"Okay."

He goes out flying and present-distributing. He's only doing stuff with sentimental value or alternately tech that's not available on these planets yet, because Boots'd ask him if he was being careful not to disrupt local economies and he writes her daily updates and wants to tell her in today's letter that he totally thought about that.

Some twenty hours later, Cipher Nine calls him again. She's smiling.

"I got it!"

Pop. "What?"

"The Hutts have discovered a new energy source. It's about a thousand percent more efficient than traditional hypermatter reactors and vastly more miniaturizable. It's called isotope-5 and was just discovered on the mining/resort world Makeb."

"....cool!!!"

"Looks like... some kind of gravitic warping effect? The physics is a bit beyond me, but their scientists seem convinced enough."

"So they want to do it because now they can?"

"Yeah. With this... Once they get full production going, they could definitely stand up to any military in the galaxy."

"Or, like, cheap electricity and therefore cheap consumer products everywhere."

"That too."

"Why don't they just go for selling it instead of starting a war?"

"It looks pretty hard to mine, and there's some sort of refining necessary? They may not be able to get much of it."

"Thus, me. Okay. ...so how do I respond to him -"

"I'm curious if he'll admit to the existence of isotope-5 on his own. Ask him why the structure of the Cartel no longer suffices, what makes empire a more appealing option than the status quo."

"Okay." 

And he sends a response asking that.

"The galaxy is in... considerable flux, at the moment. For those of will and vision, this exposes opportunity. Long have I looked for a chance to return my people to glory. At last the time has come."

"So how do we respond to that?"

"He's not going to tell us. I think... let it rest, for now. Give him your terms, freedom of movement, no wars, no being evil, and so forth. I'll keep an eye on isotope-5's development and if it becomes a problem, we can do something about it then."

"Okay." 

So he gives his terms. Anyone can rule an empire, as long as all of its inhabitants can leave if they wish; this won't be a problem for the Hutt empire, of course, since they will surely be too great to take offense if some people would rather live elsewhere, and so great they can make their empire a very appealing place for people to live. No wars. And so on.

He has picked the correct tack to present his conditions. The Hutts accept his terms.

There is some wringing of hands in the galactic media when the Hutt Empire's rebirth is announced, but functionally, not much changes.

That sort of thing takes time.

Cipher Nine keeps tabs on the Hutts' activities. They draw up plans for wardroids that use isotope-5 power sources, but apart from a few prototypes, these don't get developed. It mostly gets used as power generation for manufacturing plants. The Hutts become a major supplier of cheap, low-quality consumer goods. They make quite a bit of money.

Epic likes Hutts. He thinks they're great.

Now that they've been induced to stop the pervasive slavery and drugrunning and other such activities, sure.

Well, yeah, most people suck until given incentive not to.