What Happens to the New Hive Blockchain After Split Up From Steem
By Marko Vidrih on The Capital
More than a week has passed since part of the Steem community split up and created the new Hive platform. How did this affect the price of STEEM and what is happening with the new blockchain?
Last week, the Steem community leaders decided to switch to a new platform, Hive.io, to end the struggle to manage the network that unfolded after Justin Sun acquired Steemit startup. Hard fork successfully passed March 20 and led to the emergence of the new cryptocurrency Hive (HIVE).
Now HIVE is trading at $0.217, and the STEEM price is $0.173. However, a few days ago, the price difference between the coins was almost doubled — they cost $0.321 and $0.168, respectively.
“This is a true show of how a community can’t be bought,” said Dan Hensley, a major holder of STEEM, and now HIVE.
In February, Tron project founder Justin Sun acquired the startup Steemit, thus gaining a significant share of Steem coins and influencing the outcome of consensus voting on the network. Shortly after, major exchanges, at the request of Justin Sun, used the coins they stored to change the consensus of the Steem blockchain. Justin Sun explained the consensus change in Steem by a hacker attack, but the community did not accept his version of events, and the struggle for control over the network continued.
During the Steem community-initiated hard fork, the blockchain was copied so that all content published on Steem, as well as wallet balances, appeared in Hive. However, coins from the initial development fund, controlled by Steemit and Justin Sun, were not transferred to the new chain.
“While it’s very entertaining to see Hive trade so much higher than Steem, I wouldn’t give it too much weight until there’s more time for it to play out,” crypto trader Brian Krogsgard told CoinDesk via email. “I presume the Steem 3X from March 18 was related to the snapshot. Whoever got left holding that after it came down could become motivated sellers of Hive if it stays elevated.”
Steem Network Management requires that users truly block their assets. As soon as someone decides to vote with their tokens, they are blocked for a certain period. Token blocking is removed weekly. All STEEM holders received HIVE tokens for free, which will be blocked according to a similar scheme. Hensley said his first batch of STEEM tokens will be unlocked this week and he plans to sell them until his stock runs out.
Apparently, many community members plan to follow suit, and it is likely that the STEEM rate will drop significantly.
Steemit reaction
Justin Sun-controlled startup Steemit has taken a defensive position. Steemit officially acknowledged that it began to censor recordings in which users were encouraged to leave Steem and switch to Hive. The startup explained its actions as follows:
“Would any commercial website support a post that encourages all users to migrate to another one? No. That would not be in the best interest of the community and the Steem ecosystem.”
As said one longtime Steem user on Twitter, in terms of Steemit service has added a ban on the “promotion of third-party platforms or to promote each other without written permission.” Hensley said that alternative solutions for content creators, such as PeakD , Hive Blog and 3speak, have already appeared in Hive.
“I think with the community exodus many people are ‘powering down’ and selling steem as fast as they can, which puts a lot of sell pressure,” said Roeland Lanparty, long-time “witness” Steem, who closed his site immediately after hard fork.
Author: Marko Vidrih
Featured image credit: hive.io
