An Update on HIVE stuff: The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

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I have not been hyper present on HIVE discords and I do not keep a close enough eye on them to keep on the pulse of everything at all times. So here's an update on some HIVE projects I've mentioned in the past and what seems to be going on with them now after doing a bit of a checkup.

PIZZA: Hive.Pizza is a project that allows users to be a part of a SPL guild experience and also offers a Steam key store for HIVE tokens. The head of this project is completely MIA (@thebeardflex) and hasn't posted anything to hive in over a year and is ghosting their community on discord. They likely still make a passive income drip from the "PIZZA community discord" (discord pays community servers that hit thresholds based on activity etc.) so even if they never return to HIVE they are still sitting pretty from "Hello" chains giving daily unique user activity. There has been no communication from the head of this project so I would take that as a red flag and seriously consider what this project actually does. There are also no more giveaways or discord events hosted aswell (which is something the community did for free for the most part). This one feels particularly rough because PIZZA has a lot of nice people in their SPL guild network and folks like @hivetrending who do amazing work for HIVE across all of it's communities. I feel like we've all been bamboozled, them and myself included. I used to host PIZZA Chess tournaments (often completely out of pocket with the occasional prize pool provided by beard in PIZZA), and there is a reason I don't anymore. This isn't an attack on anyone, but all signs point to that beard has abandoned this project and token as is my current understanding. Soft rug vibes, definitely not HODLing since beard could just come back to dump a lion's share of PIZZA as soon as there is any value in doing so. Why build value for such a token abandoned by it's creator? Good question. This is more than "oh no the tokens are worth less than before boohoo", this appears to be a soft rug when it comes to the project itself (it costs nothing to communicate). During previous bull run I did pitch this guild and do some posting for them back when I played Splinterlands on @cryptoniusraptor. Revisiting the server and looking around it seems the Guilds and server have been churning along in Beards complete absence. It's sad to see him abandon the community like that with no explanation. The Steam Key shop only really worked with Beard being active as some keys he needed to send since they didn't work immediately upon purchase from the site, I would not recommend using the store until further notice. This is my stance on PIZZA as of this time. I think trending will do what he can and be upfront and honest with everyone about the moves going forward with it, with beard MIA he has to figure out where to go from here. He's out here putting in a lot of devwork on hive basically for free for the most part, truly a legend. Since I'm unsure about the keys for this project and the founding member's whereabouts and involvement I'm waiting to see what happens here and recommending caution. This could be a soft rug etc. I reduced my stake and don't plan on accumulating until hivetrending lets everyone know what will be happening going forward and the logistics behind beard's absence. I believe in @hivetrending to do the right thing, but I do not trust @thebeardflex to be reliable from here on out as a project lead. Even saying "hey I will be gone for X amount of time" would've been something. Additionally it should be noted that all the folks who seem to know in him irl also are rather unreachable. Not a good sign tbh. It's not like the bar is that high in crypto, and particularly on HIVE, to lead and maintain a project. One of the main/only qualifiers is participation. Anyway that's my two cents: wait and see, but advance with caution. Maybe him getting tagged on HIVE will make him all of a sudden erupt from the woodwork and go back to managing his project and giving some insight on what is happening, I do doubt it though (it has been over a year of him being completely MIA).

ONEUP: Oneup hasn't been going through the best stuff during bear, but @flauwy has been right there with his community communicating every hardship and advancement and informing them of everything as he goes. Even though the project isn't exploding into the moon, it had been delivered what it promised and lived up to it's integrity. Well done even though he has decided liquidating everything is the best for those holding the token later on this year. You can see they are actively posting updates to their community and their discord also sports their presence and they will kindly answer any questions you might have. This project provided web3 gaming opportunities during a time it was difficult to acquire the assets, and is still doing so. The assets being worth less now is not the fault of the project, and despite hardships they never abandoned their community. Flauwy will be taking a much needed break from everything as his farewell (for now) announcement in his discord suggests. I hope he finds the peace and happiness he deserves after always doing his best and trying to maintain integrity throughout the process. Kudos to you man, not everything works out the way we thought it would. Even though ONEUP and the CARTEL are in their final moments I have no regrets engaging here or being a part of what @flauwy created and I wish him the best going forward in his life. (More info in their discord)

SPLINTERLANDS: I no longer follow the meta or current happenings in this videogame, I have a few last posts about the things that changed and what caused me to quit but that's about it. I don't think this game has the visual streaming appeal necessary to be a good game to stream, and I don't have fun or earn enough playing it to be worth it for me currently also in those regards. Not that the game is bad (it's fine), I just got ultra burned out on it playing it for years when things were brighter. It's hard to go back, and that's where I'm at with that. I know Splinterlands has brought a lot to HIVE, but them leveraging it at every opportunity to get more out of HIVE (threatening to go to another chain etc.) sortof shows me that the game itself might not be bringing as much as it seems if all it brings is used as leverage to get more funding instead of them getting funding from selling their product (The way a video game should be making money). Most of these stats that were brought with Splinterlands for "new hive users" etc. were all completely fabricated bot account stats anyway, so what are they really leveraging? Any game developer could bring that sort of traffic to HIVE with a good game, it doesn't have to be Splinterlands.

PIMP: The PIMP project seems to be very transparent and invested in HIVE gaming/tokens and other things on HIVE, unlike Beard's PIZZA they actually publicly disclose every action the accounts are taking and every move the collective resources the project has makes (Like the CARTEL). Beard did not do this and offered a similar gimmick of "Stake and invest here so you don't have to go around investing in every HIVE game". Sadly it seems that initial pitch and vision for PIZZA seems to be on hold atm, and this is the only project I know doing something similar. @enginewitty is a solid person who is direct and holds himself accountable and communicates with his community every Wednesday morning in their discord, is posting into the community regularly, and will answer any DM you happen to send the fella. I've had a very positive experience with this project since joining and appreciated the massive level of transparency. I will likely be getting a bit more of a stake here as things develop since out of the projects I joined this one has continued to consistently deliver.

HASHKINGS: THIS PROJECT HAS RUGGED! I played this game via a PIZZA scholarship back when PIZZA was an actual project before beard abandoned it. It was honestly just a clicker with a decent art aesthetic but no serious draw aside from "Maybe I sell this shitcoin down the line". At least to me, but I was upfront about this in my postings about this too on @cryptoniusraptor. The game now has a bunch of additional requirements and fees to be able to "click to earn" like before so I haven't revisited, and honestly I'm not sure if I will or not.

RISING STAR: This game has been a consistent idle clicker with a similar sort of feel to cookie clicker. Very well done and they haven't changed things up massively or started asking for extra money or NFTs to participate in the main gameplay loop. Great example of a FREE game on HIVE that you can point to as an example of usecase or ingame inventory potential. I never put in any money here or took any out, I've just been clicking since day one and will continue to click, fun idler with a nice band theme and progression.

WOO: I haven't played WOO since it came out and have just been holding onto my packs. I know the actual WOO team has done a lot of good work advertising HIVE and getting names from Wrestling to join the network/ pitch it. This is pretty big for HIVE and the realworld connections to the wrestling community are something very valuable that @bookerman brings to the table. The WOO discord is always full of updates to the actual gameplay and real communication, the @wrestorgonline account also posts regular updates to the community. This project is alive and well and still brings things to HIVE that are very unique, well done. This game also offers concrete development milestones aswell. They are even currently hosting a HUGE event to celebrate the progress they have obtained recently, definitely still developing. I might play this during a crypto game stream variety run later on this month. It'll be fun.

That covers most of the projects and associations I have here on HIVE that I've posted about. As you can see not all of them have panned out the best, but I feel obligated to keep you folks up to date with anything I've mentioned or how my opinions change. Even if a lot of said projects were more "bull run" activity and a lot of web3 content creators don't feel the obligation to keep their followers up to date on their activities/thoughts, I do. Thanks for reading and for the continued support everyone, I hope to see you all in another post! Rant over. NEVER forget, investing in ANY crypto assets can lead to them going to zero and making you NOTHING. Always remember that and please don't take a lot of what I say as financial advice. I'm taking risks and talking about it, and sometimes I lose it all (let me be the lab rat). In any case, don't use money you can't afford to lose in the crypto space. It's a jungle out there.