Altera By Magi Network.. It Runs Well
The buzzing words about MAGI has been heard in the last few weeks, however I have not got any spare time to check it out... until today. So before I go, I know some of you might not follow this thing in close. We are talking about @magi.network which previously known as @vsc.network. It's a rebrand but I believe many of Hivians here aren't aware of it.
Anyway Magi Network is a cross chain protocol, which allow cross chain transactions, from and to multi chain wallets, so you can do all of those from your single wallet. If you are still confused about it, let me describe this in a very simple way.
I believe all hivians know https://hive-engine.com/ or https://tribaldex.com/ right? It only works on Hive using Hive Wallet. Magi Network works using multi chain wallets, so it doesn't have to be a HIVE Wallet, and the tokens do not have to be HIVE-based ones too, they can come from other blockchains. That's why we call it Cross Chain Protocol. Shoot out to @aggroed and his team back then who brought Hive Engine to this chain, which for years it has became the main distinctive different between HIVE and the legacy chain STEEM.
Currently Magi Networks has fully worked for Swap and Token / NFT ecosystem. IF you want to see how the TOKEN or NFT ecosystem on Magi works, you can go to https://terminal.okinoko.io/ . I am not a token owner nor project developer, so I skip that part. What takes my interest is tha Altera, https://altera.magi.eco/ , which you can do many SWAP to cross chain token.
So this is the landing page of https://altera.magi.eco/ . Swap Native Assets and we have BTC, DASH, and HIVE. Let see if I can get some real BTC, not wrapped or swapped edition here.
When we log into Altera, we can use EVM Wallet such as Meta Mask or BTC based wallet.
I see there is an option to log in using Phantom Wallet. I have been using this wallet recently for my gaming activities outside HIVE. However in this opportunity, I will use HIVE wallet, as I want to convert HIVE to BTC.
This is what I see on my dashboard, the landing page after logged in with my Hive Wallet. Altera works on HIVE Layer 2, so our HIVE and HBD from the first layer are not the same as the second layer. Imagine that you are on the counter, on the table you have cash box, to store your money. Below the table, you have safety box, to store more money there. That analogy is about token in blockchain, different layer will be counted differently. Layer 1 only have one place. Layer 2 can be multiple, in this case Hive-Engine and Altera will have different balance.
Another difference between Altera and Hive Engine is that Altera doesn't use swap or wrapped tokens, so your HBD and HIVE are direct or real tokens. So they are treated as NATIVE TOKENS.
Anyway I just realized that @asean.hive had tested @magi.network first from January to March 2026. They had sent some HBD in staking as compensation for my HP delegation. I wonder what stopped them to continue sending HBD on April and May 2026, I hope they are ok right now, healthy and going well with their life.
ok let see another interesting one here
Magi Network uses 2 Resource Credits, the first one is HIVE RC which comes from our HP (Hive Power, Staked HIVE) and the second one is Magi Resource Credit. Those two work with the same algo, however the balance are different. Magi RC is determined by the volume of your Staked HBD or HBD saving on the Magi Network... not on your Hive Wallet. Even those two are different saving places, the APR is the same so you do not have to worry about it.
So let see the instant swap here. If you want to swap HIVE to BTC, you need to add a receiver wallet address regarding our HIVE Wallet can not accept BTC based token. We can set the slippage and we see that there are two fees there. Protocol FEe for 0.08% and the Exchange Fee for Altera. I can say they have some brains here, they do not work for free lol.
The most important one is the route. We see that it will be swapping from HIVE to HBD then HBD to BTC. I think based on this, better I swap my HBD directly to BTC, rather than trying to swap HIVE to HBD first and gets some fees.
Talking about route... All swaps come from Pools, so we need to see the pools first!
Currently Altera only has two pools, the first one is HBD:HIVE with total liquidity valued around $5.610. The daily transaction is around $890. The second one is BTC:HBD, which is smaller with $3.683 pool value and $14.68 daily volume.
So we can only have HIVE BTC and HBD at the moment. Maybe we will see DASH soon, but not right now. The pools volume are small too, I believe we need to promote more about these pools, because this pool size could not contain a whale transaction.
oh ya, I almost forget... let's test it out!
I am swapping for BTC, directly from my HBD balance on my Hive wallet. you can see above, it's native and no wrap token. my 3.063 HBD is valued for $2.97, well it is not $3.063 as I expected. but nothing is super precise on any market.
The price impact is not big but it is very sensitive one. 1 HBD gives me 0.05% price impact, 3 HBD gives me 0.15% price impact. I can not complain about this, regarding the pool size is only around $3.863. I think the pools size should be boosted at least 20-50x from this size, else the price impact will become people issue.
So this is the recap of my swap transaction, it goes well. I have no problem here, but what about that Settlement Time for about 10 minutes? Well the fact is, the settlement is finished within a few seconds, not that long. So you do not need to worry about it, I think 10 minutes is their max tolerance for a transaction.
There, look at that... within second my Magi Balance has got updated. The transaction has gone smoothly. I am amazed that we can actually hold BTC now on our HIVE WALLET through Magi-Altera on layer 2 here. Well, I hope other tokens might soon follow too, available on our Hive Wallet on Layer two.
This transaction has costed me around 0.6 Magi RC or 6% of my current Magi RC. So I still can do some more transaction for today, however I think this is enough for today.
So here my take from my Swap Transaction here:
- Altera is working fine, I haven't found any difficulties to understand how it works, and it does work fine and smoothly.
- If you plan to use Altera frequently, I think better you have some minimum HBD deposit on it. I do not know how much, maybe 10 HBD saving could be a good starting point.
- The pools size is still limited, so there are still a lot of thing that @magi.network team have to do, maybe it's time for them to focus on the marketing, finding good investors to increase the pools size, and creating more pools to increase the userbase.
Well that's for my Swap Transaction, maybe it's your time to try it now
WHY DO WE NEED MAGI NETWORK
This is a bit tricky, but let me start from what I have said above... For years Hive Engine has created a big competitive advantage on Hive compared to legacy chain STEEM, but I believe this is not the era to talk about the past. It is not about HIVE is better that them, it is about HIVE future. Where we are going to, and definitely it is not backward to our past, which sadly many HIVE OG still love to brag talk about it.
And it is not about Magi is better than Hive Engine too. The more Layer 2 projects we have, the better for our ecosystem. There are many things that Hive Engine could do, especially due to its low cost operation. However there are many things that it can not do too, and those are the opportunities we try to grab using Magi Network.
I like to use Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighters as analogy here. All of them regarding their main or core style, nowadays they have to learn as Jiu-Jitsu and use it as their second foundation because this martial art is proven as the most effective for ground fighting and submissions.
The old HIVE doesn't have it... for example, SMART CONTRACTS became many developer obstacles here and tended to lead them to a conclusion that HIVE was not a true Blockchain. However MAGI NETWORK will end up that issue now. It has a Magi Token, a fungible token contract built for the Magi network which follows ERC-20 standard. It has a Magi NFT, a multi-token contract built for the Magi network that follows the ERC-1155 standard.
We can proudly say that all the blockchain needs, not only standard EVM, are already provided here. We are no longer just a blogging platform with the tokens as CASH-IN token, which often trigger stupid debate due which not far from disappointment over TAKE TAKE Mentality.
Anyway I think I should not talk too long here, my initial plan is about showing you guys how easy to use ALTERA from Magi Network, and I find it running well smoothly. Somehow I end up with 1500+ words of post lol.
Ok for the closure, if you think this project is worth to be supported, don't forget to:
- Vote their Witness here: https://vote.hive.uno/@vsc.network
- Support their proposal here: https://peakd.com/me/proposals/378
and thanks for reading all my words here. See you next time!
poking my Indonesian friends to test this one too: @arveno @rqr4 @happyphoenix @ekavieka @ramadhanight and my Singaporean friends too: @blitzzzz @vaynard86