Mission Statement

VSC exists to advance the Hive blockchain into a fully interoperable smart contract platform, unlocking cross-chain utility and expanding access to decentralized finance.

The mission of VSC is to bring the future of smart contracts to Hive, enabling the cross-chain future we envision for the ecosystem. Hive has been disconnected far too long, and with VSC, Hive becomes connected to the world of cross-chain and the broader crypto space. VSC aims to bring a whole new world of interoperable smart contracts on Hive, along with an entire toolkit of cross-chain technology, turning Hive into a DeFi hub, starting with connections to Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Hive has long operated as a powerful yet self-contained ecosystem, siloed from the more well-known blockchains. VSC changes this by introducing a fully decentralized Layer 2 smart contract network, designed from the ground up to integrate with the broader crypto landscape. By enabling smart contracts in any WebAssembly-compatible language and providing a full suite of cross-chain technologies, VSC aims to position Hive as a leading hub for DeFi. This enables technologies such as wrapped assets and multi-chain innovation to expand.

Through this proposal, the VSC team is seeking additional funding to accelerate development and infrastructure deployment of Hive smart contracts and technology to turn Hive into a world-class cross-chain hub. We’ve already delivered a major milestone — the successful launch of Hive’s first decentralized smart contract Layer 2 in Q1 2025 — and are now focused on expanding capabilities, improving developer tools, and increasing adoption across the Hive community and beyond.

Our track record is proven as we have successfully launched the first fully decentralized smart contract Layer 2 on Hive at the end of Q1 2025. The VSC team comes from a deep background of engineering experience and has a key focus on user experience. Our team is ready to take on the challenge of turning technically complex problems into delightful user experiences powered by world-class engineering. We are creating intuitive tools that empower users, developers, and the wider Hive ecosystem.

Key Selling Points

Liquid Staking Unlocks Capital

VSC’s Liquid Staking system allows users to stake HBD on Hive while still retaining transferability within the Layer 2 network. This breakthrough makes it possible to earn staking rewards without completely losing access to funds for any period of time. This unlocks new liquidity for both Hive-native and external users. As a result, VSC enables more flexible capital use and opens the door to advanced DeFi strategies on Hive. Liquid HBD staking also lowers the barrier to entry for a new user to get started because they can retain their usable value while staking.

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EVM and Social Wallet Compatibility: Barrier-Free Adoption

Users from Ethereum and other EVM chains can use their existing wallets to access Hive’s L2 ecosystem. EVM wallets are the first non-Hive wallet types supported by VSC, and we will be adding support for more wallets like Bitcoin and Solana in the future. In addition, we are adding support for Social logins like Gmail, Discord, or even your X account. No new setup is required; just connect your favorite sign-in method, and you're ready to go. This opens Hive to a global user base and expands its reach across crypto communities while giving existing users new options for managing their assets.

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Smart Contracts in Any Language: Built to Attract Developers

Through WebAssembly (WASM) integration at the core of VSC, developers can write smart contracts in a variety of familiar programming languages — including Rust, C++, Go, and AssemblyScript. VSC’s flexible contract engine removes the need to learn chain-specific languages, dramatically lowering the barrier to entry and expanding Hive’s developer community. Gone are the days of needing expensive Solidity developers or specialists just to deploy your project. Develop in whatever programming language your team is comfortable with and deploy with ease.

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Liquidity Pools Mean a Better Trading Experience

HIVE-HBD, HBD-BTC, and other pairs enjoy lower slippage and deeper liquidity, thanks to native Automated Market Maker pools. Connecting HIVE and HBD to BTC with direct liquidity pools also opens the doors for investors to easily acquire those assets and can make Bitcoin the liquidity layer for Hive. Especially in the US, the number of exchanges that support Hive assets is very few, and the liquidity is very low. That means better prices for users, greater incentives for liquidity providers, and potentially a much larger market as capital can flow in easily from other ecosystems like Bitcoin.

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VSC Powers Hive’s Cross-Chain Expansion

VSC positions Hive as a cross-chain hub, enabling seamless interactions with Bitcoin, Ethereum, and more. This multiplies Hive’s utility, attracts wrapped assets, and opens up massive new markets. We are building cross-chain infrastructure that allows Hive to be interoperable with other blockchains, leveraging its speed and scalability. This means that Hive and non-Hive users will be able to easily move assets between chains using VSC as the bridge. Hive is becoming a cross-chain smart contract platform with liquid staking, universal wallet access, and frictionless DeFi.

Key accomplishments

VSC Mainnet launch - On March 31st, the team launched VSC mainnet - unleashing a whole new era of utility on Hive and marking the beginning of cross-chain expansion. The VSC team worked tirelessly through multiple stages of testnet development and architecture for many months. Now, the VSC team has reached its inevitable goal of getting the network to Mainnet and is working on the next stages. As of writing this, the VSC mainnet has amassed over 31 node operators, with some being well-known Hive witnesses such as @gtg, @blocktrades, @ausbitbank, @dalz, @techcoderx, and many more!

Solving Hive’s User Experience - VSC enables users to own, send, and receive any asset with any wallet, including HIVE and HBD. This is a technical achievement that we haven't seen duplicated anywhere else, and we are very proud of it. EVM wallets and social login options are only the beginning, and a start of the interconnected, user-friendly future on Hive.

HIVE-HBD Liquidity pool - The VSC team has developed the first liquidity pool on VSC and is currently testing functionality. Following the approval of this proposal, we will continue our development cycle, and in a short time, fully deploy it to the VSC mainnet for operation. Once deployed, users can become liquidity providers and start earning fees generated from swaps on the network. In addition, the liquidity pool dramatically lowers slippage, increases liquidity and saves Hive users thousands of dollars swapping from one to another.

Write smart contracts in any language - VSC has added support for Golang smart contracts alongside our already existing AssemblyScript-based contracts. This further advances our goal of making the developer experience easy, leveraging already existing tools and libraries. Creating smart contracts for Hive will be very easy for developers since they won’t need to learn a new programming language or hire Solidity specialists. Bringing smart contracts to Hive allows us to create standards for Layer 2 tokens, NFTs, permissioned systems, and much more.

Partnerships and integrations

Over the next several months following the mainnet launch, our goals will slowly migrate towards establishing external and internal partnerships. This has already started with getting VSC integrated into current applications built on Hive, such as PeakD, Hive Keychain, V4V App, and more. We are in conversations with potential external partners such as DASH and a couple of others that will start being revealed as we make more progress. We have also onboarded a new Business Development Lead that will be spearheading partnerships, which will help tremendously in this regard.

Onboarding new users into the Hive ecosystem is much better and easier, with collaborations; that’s why we are very heavily focused on it. Not only can we help projects integrate our technology to give their existing users a better experience, but we can also attract new users with these partnerships. If you are a project owner and are interested in integrating VSC into your project, please reach out to us on Discord to discuss potential collaboration.

Ongoing integrations

Peakd - Has started integration work on their beta frontend version as seen in the screenshot below. We look forward to continued collaboration and soon the launch of VSC on the main site in the coming weeks.

Hive Keychain - Is actively working on integrations to their SDK, and in the near future to the Keychain extension as well. We look forward to seeing their work progress and will continue to project assistance throughout the process.

V4V.app - Has been a longtime friend of the VSC project. In the next few weeks we will complete our integration work, enabling end users to seamlessly exchange Hive to/from Bitcoin and fiat currencies using CashApp. In addition, v4v, allows EVM wallets to purchase Hive with ease.

Altera DeFi Frontend

A critical goal of the VSC project is to build an end-user application design in the shadow of traditional banking applications. Something that is often overlooked is the actual user experience of using a DeFi platform, and we have built our app with that in mind from the beginning. This provides a full end-to-end experience, from doing transfers, filtering transactions, tracking your portfolio, and more. Most importantly, Altera supports EVM wallet and social login for an improved onboarding experience. This enables both Hive users and Metamask (or non-crypto users) users to access the entire VSC and Hive ecosystem from one application. In addition, Altera will support direct fiat onboarding to Hive and HBD in the near future. This enables easy conversion of fiat currencies like USD to and from Hive.

Over the last few months, we have been working on creating a revised version of the Altera DeFi app from scratch. It’s been a long road, however, and we have put a ton of work in building it with user experience in mind. This starts with being mobile-friendly from the beginning, allowing anyone with a smartphone to get started in seconds. While it is still in the early stages, with plenty of design work to do, we are gearing up for our first MVP release soon (maybe even before this proposal is published).

Here are some early-stage previews!

Altera Fiat Onramp

At HiveFest 9, we showcased proof of concept fiat onboarding directly to HIVE for the first time using Cash App. In our next proposal, will release not only support for fiat onboarding using Cash App, but also support for buying BTC or ETH within Altera. Over the next few months, we will directly hook up Hive with Bitcoin through the HIVE-BTC and HBD-BTC liquidity pools that will arrive, fully connecting the onboarding cycle from fiat to/from Hive, enabling limitless access to Hive from the outside world. We will also be adding support for Coinbase and Meld.io for those familiar with these two ways of buying and transferring Bitcoin and Ethereum. As you can see, we are already working on this feature, and more will be added in the future in this matter.

Being able to easily bring capital into the ecosystem is extremely important for users. One of the biggest challenges with this is the availability of HIVE and HBD on exchanges, specifically in the U.S. We are rolling the solution up into a pretty interface right inside our application. You'll be able to go from fiat in your bank account to HBD on VSC in seconds using one of our partner providers. Then, you are ready to use the network with basically no barrier to entry, like you see today. If you have ever tried to buy HBD with USD, you know that it's a complicated, multi-step process today.

Introducing Our New Business Development Leader

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Roadmap

As you may already know, VSC Mainnet is now live and stable with over 30 nodes after a soft launch a few weeks ago. We are now in a stage where we are fine-tuning everything for our upcoming deployments. This roadmap should give you a rough idea of those steps and the timing around each of them. It's worth noting here - development is not linear, and we expect there to be at least small delays as we are working with new technology.

In the second half of April (if not already), Altera will see the light of day as our MVP release with the features we explained above. Not long after that, in May, the first ever HIVE-HBD liquidity pool will be deployed on VSC for a better trading experience and deep liquidity in Altera. The HIVE-HBD liquidity pool will be followed by what most people are waiting for: Wrapped Bitcoin, launching in August.
More wrapped assets like LTC, DOGE, and DASH will arrive later in the fall, and even more in Q1 2026 with our EVM integration. This integration means that ETH, USDC, and other ERC-20 tokens will be wrapped within the VSC Network. This paves the way for several tokens on Ethereum, like USDC or DAI, to be paired with HBD. Liquidity pools will be created for these different pairs as they are added, and liquidity will increase as users are incentivized to participate as liquidity providers. A deep HBD-USDC pool could have an incredible impact on the overall stability of HBD and will make fiat onboarding even easier. Just imagine the possibilities from there, and you can get an idea of where things are headed.

VSC Budget

Amount: 420,000 HBD over 365 days.

This covers:

• 6 full-time developers, up from 3 full-time + 1 part-time developer, nearly doubling our throughput
• 1 part-time marketing/social media position
• 1 Business development position
• Travel expenses for conferences, team coworking events, etc
• Marketing budget, such as sponsorships paid advertisement, etc
• $75/day budget for continued V4V development

Scope

Core Engineering

• Modularize the VSC codebase for rapid prototyping and integration of many wrapped assets and ecosystem integrations.
• Develop a reward structure for VSC Node Operation
• Develop a dynamic resource credit pricing model based on consensus availability and node performance
• Research long-term storage requirements and contract storage pricing as part of dynamic RC calculation

Frontend “Altera” app:

• Develop a world-class interface for DeFi on the Hive blockchain and beyond
• Develop swap, send, receive, deposit, and withdraw features
• Develop a detailed transaction page with a user breakdown of transaction data, providing the user with filter options, sorting, detailed view, and other relevant information
• Develop a user on ramp and off ramp flow for converting fiat to/from Hive assets, in addition to already existing on ramping technology.
• Develop accounting technology for calculating a user’s gains and losses for either user knowledge or tax requirements, if needed
• Develop a custom backend to facilitate an index across VSC, Hive, and other blockchains.

Cross-Chain Future:

• Continue development of the VSC Bitcoin Chain relay and deploy on the VSC mainnet
• Develop the VSC Bitcoin wrapping contract, bringing the first native wrapped Bitcoin onto Hive. With extendable support for Litecoin, dogecoin, dash, and other bitcoin forks
• Develop a Zero Knowledge-based Rollup of VSC Consensus for deployment in smart contracts
• Develop a ZK-based bridge for connections with EVM, Solana, and other smart contract chains
• Research prerequisite light clients and other technologies required to build into VSC to enable a two-way bridge
• Develop a general purpose EVM-based VSC consensus rollup for VSC —> EVM communication
• Research and develop of secondary alternative wrapping technology to allow for integration of none standard blockchains such as Solana, Tezos, etc.
• Research and develop modular approaches for cross-chain bridging that reduce network overhead, increase security, and allow for rapid expansion and deployment of VSC wrapping technology across the Crypto ecosystem.

Smart Contract Development:

• Develop smart contracts standards for L2 tokens, NFTs, Liquidity pools, permission systems, etc, where relevant and requested by the community
• Develop SDK client libraries for both AssemblyScript and Golang
• Develop common interfaces and standards similar to those such as ERC for tokens, nfts, dexes, cross chain, wallet standards, and more where relevant.

V4V:

• Full open source re-write of the back end of v4vapp in progress (can be seen on github but it's not in a runable state).
• Full documentation and instructions on how to set it up and run the Lightning node side of this.
• Integration with VSC Liquidity pools.
• The setup of a round/robin or other system to make redundent use of different gateways (this step is hard to predict until the outcomes of the first three are completed).

Other:

• Develop bridging and migration technology for Hive Engine to/from VSC
• Develop "mimic" Hive replica - a fully end to end software package for simulating the Hive blockchain in a local and reproducible environment. Greatly improving testing capabilities of VSC and other Dapps.

Ending Notes

The VSC project presents a unique opportunity for Hive to position itself as a leading player in the cross chain space. Introducing a unique set of features no competitors have matched, and turning Hive into a cross chain hub. Making DeFi feeless, lightning fast, and interoperable. Given our extensive track record, proven accomplishments, and long-time Hive involvement, we urge the Hive community to vote for Proposal #342 and bring the future of cross chain to Hive! Perhaps more importantly, bring Hive to the broader cryptocurrency space as a DeFi hub!

Further reading

• VSC Mainnet Has Produced The First Block
• VSC Mainnet Launch Date Confirmed!
• Our previous DHF proposal

Team

• @vaultec - Founder
  • The founder of VSC and proven web3 developer. Originally joining Hive in 2018, he has a long history of working with web3 technologies and platforms
• @geo52rey - Core Contributor
  • Fullstack develope with strong working experience in Web3 and startups.
• @platinium - Part-time Core Contributor
  • Fullstack developer with a strong interest in web3 and blockchain technology.
• @manuphotos - Social Media / Marketing team
  • Founder of HiveCuba | Photographer | Community Manager of Hive Keychain | Developer
• @l337m45732 aka “nifty” - Social Media / Marketing team
  • Writer | Content Creator | Hive Witness | Meme Engineer

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