future to allow for the release of a client that any user can run on their desktop computer to act as a Hive.Loans EVM mining node that would be paid in HIVE for the work they do and ultimately exist for the sole purpose of further decentralization of the Hive.Loans EVM chain. The biggest part of all this will be reverse engineering and modifying Ethereum in order to accept cross chain transfers of HIVE as gas fee but once this issue is solved then we're golden.
I'd briefly considered creating my own sidechain token similar to how Binance has BnB but decided that the best way to bring value to the HIVE network as a whole is to utilize HIVE as the token on the Hive.Loans EVM chain not only to bring a greater demand for the token but also to help curb inflation. Perhaps the Hive.Loans EVM chain burns a percentage of the HIVE gas fees and distributes the rest to the miner calculating the EVM step.. Plenty of ways this could be done and ultimately it'll be developed in a way that maximizes its positive effects on the HIVE ecosystem, with stuff like the Hive.Loans site profit taking a back seat to HIVE as a whole profiting.
I appologize for the wall of text in this post.. But there is a lot to explain regarding the future of Hive.Loans and it's fully capable EVM based chain. This post only scratches the surface of the incredible amount of potential that this sort of thing could bring to HIVE and in future posts I'll dive deeper into how exactly this will become a reality and it's future ramifications here on HIVE.
Assuming this all gets built properly and is proven to be secure and feasible this could very well be the beginning of HIVE not only becoming a house hold name but also completely decimating any competing chains. I'll post more info on the implementation of this as more progress is made but after the centralized version of Hive.Loans is shown to be operational the EVM version is the #1 priority.. As the result of it coming online will change everything we know about the future of HIVE.