Ithink there’s something funny going on with regard to this sudden drama regarding kewbit and his development of a network agnostic haveno client. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that this happens exactly when reto decides to clean all reference to haveno out of their network. Could be, but I don’t think so.

So, Reto has basically no fees right now. They don’t really benefit financially from being the only haveno network with liquidity. Yet, it does seem that they do want to have a monopoly position within our community. Why? They benefit in some way. If you don’t pay with money…

I’ve always been a proponent using my little voice in our miscellaneous community spaces for reto, using the network with the liquidity, allowing competition to emerge organically, being OK with them being the big one as long as they serve the community honestly, and of being cautious with new haveno networks that pop up overnight. But this is entirely different than those things. Reto is actively trying to monopolize haveno and therefore the decentralized xmr <-> fiat gateway. This isn’t some people saying “who is hardenedsteel? Do we trust them?” This is Reto removing reference to haveno and a sudden controversy around the person that is developing a multi network Haveno client, going hard and trying to get them drummed out of the community. And they’re doing it for 0% fees, which tells me they’re after something else, and the only something else there that I can see is XMR users’ data.

I don’t know if kewbit is an asshole, annoying, acts like a child or any of the accusations against him lately. But I do know, we need competing haveno networks. We have literally forked away our entire currency network twice because we believe in what we are building so strongly we would not allow even network effects to stop us. Multiple haveno networks needs to be a top short term priority in this community, we are at a potentially dangerous point in development of a decentralized fiat exchange and preventing one group of arbitrators from controlling that is absolutely vital, regardless whether their intentions are benign or not.

Edit: looked into some details that I was not aware of, and have come to the same conclusion most of the community is coming to: this kewbit fellow is jerking us around. I still think it is important to have competing haveno networks, and a haveno client that supports multiple, and I’m still put off by the retoswap rebrand, but I am now convinced that this kewbit drama is exactly what it looks like at face value. It looks to me actually he is trying to hostile takeover the haveno brand.