We’re back: CBRS Podcast, episode 68
It’s been a while. Life got busy (kids on holiday, work, a thousand small things) and honestly, we hadn’t sat down together in weeks either. People even messaged us: “What happened to the #podcast?” One friend had already binged every episode and was asking for more. That felt good.
So we grabbed coffee, caught up, joked around like always, and recorded episode 68. Here’s what we actually talked about.
HiveFest is back, and it’s in Barcelona
@HiveFest is happening 17–20 September in Barcelona. Not far for many of us, warm weather, and yes, we immediately started dreaming about #coldbeetrootsoup.
Both of us want to go. The plan is simple: show up for a few days, soak it in, fly back. Minigunner already messaged home about it and Artakush is checking flights right after the Podcast. 2 hours by plane, or 24 hours on FlixBus if you’re feeling brave. We’ve done the cheap-ticket life before. Five euros to Italy sounds great until you remember the 36-hour layover.
Alongside HiveFest there’s @ChainCulture on the 18th. It did well in Malaysia, and now it’s coming to Barcelona. We’re curious how it lands in a city that already has a lot of #blockchain activity, and whether it can pull in people who aren’t already deep in #Hive.
Our take: ChainCulture is a strong idea. It’s a kind of “here’s what Hive can do” day for projects and builders. But once a year tied only to HiveFest might not be enough. If the goal is to accelerate real adoption and attention for Hive-powered apps, maybe it needs to happen more often, or travel to other hubs. One day doesn’t have to be wildly expensive; it could even grow into something that moves between events once the name sticks.
Wallets, listings, and “where did the money go?”
We touched on Cold Wallet adding Hive across a huge number of countries. Genuinely cool for reach and trading. But it raised an old frustration: when Hive pays for integrations, we often don’t see clear public breakdowns.
Listing fees in this space can be serious money. Tens of thousands isn’t unusual. As a community-funded chain, we want to know: what was spent, what’s the deal, what’s the expected return? Same with past promos (cards, giveaways, transaction contests). Cool ideas on paper; sometimes hard to verify in practice. One of us tried a card project back then and couldn’t get HBD flows working, and we still don’t have a satisfying post-mortem on whether that spend paid off.
Wallet presence matters. So does transparency. We’re not against investing in growth; we’re against guessing.
InnoPay: small steps, real venues
@InnoPay is moving. Presented at events like Aachen Summit, started in Luxembourg with a handful of venues (restaurants, bars) where you can pay in HBD, digital menus in the app. Log in, see where you can spend.
Now there’s a first spot outside Luxembourg: Zembar in Bucharest, the first venue in Romania accepting #HBD. That’s the kind of progress you can point at.
(Separate from other “creator”-style projects that seem on hold. We’d like to catch up with people like @Starkerz again, especially with @SPKNetwork / @theycallmedan work in motion, renting storage, earning Hive. But that’s another conversation.)
DHF, Magi, Keychain, and being careful with millions
We went deep on how the #DHF should work, because right now it feels tense.
@magi.network is back with another large proposal (after earlier funding while still under VSC). Development is moving, but the liquidity pool is tiny (~$2k). Rumour of a whale topping it up helps; we still need users, not just liquidity.
Meanwhile Hive @Keychain is so central that almost every Hive user depends on it. That creates a kind of monopoly on necessity: when they ask for DHF support, the community often has little choice. We’re not trashing Keychain. They’re important. But the dynamic worries us.
Our shared view:
- Fund in #milestones, not open-ended firehoses
- Early milestones should show real progress, and before the next tranche, some path to revenue (even partial sustainability)
- Learn from cases like LeoFinance: funded when it made sense; not funded again when results didn’t match the pitch
- Prefer the @meno model: build something that works first, then ask
@ecency got a shout-out for publishing operational transparency and infrastructure sizing for 2025–26. That’s what reporting should look like, on-chain and off-chain, so outsiders can see Hive development too.
And yes, Hive’s price came up. We’ve seen 20 cents feel “slow”; seeing six cents (and block rewards feeling thin) makes big new asks like $330k hit harder. It’s not “never fund.” It’s fund like adults: structure, forecast, proof, milestones.
Scrobble from @acidyo is doing interesting work: tracking what you listen to across platforms (YouTube, Spotify, etc.) and tying it into Hive. There was debate whether it stores metadata or actual audio; ties to @meno and voice-message style storage came up. Either way, it’s a nice example of one builder shipping something another person needed. “Finally, I can continue my idea.” That chain reaction is how Hive used to feel.
We also nodded at @ecency again for transparency, and at old-school milestone reports people voted on: finish work, publish report, community rewards you. That rhythm could map cleanly to modern DHF if we’re disciplined.
Games, ads, and not always asking the DHF
@minigunner has been deep in @polana (JAM / Polkadot ecosystem) as community manager. We cleaned bots, down from ~20k to ~3k real humans with verification, ~500 very active inside. JAM isn’t ready for months, so idle hands turned to building a football manager game called Gaffer.gg with #Cursor: click-based, no heavy engine, five weeks in, 430 players already in a small community.
The lesson bleeding into Hive thinking:
- Games need energy and revenue eventually
- Ads aren’t evil if they’re optional, support the dev, and refill in-game energy. Many players will watch 30 ads before they’ll pay a subscription
- Pump ad revenue into Hive (buy/support the ecosystem) instead of only draining pools
- Tarot Core and similar Hive games could use the same mindset: watch ads to support the game and each other
That led to Gaffer.gg, a fuller soccer management game, weeks of real work, visible in the app. The plan: one serious flagship-style game for Hive. Fun for Hivers, sustainable via ads and community support, not “DHF or die.”
We have the people. We have the numbers. Support doesn’t always have to mean another proposal.
We’re glad to be back in the studio. Episode 68 is in the bag; episode 69 is next, and we’re aiming not to vanish for weeks again.
Thanks for listening. Find CBRS Podcast on YouTube, drop us a follow or a comment anywhere you hang out, and we’ll see you on the next one.
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