Between an RC and a Hard Place

This has come up nicely so far!

It isn't finished yet, but it is the wood panel wall behind the benchtop counter, resting on a stone strip of backsplash, made of the same material as the benchtop and island worktop. The wood is aspen, which is quite white and clean and it has been stained slightly with a tint in lacquer and then a clear coat of lacquer on top, to make it somewhat wipeable. Though, how wipeable is yet to be seen, considering it is behind the stove and my daughter's favorite breakfast is bacon and eggs.

What we will likely do at first at least is, create some kind of Perspex shield, until we know more about how it is going to act and react to the cooking environment. We might test a few offcuts also, to see how washable they really are. In a few weeks when all of this is ready, I think that at least looks-wise, it will be pretty nice - especially in comparison to what was there earlier.

The other thing that is looking good, is Hardfork 26, which seems to have gone off largely without a hitch. I was expecting the cost of account creation tokens to skyrocket, but at the moment, that hasn't been the case at all and they are pretty much the same as previously. This means that I can keep on claiming them, just in case someone comes knocking on my door and needs several thousand. Wouldn't that be great!

What has been affected heavily are the RCs on my Splinterlands rental account:

Normally it is hovering around 85%, but is now at gurgling down the drain. And, it isn't like this account has no RCs attached to it:

I can delegate more to it, but I want to see if it is going to balance, but if not, that sets up an interesting usecase straight away for Resource Credit delegation, which is a new capability and there should be interfaces that can manage it soon enough.

But, just think if it doesn't balance, Yes, I am able to delegate RCs to it, but RC's only exist in relationship with HIVE POWER. This means that while RCs can safely be delegated without it coming at a potential vote cost, it also means that some accounts will have to keep more HIVE powered up to manage their card rentals and gameplay. And, if it is powered up, that will incentivize it to be active.

And, because RCs are lost when HP is delegated (gained by the delegate), it means they will have to use their vote themselves on Hive, if they want to maximize. This means that they will vote manually, use autos or create a trail. Which reminds me, I should get the abouttodie account to follow my votes, once the autos are back up and running.

That is 50 cents (or more useful - 1 HIVE) a day in voting potential being wasted that could be spread from the pool. Nothing to sneeze at.

But, thinking of powering up HIVE, if someone did need 7000 accounts from me for managing card rentals and they needed to have 1000 worth of RCs on average, that would be 7 million HIVE powered up. Of course, that can be scaled in various ways if needs be, but as it is now calculating the true cost of transactions more precisely, we can see that the needs of some interfaces and games are going to get pretty hungry. This will force design changes too, as more are competing for resources.

Over the years, people haven't really understood the value of Resource Credits, but essentially and as the name implies, it is a pay to play mechanism, where there is a gaming hall full of machines, but in order to use them, you need tokens. However, you don't have to pay for the tokens directly, as with Hive power, they are a replenishing resource.

There has been an adjustment of the cost of the machines (in RCs) through this fork and it will be interesting to watch it balance and then see what has actually changed. For most, this isn't going to be an issue, but I would suspect that if commenting a lot, a person might want to power up a 100 HIVE or so to make sure they are always able to, or when possible, get some kind person to delegate some RCs.

RCs pay for the "transaction fees" for various actions, but they have no value themselves (until soon), but what they do incentivize is owning and staking, which is another mechanism to secure the blockchain and creating a little scarcity of HIVE. However, there has been very little need for this up until now and without being able to delegate RCs, most have just gone to waste anyway. Now the "price" of some transactions has increased, it means that there has to be se balancing of RCs, so perhaps some people will have to buy HIVE and power up, get delegations or perhaps, even rent Resource credits in order to do what they want to do.

This is far better than the alternatives of transaction fees like on Ethereum though, as RCs are constantly generated, so as long as a person has enough Hive Power, they will never have to rent or pay for RC transaction fees on Hive.

The delegation also creates other opportunities for games to have hotseat accounts, where they can have players use numbered gaming accounts from a pool, that can have people come and go from as needed. Each will need RCs to operate, but they won't need HP delegations, this gives the power of HP on Hive, but enables other accounts to still operate cleanly, for a more efficient process with less wastage.

What this all does is more closely ties the second-layers to the base layer of Hive, but in doing so, improves the overall potential of both layers and makes both more secure and stable. Also, with a game like Splinterlands for example, the more powered up Hive in the Splinterlands community, the more value the community can provide Splinterlands content on Hive, which gives increased incentive for many players to use both, essentially creating a powerful crowdsourced marketing engine.

For some though who have sold their Hive to get into Splinterlands, it might be painful to have to buy some of that Hive back to keep playing Splinterlands as they have been.

Down further.

At some point, I will undelegate the HP from this account though and then delegate Resource credits to it instead, as that gives me the Hive voting power back and maneuverability for the Splinterlands rental account at no cost and, I am sure that many are going to be doing the same.

This change is likely going to get some resistance from some people who want to use Hive, but don't want to own HIVE, but overall, when Splinterlands is selling through several million dollars of assets in the space of a couple minutes, I think most of the big players should be okay to spend a few hundred on enough Hive to keep earning thousands more on Splinterlands.

Resource Credits now have investment potential, because they are no longer tied to to the account with the HP. This will hopefully result in new ways to use them and therefore spend them, which might create RC shortages in the future too, though I suspect that is a very long way a way.*

For now though, I claimed a new lot of accounts just before the Hardfork in case they did go up significantly and now, I am just waiting for the influx of people who want them to participate on Hive for "free". Nothing is free in this life...

Nothing.

We all have many decisions to make daily and sometimes, we find ourselves stuck between a rock and a hard place - or some aspen wood and a kitchen benchtop.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]