You will have to excuse the normal service which is always expertly done by @hetty-rowan, but she's off ill today. I thought I'd take this moment to push through a few much needed updates.

Tagging for subscription: @stickupboys, @dibblers.dabs, @melinda010100, @thatcryptodave, @lordtimoty

If you remember the post that I made just after the new year here, you will note that I had started fleshing out a few plans for the BRO umbrella going forward for this year. The previous year we had focused on building a solid foundation and presence in the hive community. I think we achieved this really well.

This year I wanted to achieve growth. Not only do we have BRO, but we now have Cine under our umbrella and we are responsible for large stake in several other projects on the Hive Blockchain! This is something that I take great pride in growing.

In the spirit of clarity I will break it all down for you. What I've been doing with BRO, and then we'll talk about what I've been doing with Cine.

As a reminder. Here was the rough roadmap I had around two months ago.

BRO

Liquidity Pools

I was unsuccessful in creating a BRO liquidity pool. For almost half a year I had given this some deep thought and I have came to the conclusion that no-one really wanted a liquidity pool. Plus our reflections earn what liquidity pools do just by holding our coin. The true value of BRO is that it is rare, and the more projects that we "get on board with" the more you guys earn.

So I have gone against that thought. And also the whole idea of maintaining volume. BRO is a coin to hold. Not to sell. However, if you would like to "get out quick" so to speak then I'm open for a chat on discord and I'd be happy to purchase them from you if you find yourself in a situation where you want out!

Splinterlands.

I must say. Out of all the projects I've ever been involved with, splinterlands gave me the biggest surprise. I've been playing splinterlands now for almost 3 years on and off and it always seemed to me like it was a never-ending vortex of buying crypto assets. However, thanks to @xawi and some quick persuasion she got me to buy into it heavily and I saw our funds more than 20x.

So, we now have a full Chaos Legion deck for us, and I have been focusing on buying up the cards that I have effectively missed over the last few years.

A few weeks ago I bought us a Prince Renyn and a Valnamor. For non-splinterlands players that was a $10,000 investment I put down for us for the coming months.

$10K? Are you mental?

No, our splinterlands player is one of the best, and in the last two weeks he has already won us:

• #1 in Diamond League (100,000 Dec)
• won over 4000 SPS in tournaments.

Thank you to @burlarj for your service. I'm really lucky to have you as a player, Sir!

So, with those purchases, ROI sooner than you may think.

Lands

Thanks to @neoxian I have a tract for us BROs. At a time when I was losing faith in splinterlands he held a tract for me and let me pay up what I was due him. Credit where credit is due, Sir! We're going to crush it now all thanks to you!

So what does that mean for you?

Well, I split my winnings with my player 50/50. Dude is a genius, it is only right.

With my 50% the Dec all goes to the BROs, as does the SPS we mint daily on my account. I am currently using the SPS we win to boost our players account so that we can keep participating in tournaments. The sps rises all the time.

So from Splinterlands - if you own BRO, you will get:

• Dec payout every 15 days
• SPS every 15 days
• We are also planning to sell our extra cards we win when they go out of print. 50% of that will be sold and dispersed as dec to everyone

As for Lands, I think this will be another way to farm in splinterlands so whatever gains we earn from it then BRO's will have a large share. That's for sure.

Future?

Right now we're concentrating on building up Cine. But I have a big budget for BRO. I'm planning to take BRO into streaming & I'm also thinking up a plan for project incubation.

Project incubation?

It's something I've always wanted to do since I've been in crypto. Give people the necessary tools to start a project and run it properly as a business rather than just seeing $$$ signs --which tends to be a lot of the crypto space at the moment.

I would love to involve @themarkymark in this too - a lot of the sense that is talked into me comes from him, so again, 50% of my dumb shit ideas that have never seen the light of day are all thanks to him! Ha. Again, credit where it is due.

Cine

Realistically speaking I didn't have as big aspirations for this project as I do now. Many thanks to @stickupmusic & @papacrusher for this. I now feel we could touch the moon and it's because of their relentless positivity and ideas that get me up in the morning.

Backstory

CineTv was a dying duck. I already knew I had failed my community and what was once a bustling hub of excitement and opportunity had waned into a quiet space of defeatedness -- all bar one or two people.

When @taskmaster4450 and I had thought this project up we had envisioned great plans for a futuristic TV and Film hub. Basically, we had thought imdb.com but better. Something that pays you for your contribution.

I quickly got to work contacting all my newly found friends -- including @theycallmedan who gave me an excellent opportunity to sit and talk with him. We had an awesome team, some of the top names on hive with the best projects around. Things were going to be great.

The problem?

Everyone was just too busy with their own projects. I had a great team here but no-one with the free time to sit and make it work. Even me, I was too busy with BRO to effectively take care of Cine. I perhaps learned another lesson that day pretty quickly.

And the devs god damnit.

Anyone that's ever tried to run something hardcore on here will know that they all go to aggroed in the end lol! In essence what I mean is that if you're trying to run something on a shoestring then don't expect to get anyone remotely competent, or if you do then they'll be so wrapped up in their own stuff to give even 50% of their attention.

But that's not a slant at anyone that worked with us, I mean, those that did come and create certainly did a damn good job. Thanking @zeroooc and @bambukah for that one hard!

The Turnaround

One fateful day I had been nagging @papacrusher to get back working with me because in 2018 he had practically his entire Police force working with the Bro's at one point, and something, I don't know what, clicked in him and he wanted to do some work with me.

So I made him Project Manager of Cine. I specifically wanted someone non-crypto to work here because we are trying to engage with mainstream, and not us liquidity pool geeks and maths nerds.

So now Cine is running VERY smoothly thanks to him.

Currently we have (or are working on)

• LP pool - it's just over 95% APR in there last time I checked,
• A Peakd badge - show it with pride
• We are successfully running weekly contests
• We're working with @acidyo on some serious POSH integration (and usecases) of our new front end when it's done
• We are curating daily
• The CineTv main account has over 100,000 Hive Power delegated to it.
• @themarkymark is helping us with curation! (Thanks dude!)
• I've been making some sneaky on the side partnerships T.B.C

Wen Front end?

I'll not lie. This has proven our biggest challenge yet. I've went through at least three versions of the front end and many people that promised to look at it but disappeared off the face of the earth. However, I think now I've managed to nail down something solid.

For now Cine has two developers. So, for now, we have managed to get backend access to Cine's outpost branch. Fun building has commenced.

ETA: Unknown. I've yet to have that discussion with our devs but the work is being done and they are hard at it for sure.

Funding? Dev's are expensive you know!

We have made a rough estimate that all the work we are doing on Cine for the next year will cost us $80,000 or thereabouts. Thankfully I have deep pockets due to several semi-recent windfalls, and rather than ask the community for this, I (raymondspeaks) will be funding this out of my own pocket. BIG thanks to @abrockman << if it wasn't for his advice and guidance I would still be working on a shoestring budget.

Our core team is growing. There are now around 8 fully paid staff members.

So, get in whilst it's cheap. Massive building is happening behind the scenes. On both BRO & Cine.