Builders, Borrowers, Rappers, and Big News from Hemi.

This week’s Midweek with Max had a lot going on. The team brought in guests from Bima and 1delta, walked through key engineering updates, gave clarity on token timelines, and ended the session with live karaoke. No fluff, just builders talking through what they’re doing and where things are headed. And lots of singing.

Sid from Bima opened the session. He explained how Bima came out of a conversation with Tim Draper in an airport lounge. The idea was simple: let people borrow against their Bitcoin without having to sell it, and then use that capital in DeFi. He talked about how hard it was to build on Bitcoin in 2018. Today, the environment has shifted. Bima is one response to that shift—offering a collateralized debt position model that gives users flexibility and liquidity without giving up their BTC.

Sid explained why Hemi makes sense for Bima. The low fees, fast integration, and clear focus on retail made it appealing. He also gave a real-world use case: a family office in Argentina that lost its millionaire status multiple times due to volatility. Bima, in his view, offers a way to balance long-term BTC holding with short-term access to capital. He encouraged the community to check them out on X and Discord, where they’re hosting a UEFA watch party.

Next up was 1delta. The representative gave a short breakdown of what they’re building. Their project started with margin trading built on top of existing DeFi liquidity. They’re not trying to be a perpetuals platform—they route through lenders and DEXs to support cross-margin trading without the clunky UX that defines most DeFi today. He explained how they’re abstracting away the chain-switching pain and wallet errors that most users deal with. 1Delta’s DEX aggregator is live on Hemi, and lending integrations are coming soon.

On the protocol side, Max gave his usual roundup. Node running has gotten easier with new Docker profiles and documentation for Ubuntu. They’re supporting both full sync and snap sync setups. That’s especially helpful for ecosystem partners who want to run nodes in different configurations. He also gave a preview of what’s coming with the Ethereum Pectra upgrade. That’s scheduled for May 7 and includes upgrades that will help lower data availability costs. Those changes won’t dramatically impact Hemi right away, but they’ll help longer term as more L2s start competing for bandwidth.

There was also an update on ZK provability work, which is a step toward building out BitVM support. That’s one of the major roadmap milestones still on track for Q3.

PoP mining is about to change. Right now, PoP points are distributed based on a flat model. If a keystone gets 100 tokens and 5 miners, each miner gets 20. That’s shifting to a dynamic algorithm that targets 4 publications per keystone. If a block gets fewer than 4, the rewards will increase. If it gets more, they’ll decrease. That change will roll out before TGE and continue after, when actual tokens start being paid out.

The team also confirmed that PoP testnet points should show up this week. They’ve been cleaning up inconsistencies in how address data was stored. Mainnet LP points are expected to go live next week. The delay there had to do with the way LP positions are handled across DEXes, and how they rebase in real time. A fix is in progress with Absinthe and should be deployed soon.

On the community side, there was a lot of news. The Hemithic role is rolling out next week for early testers. You qualify if you joined the Discord before September 18, 2024, did five transactions on Sepolia, and minted a Demos ID. That role comes with an exclusive NFT. There will also be a separate set of pixel NFTs for creators. People holding the Hemi content creator or base role will get one. So will folks who won past contests. Each NFT is capped at 500.

There’s also a new plan to run weekly activities. That includes game nights, contests, and other events. These will come with their own perks—XP, points, possibly even more roles. And for the first time, the Rap God role is open to anyone willing to sing at the end of the AMA. Three community members stepped up and sang live—gospel, pop, and Ed Sheeran made appearances. It’s now a tradition and it’s glorious.

Finally, Hair Token is real. It started as a joke about Max’s hair and has turned into a meme coin backed by the community. Contracts are done. A DAO is planned. Launch is a few weeks away. It’ll run on Hemi.

This was one of the more complete and wide-ranging sessions yet. Builders showed up. The roadmap got clarified. Songs were sung. POP rewards are getting smarter. And karaoke might be the thing that keeps this community going through bear cycles.