Let's play a game. I created a new account - @hivegiftcard, and sent 50 HBD to this wallet. I will split the private active key for this account into five equal length pieces. Then I will send them to five random people who agree to participate in this experiment. These participants will need to figure out a way to work together and put all the pieces back together to access the account and claim the 50 HBD.
The purpose of this experiment is to remind ourselves and discuss the powerful features of the Hive wallet, and have fun. There are no rules for the experiment. There are no expectations. Any outcome is good outcome. Even if one person figures out a way to trick the rest and keep all the funds to themselves, that is completely acceptable outcome too. Before I tell you more about the details of the experiment, let me tell you about the Hive wallet and awesome features.
Hive Wallet Private Keys, Features & Functions
Hive blockchain offers complete ownership over the accounts created on the network to those who have the private keys to them. Every account comes with wallets. Owners of these wallets have complete ownership and control. With this comes responsibility for every owner of the accounts/wallets to keep their private keys secure.
Each hive account/wallet has several private keys: master key, posting key, memo key, active key, and owner key. Each of these keys have their designated purpose and function. Often times new users make a mistake of using the master key for everything. This is not advised. Best practice is to use keys based on what they are designed for.
While using a Hive.Blog website first time with a master key, the UI will show a warning and give an option to download a pdf file with all the keys. Relying on Apps warning is not a good idea either. Some may show a warning, others may not. Alternatively, all the keys can be seen in the "keys & permissions" section of the Wallet.Hive.Blog website.
Private Posting Key is used to perform social actions like upvoting, posting, commenting. Social actions are usually the most used one, and making a habit of only using posting key for these actions keeps our wallet secure. If somehow somebody got access the posting key, they wouldn't be able to transfer funds because permissions of this key are limited for only social actions.
Private Active Key is used for monetary and wallet related actions like transferring Hive or HBD, powering up or powering down, transferring funds to and from savings. Also, actions like buying selling coins in the internal marketplace, voting for witnesses, and conversions can be done by using the private active key.
When transferring Hive or HBD to other accounts, apps will have a memo field. One of the mistake people did in the past was copy/pasting their keys in the memo field. Wallet.Hive.Blog app will usually show a warning if it detects private keys in the memo field. But again we shouldn't rely on apps and always make sure we are not making our private keys public by accident.
Private Memo Key is used to encrypt the memo we are sending or decrypt encrypted memos we receive. Not all apps support encrypting memos. That's why it is always a good idea to test the feature on the app before sending the actual private encrypted memo to someone. On Hive.Blog we can send encrypted memo by starting our message with # symbol. To do this, first we will need to login with our private memo key on Wallet.Hive.Blog, then when making the transfer it will also ask for a private active key, because some coins are being sent too.
To view the encrypted memo, we will again need to login with private memo key. When we are logged in with either private posting key or private active key, we will not be able to decrypt the memo. In fact, on Wallet.Hive.Blog we won't be able to see any memo. This app hides the memo if it is encrypted and not logged in with memo key. Some other Hive apps show the encrypted message.
Master Key/Password is can do all of these action that are done by posting, active, and memo keys. It is not a good idea to use this key and/or share with anybody. Better to keep it offline.
Private Owner key can be used for resetting all of these keys and generate new ones. If you believe your account might be compromised, using the owner key we can generate new keys and so the old keys cannot be used anymore. It is highly recommended to keep this key offline all the time.
By fully understanding Hive wallet, its features, keys and their functions we can develop better habits and techniques to keep our accounts/wallets safe and use Hive at its fullest potential.
All of this gives us full control and ownership over our accounts/wallets. This enables us to use fast and zero fee transactions, earn interest on HBD in savings, participate in social actions, participate in governance, and most importantly have peace of mind that our funds are safe and secure.
Hive Wallet Social Experiment
I have created @hivegiftcard account and sent 50 HBD to this account. I will split the private active key for this account into five pieces of the equal length. I will send these five pieces of the key to five different accounts that agree to participate in this experiment.
If you would like to participate, please leave a comment stating that.
Normally, Hive wallet private keys begin with number "5". The private key you need to gain access to @hivegiftcard also starts with the character/number "5".
The total length of the private is 51 characters. Since first character - "5" is already know to us, I will remove this character. Now we are left with 50 characters long key.
By splitting it into five pieces, we get five separate ten character long alphanumeric text. I will randomly choose five accounts who express interest to participate 12 hours after publishing this post. If there are less than five participants than I will wait longer until there are at least five people.
After the pieces of the private key are sent I will add an "update" at the bottom of this post with the names of the accounts who received these pieces in the memo.
I will send memos in an encrypted form. So you will need to use your memo key to be able to see the actual memo.
Now participants can decide on how to approach this experiment, how to cooperate in putting the pieces back together so they have the full key to access the account. Final outcome doesn't matter. There are no expectations on how they choose to split or use the funds.
Important thing to note is that the five separate pieces will not be sent out in the correct order. Participants will need to figure out the correct order in which all pieces should be put together.
Find the correct order, add "5" in the beginning and you will have the full active key.
They can split equally among themselves, they can give away to someone, or chose one person to receive everything. Any outcome is ok.
I would also like to offer a "Double or Nothing" opportunity too. If the 50 HBD is sent back to me, I will add 50 HBD making the new amount 100 HBD and announce a new experiment. While funds will increase, participant may not be the ones who are randomly chosen next time though. In this situation there will be a restart of the experiment, everybody will have an opportunity to participate again, but it is not guaranteed that same participants will be randomly selected.
If consensus is not reached and funds are not moved out of @hivegiftcard account within seven days after this post is published, nobody will get the funds. I will reset the private keys at that point.
Just to make sure I am not deceiving as well, I have sent the full private active key ("first character 5 removed") as an encrypted memo to @hivegiftcard. In the case someone will need a proof that I sent the real pieces, I will share the private memo key so they can see that I did send the correct data.
Let me know in the comments if would like to participate and if I need to clarify anything.
UPDATE: The game/experiment has started. Because many showed interest, it has been expanded to 4 teams of 5 and prize increased to total of 200 HBD. Details on the updates can be found in the following post.
@geekgirl/hive-wallet-social-experiment-update-or-200-hbd-5-hive-prize