So, for those who haven't heard about it yet, one of our dApps, DLive, is moving to a different blockchain, away from Steem. I noticed a few Steemians who didn't have time yet to read up on all the ins & outs feel like this is a sign Steem as a blockchain is failing the dApps and therefore all of us, the investors (in time and/or money). But I say: stay calm: although the general consensus is that his is a shitty move, there's no reason to think this is a bad omen for 'us' on Steem, to the contrary, often when the wind blows a bit heavy on our platform I see a lot of positivity rise from it at the same time.

The announcement

The announcement came 17 hours ago: @wa7 wrote his post where he thanks Ned for the 2 million SP delegation, and then starts complaining about all the things that are wrong with the blockchain. The most ironic complaint? Whale upvotes made the rewards among DLive users 'unfair' - with a free to use 2 million SP delegation from Steemit Inc they should have been able to balance things quite a bit, don't you think?

But no, it's 'the other whales' who are to blame! Of course!

The comments

The post is basically laying blame outside of themselves, in the meanwhile praising a blockchain that hasn't proven itself yet, but even if you don't feel like reading the post, please read through the comments. Especially the comment that got rightfully upvoted to the top spot by @meno explains a lot and overlapped a lot with my observations on the DLive team: @wa7 is part of the team of the 'new blockchain' they are moving DLive to, and basically they rebranded DLive by letting Steemians work (!) on a new logo that then got finalized by their 'in-house designer', coincidentally making it a perfect match with the colour scheme and typefaces of that Lino blockchain.

"Thanks Steemians for providing us with your creative brains thinking you were spending your artistic energy on a dApp that is supported and supports the Steem Blockchain! We'll be going with your ideas somewhere else! Bye!"

It's a nasty business and it all seems to be planned so carefully that it can't be explained as a coincidence. The logo was literally selected two weeks ago and the move will happen on the day Steem will move to Hardfork 20 - basically the Hardfork that will make many of their complaints obsolete (like easy sign-ups).

The community

Apart from informing people who might not understand what is happening and misinterpreting what's happening, I also felt the need to write a bit about all of it because I saw quite a few of my Steemit friends get hurt because of the move.

@jongolson

Right after I had received an e-mail from DLive about their move my mind blew up being filled with questions, the first being 'do they expect DLive users to move with them to a new blockchain? Don't they understand many people are here for the Steem and the dApps are just what makes it more diverse and fun?' I then opened my feed and saw @jongolson's post who - as he says it - is a business man and had plans for his content career in which he included DLive in for a big part. He'll have to rethink a big chunk of his plans but he also confirmed my initial thoughts: it's not the app that matters to him, but the fact the app provided him something on Steem. He's on DLive for Steem, and will simply find alternatives that adds to his Steem content strategies. So despite the blow, that's not a user we've lost :-)

@whack.science

He's one of the kindest people I know and I know he had a good thing going on DLive - when he rebranded his channel DLive picked up on his efforts and supported his content for quite some time. Now upvotes of 'whales' or 'dApps' never become 'rights' and you should never expect to receive them, as I'm sure @whack.science sees it as well, but that doesn't mean missing out on a steady income doesn't hurt. (Glad to see he started his first using @vimm for some of his live streams two months ago! Go Whack!)

@zygibo

A less visible comment with a lot of stories behind it came from @zygibo:

Well, thats will be end of DCR Tools support for Dlive :( well, I want to cry - months of work... ;(

Now, here you can find these tools this user (and team?) built for DLive. It's okay for any business to make 'business decisions' but please keep in mind that a lot of people work for you and without any communication become victims of your sudden moves. I don't know @zygibo and if he can reuse his tools for other dApps or someone would like to use them, but if you know a guy who knows a guy who knows a gal who knows... Then please get in touch with @zygibo and see if there's a way to make all the efforts worthwhile still.

Plus all the others

As I said before, I understand business decisions, but this feels a lot like a company firing their employees the last hour before they have their Christmas Holidays so the company know for sure they don't have to answer any questions or look at the sad faces of 'the people'. It's no way to treat each other and I'm sad for those who had built upon the platform, supported them, and basically lost time and energy because of them.

The future

As stated in the first paragraph of the post: don't panic about this dApp leaving - it's clear they were not here for the long haul anyway and it's better they leave now then when mass-onboarding starts to become 'a thing' and even more users would have been confused by a move like this.

Also: alternatives are available. I heard yesterday for the first time about @vimm which is basically another streaming platform that according to whispers 'seems very legit'. I read in the comments by @r0nd0n:

Don't worry everyone, it looks like @vimm is poised to take their place, and although they're still in alpha, they already have a lot of features I wished dlive had. (Here's a link to their discord if you are interested.)

So if you're looking for an alternative, give it a try. Also @dtube now adds live streaming although I believe not everyone thinks it works good enough, yet, and I have no idea how it compares to @vimm.

A closing word

Let's not forget and appreciate how, even though we sometimes quarrel quite a bit, on moments like these the community comes together. I've seen a lot of great supportive comments, supportive upvotes (and agreements on downvotes :D) and compassion and joint anger/disappointment. Even though I've never used DLive I felt personally cheated on - and therefore felt how this must feel for those who've added DLive to their daily arsenal. But the beautiful thing I've seen in the past hours is that even though the disappointment is real, for the most part people are here to build here, on the Steem blockchain, with each other.

Onto the next dApp that will rock our boats!

Edit about one hour later: @meno and I published a post 2 minutes apart from each other - funny how two people on other ends of the world are basically doing the exact same thing at the exact same time. But anyway, his post dives even deeper into the details of DLive, their start, their end, and all in between. A convincing and well-written post. You should read it! Next time I'll leave the writing up to him again :D

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