Understanding Resource Credits Costs on Hive (and Splinterlands)

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If you've only got a minimal amount of Hive Powered Up you'll find that you are extremely limited in what you can do on the blockchain.

This is because your Hive Power determines how many Resource Credits (RCs) you have, and the amount of Resource Credits you have determines the amount of transactions you can do on the chain every day.

Resource Credits were introduced three years ago on Hive (which was then Steem) to limit spam, and they are designed to reflect the relative load which different transactions (txs) put on the blockchain.

The way in which RCs are calculated is actually quite complex, but the general gist is that the more data a tx stores to the chain and the longer it takes to compute that data then the higher the RC costs are going to be.

(And I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think the RC costs are dynamic - the busier the chain is, the MORE it costs you in terms of RCs to do anything, so all things behind equal, the more Hive you have powered up the better, as the less likely you are to run out of RCs!).

When it comes to calculating RC costs, there are three main types of transactions, and each of these types has a separate pool of resource credits dedicated to their use.

  • Transfers - which I think are just money transfers.
  • Comments - which include posts and comments on other people's posts (by far the most expensive in resource credits costs)
  • Votes - upvotes.
  • (There is also a 'claim account creation token tx, but this is VERY expensive and you need at least 5K HP to be able to do this).

At time of writing the RC cost for each of the main type of TX type is...

  • Comments - 1.1 M
  • Votes - 0.07 M
  • Transfers - 0.18

You can find out how many resource credits you have and the approximate costs per transaction by going to https://hiveblocks.com/@username - you'll find the information on the panel to left, just under the main HP/ RC Panel, which shows your current RCs in a green 'mana bar':

Screenshot 2021-10-12 at 04.17.30.png

What can you do with 10 Hive Power's worth of Resource Credits?

The screen shot above shows an alt account I've got called @self-track which I've deliberately powered up to 10 HP to keep the maths simple..

10 HP gives me around 20.6 Million mana's (* but see below) worth of Resource Credits, which at a 100% 'full mana charge' is enough for.....

  • 11 comments
  • 100 + votes
  • 64 transfers

RC Mana recharges from zero to full in around 5 days, and in fact the very bottom of the RC info panel tells you, effectively, what your daily usage max is for each type of TX.....

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.26.40.png

So at 2.2 Million a day (which I get for 10 HP) I can do the following every day:

  • Make 2 comments or posts
  • Give around 30 votes
  • Make around 12 transfers

(*) NB I don't think the Max mana is displaying properly, I know from experience that it takes around 5 days to recharge from zero to 100% RC mana, and a recharge rate of 2.2 a day times five = 11 Million mana, so I don't know what's going on there, but the recharge rate it's what accurate, NOT the total RC Mana - possibly the total is calculated from an early timestamp when RCs were cheaper.)

It should already be clear that 10 HP, even 20HP isn't going to allow you to do that much transacting on the Hive blockchain, and below I demonstrate that with some screenshots showing just HOW MANY RCs different types of TX use!

You can do the same by using hiveblocks.com/@username and simply refreshing after every tx.

Demonstrating the Different RC costs for Splinterlands Transactions...

These seem to act a bit differently to the costs outlined above....

I went on a bit of a transacting rampage with my (rarely used) alt for this....

Starting out...

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.20.31.png

One card transfer

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.25.44.png

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.26.18.png

Cost me 0.6% of my resource credits, so presumably I could do around 180 of these in total, or 35 ish a day allowing for recharge.

Five Rentals

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.28.24.png

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.29.09.png

Five rentals used another 1.2% of my RCs, bringing me down to 98.23 resource credits. So this means I can either rent around 400 cards now day or 80 a day on average, allowing for recharge time.

Note the odd amount of RCs is because it's already recharging!

One comment

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.31.25.png

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.31.47.png

Yowser, down to 92% after just one comment - so I can make maybe 2 or 3 of these a day with 10 HP allowing for recharge.

Voting Spree - 10 upvotes

Screenshot 2021-10-11 at 21.34.24.png

Cost me another 6% - so I can easily max out my votes for curation returns if I need to, these are cheap!

Final Thoughts - Splinterlands is relatively cheap in terms of RC usage....

A mere 10 HP gives you enough RCs to rent around 80 cards a day (NB purchasing may be more expensive in RC costs) OR transfer around 30 cards, this should be enough for even the more active players.

Although NB cancelling rentals will also cost in terms of RCs.

However if you want to get active blogging, you will need at least 30HP to be able to make around 5 comments a day, 10, or even 20 wouldn't cut it!

P.S. I'm not 100% sure the RC costs on Hiveblocks tally up with the actual costs, DYOR to find out more!

NB Splinterlands GamePlay is now stored off-chain - so you can play as many games as you like RC free.

But any NFT transactions you want to make, like buying, selling, renting cards, THEY ALL COST Resource Credits.

Find out More...

Here are a few links for yer further reading....

https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-python/rcdemo.html

https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-recipes/calculate_rc_recipe.html

https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-recipes/rc-bandwidth-system.html

https://developers.hive.io/tutorials-recipes/rc-bandwidth-parameters.html



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13 comments
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hey love the content you put out im haveing a issue with this now i love blogging and i rent alot of cards and other stuf how can i get more rc with my other crypto what is the process to powering up can i send money some where like hive engine wllet get swap hive and send some where ?

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(Edited)

Hi - if you have other crypto, the easiest way is to buy Hive on Binance or Bittrex and send it to your Hive account - all you need is your Hive username to send (but try with 1 Hive first) - should be in your account within a couple of minutes.

I use the wallet on Peakd https://peakd.com/@username (you can log in vai keychain)

And to power up:

Screenshot 20211014 at 10.36.14.png

If you wanted to swap DEC for Hive on H-E you'll need to withdraw the SWAP Hive to Hive - use LEODEX it has a 0.25% fee (HE has a 1% fee)

(https://leodex.io/market/LEO

Then the power up is the same.

You can also get other crypto into Hive via BSC - say swap whatever for DEC - DEC to Splinterlands, then to Hive via HE.

I've got 50 powered up to this alt account, but I've just had to delegate myself another 20 to keep the RCs up. But for most people 50 HP should be adequate. Renting cards especially is quite cheap, it's posting and commenting that's MUCH more expensive.

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great post! hope that RC delegation is coming soon to fix this for small accounts

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I'm not sure when the next HF is - I'm looking forward to that, should be very good for the Hive price!

Imagine too - being able to rent out HP for DEC. I'm sure someone will code something to make that a possibility!

!PIZZA

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Just leaving this here for anyone who may be struggling with Resource Credit issues:
@giftgiver will give you a free delegation just by heading to their website https://giftgiver.site and entering your username.

It's a really nice website for if you are in a pickle and cannot send a message or send a transfer due to a lack of RC available to you.

Besides that, good post I wish I knew more about RC when I first started with Steem.

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Awesome stuff! I remember those days so long ago when I had so little Hive powered up and I felt like my hands were basically tied behind my back whenever I tried to do anything. I have made it a point now to give a decent delegation to people when I onboard them they don't have to deal with those headaches. I know of at least one person who was very frustrated to join and start playing Splinterlands only to find out he was able to only do like one or two battles per day...

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Right now comments and top level posts take up the same amount of RCs, but I read that might change, maybe in HF26. To make the RC cost really proportional to the amount of data stored (and CPU needed to process it).

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Well that would make sense! I mean this hardly takes up more room than sending some

!PIZZA

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I get a lot of questions about how the resource credit system works and I just want to thank you for making it easier to understand, I'll reblog and begin showing off your post as a good start point.

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