Scalability is not easy even in centralized systems if growth comes in spikes. But when you also need to ensure decentralized redundancy, security, and hopefully speed, things become complicated. And when the networks have an extractable value that can attract bad actors, another layer of complexity is added, to protect the network.
The majority of blockchains have introduced fees at every transaction to protect the network and pay various actors that are part of it, mainly miners or block producers, but also liquidity providers, for example. Developers are most times paid from funds that are centrally controlled. The distribution of funds for projects sometimes happens through DAOs or other forms of governance where stakeholders vote on proposals that should be implemented or not.
The alternative to fees to pay for almost anything is to have fee-less blockchains, like Hive. Hivers still need resource credits which are the "tokens" used to pay for transactions onchain. The difference is RCs are replenishable over time and can be delegated directly from someone who has Hive Power, something you buy and stake once and gives benefits forever.
On a Fee-less Blockchain (Hive), You Can't Have Unrestricted Number of Full Wallets
But... nothing is perfect. For a system like we have on Hive to work, we need good control over the number of full Hive accounts, otherwise, the chain collapses under its own weight.
For example, Ethereum or Bitcoin, which are blockchains that have high fees on every transaction, also offer someone the possibility to create as many wallets as they want for free, even if they don't have any ETH or BTC, respectively. Bitcoin is mainly a financial transactions chain (even though it can hold anything in those blocks). Ethereum is more than that, but fees are much higher too, at this point.
For Hive, on the other hand, any new full account is much heavier on the chain than on the other two we mentioned. In fact, creating a new account is one of the heaviest operations on the Hive blockchain, even before that account creates anything. Then, besides financial transactions, a Hive account is likely to have social interactions (blogs and comments), which have, again, a higher impact on the chain's resources than a simple financial transaction. All that is on a quick chain, unlike Bitcoin or even Ethereum.
I think a new Hive account without any RCs can create 3 posts/comments before it runs out of RCs. Imagine one would be able to create as many new full Hive accounts for free as they wanted (without a previous HP stake), like on Bitcoin or Ethereum. Also, imagine that such a person starts to automatically spam the chain with new posts every day (or every two days or when the RCs allow) from a network of 1000+ accounts. It doesn't matter to them they don't receive any rewards, they just want to attack the chain. All that could happen without any investment, if accounts were unrestricted. That would be a serious attack on the chain, especially if concentrated, with almost no cost for the attacker. That's why it can't be allowed, in my opinion. Maybe for other reasons too. But that for sure is one of the reasons.
Workarounds: Hive Lite Accounts and Not Only
Splinterlands
There are several solutions to work around this limitation. Probably the easiest one that is already implemented by different applications (including Splinterlands), is to have your application run without Hive except on essential parts like fungible and non-fungible token ownership and markets, and only offer full Hive accounts to the group of users that show interest, and not to everyone who joins. For example, Splinterlands only creates Hive accounts for those who buy the spellbooks. They came to this solution in the fall of 2021, when they ran out of account claim tokens due to the high influx of new accounts and they had to create new Hive accounts by paying the 3$ fee for a while before they changed their process.
We also have 3 Hive Lite Account solutions that I know of. 1 has already been implemented by the INLEO team, and two of them are in the works by SPK Network and VSC.
INLEO
The INLEO solution is based on creating a new full Hive account when the user joins but only releasing control of it at the user's request or after a while of seeing that the user is active, after which they will start displaying notifications that they should take control over their account. I haven't gone through the process recently, and it has been changed, so I only know it from what the team described.
New users can create a new Hive lite account via Twitter (X), mainly, which is the platform INLEO Threads is trying to be very similar to, to make the transition of a new user into Web 3 very easy.
However, this approach faces the risk of falling into the same issues Splinterlands ran into in 2021 if their onboarding spikes.
SPK Network
SPK Network team is trying a different approach. From my understanding, they try to create off-chain accounts that can be used for some type of content that is not slated to last forever, and probably for new users who want to test the platform without committing to a full account. If I remember correctly, Matt said that on 3Speak, for example, comments from off-chain accounts will be integrated seamlessly with those of full Hive accounts.
VSC
And finally, @vaultec presented their solution... What they are working on is allowing someone from an EVM (Ethereum, he said), to use the Ethereum address to connect to Hive and be able to control assets on Hive with their Ethereum private key (from Metamask, instead of Keychain). I believe they would use VSC smart contracts to create full Hive accounts associated with the respective Ethereum address and they would use the same contract or others to "translate" authorizations given using the Ethereum private key into the correct broadcast operations that use the right private key on Hive.
I imagine someone who would use such a process would pay the fee for creating a new Hive account. Given the fees on Ethereum, that's cheaper than a single regular transaction over there, so they shouldn't have a problem with that.
Want to check out my collection of posts?
It's a good way to pick what interests you.
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
Hive is really cool and I see it as a way of running away from unexpected fees
That it is. And everyone who doesn't like fees (unexpected or not), can find a refuge on Hive. :)
It does sound quite complicated and I think the issue of new accounts attacking the chain can be an issue. As for the Leofinance team onboarding accounts, I hope they can make do with their free account creation tokens but who knows if that will be enough. I guess they would have to pay like Splinterlands if it doesn't work out.
They probably won't pay. Splinterlands could afford to pay because many of the new accounts at that time bought the spellbooks directly, so they just used part of that income to create accounts for them. In hindsight, that was a mistake, because some strong bot farms were created back then.
I think ecency still has free accounts for new users as well. I didn't know how big a burden accounts are compared to BTC and ETH, but that is understandable with how much more things we can do compared to those.
When front ends offer free accounts, they are not really free. They cost account claim tokens, which can be "mined" using RCs. So they cost RCs, and lots of them. No front end would be able to onboard a huge amount of users at once using this method because they'd run out of these tokens, after which they could only create accounts by paying for them.
Yes, they are. I remember at some point Blocktrades said creating a new account is one of the most costly operations on Hive, and that cost is paid forever, it's not a one-time thing.
I've heard of this, and is this possible with our accounts as well? I was curious to try getting another account to have a friend try Hive, but I didn't want to spend money in case they don't stay.
To claim 1 account creation token you need about the full RCs of a dolphin-size account, or maybe a little more. It varies, but that's the relative size you should have in mind.
Gotcha, I'm still far, but that is nice to know. Thanks.
Not that far... Almost halfway through. :)
I like that. Think positive.
Hive chain is exemplary to counteract the spamming as RC is limited and there are other algorithms working out to resist such actions.
I think you are right in your idea about the chain. The other fact is how, onboarding would be eased, I am confident at the Inleo app aims and also other lite frontends doing well like ecency, for example.
But still I hope and wish Hive would undergo more updates, since it needs to have a more genuine features to be added, making sure the ecosystem is trendy to be followed by others outside Hive.
The RC system hasn't been stretched to the limit yet. Many expect the value of RCs to rise significantly as the cost of operations skyrockets if Hive experiences a parabolic growth in usage.
I also believe our UXes need to be improved on Hive to attract and keep outside users, but we also have to acknowledge the efforts of a few teams to do just that.
i like about hive the fact that it has no fees, and its much simpler than others
That are two of its advantages. Although it can be more complicated than necessary for the regular non-crypto user we may want to attract.
!discovery 25
Thanks for the extra visibility!
The platform is going well, there is no fee, people are happy about it, but we still need to promote it so that new people can join it.
That's true, marketing is important, but we have to have what to market and to pick the right times to do it.
Yeah you are right.
This post was shared and voted inside the discord by the curators team of discovery-it
Join our Community and follow our Curation Trail
Discovery-it is also a Witness, vote for us here
Delegate to us for passive income. Check our 80% fee-back Program