The situation with HIVE is unfortunately not improving. It was back in November last year when I wrote up the last Budget, Lease and Vote Value Update where I warned that "If the Hive price continues to decline below 10 cents then there is a point where even the modest VPS expense can no longer be justified." Since then the HIVE price has again halved. Now it's at 5 cents and with the Virtual Private Server (VPS) expenses going unpaid again since that post it's time to make the big call that I've been putting off for months. It is time to decommission the VPS that runs all the services that I have custom built and supported for Precious.
What does this mean? It means that Precious will need to revert back to a basic voting service for SGS members. All the current Hive Power Leases will be cancelled and there will be no more Weekly Lease Payments distributed for those delegating extra Hive Power to the @ssg-community account. Powerdown on the account will continue so that the outstanding VPS expenses can be paid and then after that the PRECIOUS Token Holders can be made whole via a Token Buyback with the remaining funds. More on that soon, but just for now please don't dump your PRECIOUS Tokens because you'll be missing out on the Token Buyback if you do. The price of HIVE has dropped a lot, but the PRECIOUS Token WILL be supported until everyone who supported the project has been paid out.
While the leases will be finishing immediately, the VPS is still paid for until the end of the month of June so existing services can continue for the short term while we transition and our lessors pull their Hive Power back. The vote value from the @ssg-community account will drop significantly while this happens but there is still a couple of weeks before the VPS will be finally decomissioned. That gives a little bit of time to set up a new (more basic) voting service for SGS members so that Precious can continue.
I am personally a bit saddened by this development and I've been putting it off for months now because I have been in denial and I know this news will be dissappointing for SGS members. However, the writing has been on the wall for a while now and there is not much we can really do when the ecosystem we've built our community service on loses 98% of it's peak token value in 4 years and there is genuinely no real green shoots on the horizon that could turn things around.
Precious will continue in some form however, as I hope that SGS will also. I'm hopeful that HIVE can rebound at some point in the future and who knows, maybe the ecosystem and community here can revitalise itself such that further fundraising and expenses can be justified down the road. I won't be throwing any of the old code away (though it's very old now and really needs a re-write) Never say never.
Thanks to all the SGS members and broader community for the ongoing support and understanding over the years. You are appreciated and I will always try to be accessible to you via Discord as we go through this latest transition if you want to reach out.
