Mission Statement
At some point in your Hivean journey, you will become not only a user but also a guide to our ecosystem. When that happens, you will need to develop a few more skills to help others navigate this world.
Today, you will learn an important part of onboarding people: how to create accounts. Some of the topics we will cover are:
- Paid and free account creation
- Account creation tokens
- Account recovery
- Resources new accounts need
Creating an Account
Just like many things in life, there are several ways to tackle this challenge. Many apps and services that operate on Hive also offer solutions for onboarding accounts.
In this post, we will cover just a few, but it is likely that over time, more and more on-ramps will emerge. While there are multiple ways to create accounts, not all of them are free.
Hive accounts (usernames) are easy-to-remember names between 3 and 16 characters long. They must be created by another Hive account and come with an associated cost.
Some providers offer accounts for free, which usually requires some verification to prevent abuse. Others charge a small fee but require no verification.
For the sake of this lesson, we will focus on examples of both.
Account Creation Tokens
Account Creation Tokens (ACTs) were created to simplify the process of making new accounts. These tokens can be minted by anyone, but they have a cost. Normally, it takes 3 HIVE tokens to mint an ACT, but there are ways to do this for “free” — if you have enough resources.
These tokens are non-transferable and tied to the account that generated them.
⚠️ Warning: Although all accounts can theoretically generate ACTs, only accounts with enough resources should do so. An account with very little Hive Power wouldn’t be able to create them, or it might end up consuming all of its resource credits, preventing it from transacting until they recover.
Why Do They Exist?
Hive wanted to make onboarding easier, especially for apps, games, or communities that want to create many accounts for their users.
ACTs make onboarding cheaper and more scalable.
They allow dApps to sponsor or subsidize account creation.
Claiming ACTs using Hive Invite
One of the easiest ways to invite friends to use hive, is to use Hive Invite. The website is straight forward to use, and it requires actions from both the inviter and the invitee.
In the following tutorial, you will learn how to easily claim ACTs using Hive invite. (http://hiveinvite.com)
Generating ACTs is as easy as a couple of clicks!
Please keep in that although the current cost of generating ACTs is 3 Hive tokens, this can change. We will then use these ACTs to create an account later. Think of these tokens like olive branches you can extend to your friends.
Make sure you have the correct amount of liquid Hive in your wallet to do this paid operation.
After the transaction is broadcasted, you should be able to see your balance ACT balance. In our case here, we have 6 ACTs ready to be used. Six new hiveans coming right up!
Who should we send an invite to?
Using ACTs with Hive Keychain
Now that you've amassed your ACTs, and you are ready to create new accounts. For the sake of this tutorial you will accompany me in the creation of an account for a family member of mine. But there is no reason why you can't make another account for yourself.
Some Hiveans use separate accounts for different things. For example: You might want to use a different account for playing a video game, or for using @distriator.
In lesson three: Mastering your Wallet - we learnt all about Hive Keychain. A powerful tool that will allow you to interact with all apps in our ecosystem. But did you know it can also help you create new accounts? Well, this is how you would do it.
Open your Keychain and click on the three lines on the top left.
Follow along to find the Account Creation Tool.
Keep in mind, if I don't have ACTs, I could burn 3 Hive Tokens instead. This would create an ACT, and then create an account. This detail although operationally might not seem different, its important to understand.
I'm effectively going to burn an ACT to create the account @ketzali. This new account is my newest onboard. This next step is very important, and you must pay close attention to what you are doing.
Important note.- Accounts with many resources can create ACTs using RC (resource credits), small accounts would have to, by necessity, burn Hive tokens to create them.
This is the part where you backup all the keys, and you take triple precaution about keeping them safe. Remember: if you lose these keys, the account cannot be recovered.
Go ahead and mark each checkbox once you've saved everything and hit: Create.
And you are done. The account is now created and its been added to your keychain.
Did you know?
I'm sure you are ready to give your new onboard the keys, and let them Hive away to their hearts content. But, did you know there's an easy way for you to setup the private keys on your new recruit?
You could sit there and type away that long difficult master password or, you could do it in just a few steps.
On your Keychain, go into Account Management and select the new account you've just created. Scroll all the way down and click on QR Code.
Very Important!
It's never a bad idea to repeat a thousand times the importance of keeping your keys both private, and safe. You must make it a point that the new Hivean you've onboarded knows this very well.
At this point have them go into their Keychain App and Scan the QR code to import all the keys into their wallet.
One more step before you claim victory: After stressing again the importance of backing up the keys, delete them from your Keychain. Youre new recruit is now fully responsible for their safe keeping.
Other Popular Options
Ecency: Friendy, intuitive and Powerful
Ecency as a front end for Hive is always evolving and improving. As of me writing this course, they've shown the community once more, they are willing to take the lead when it comes to being creative and effective.
As with the other methods to open a Hive account, you will have to pick a username to begin the process. It's important to stress the point that picking a good username is key, as it cannot be changed afterwards.
If the username is available, and you are sure it's the one you want. Go ahead an enter an email address and a referred user. Entering a referred user is optional, of course, but if you were invited to Hive by someone, then this would be where you would type in their username.
As you can see, we got options with Ecency. And although I will be using the free account option for this tutorial, this flexibility for account creation is one of the reasons why Ecency always scores high in my book.
The process for a paid account creation is straight forward, and you can pay with different cryptocurrencies. But if this is your first venture into cryptocurrencies in general, the free option or the friend option, might make the most sense for you.
I'm going to be creating an account for my wife with the "Ask from a friend" option, she's began using distriator, and it makes sense to keep her purchases separate from her writing.
You would first see this screen where you would have to enter your friends email address, and download your private keys. Again, securing your private keys is very important. Failing to do so, would result in the loss of access to the account.
Your hivean friend would then get a link he or she can follow to complete the process. The screen would display at this point the public keys, and the name of the account about to be created.
Its at this point that you can delegate some resources to the brand new account, since it will have none. We will talk about this point in detail a little later in the lesson.
In my case I'm going to pay with my ACTs, the account creation tokens I've been collecting for a while now.
After signing the transaction, the account would be ready to use.
Creating an Account with D.Buzz (https://join.d.buzz/) (Free Account)
D.buzz is part of the family of Hive Apps. Its focus is short form content (think Twitter/X). With users all over the world, D.buzz aims to connect people quickly and efficiently.
True to their ethos, their account creation steps are very easy to follow. So let's get started.
Visit http://join.d.buzz
Pick a username to create. Make sure its something you like, these cannot be changed later. D.buzz will let you know if the username you want is available.
For the sake of this tutorial, I will be creating @mutethisuser. You might remember this account from Lesson 4, Mastering Being Social.
After you've picked the perfect name for your new account, you will find yourself in the most important step of account creation: Obtaining and securing the account's keys.
As said before, making sure your keys are stored safely is your number one priority. Lost keys can't be recovered through any means.
After securing your keys, you can proceed to the next step. Since its a free service, you will required to enter your phone number.
After requesting the code, you will receive an SMS with a confirmation code. This will have to entered within before the time expires.
Once this last step is done, your brand new account is officially alive and well. You can begin using it with your favorite dapp at this point.
New Accounts and Resource Credits
So far we've been discussing creating accounts, but believe it or not, there is something very important we've not discussed just yet: Resource Credits.
Unlike most blockchains in the wild, Hive has a unique superpower: You can begin using it, without spending a single dime. This feature, this power has of course limitations, and its precisely those limitations the ones we need to address.
A freshly minted account will have 0 resources to begin with. In practice this means they can quickly run out of bandwith, of resources, and be unable to post, comment, etc.
All the way back in Lesson 3, you learnt how to delegate Hive Power to an account. Delegating Hive Power also delegates Resouce Credits, thus allowing this account more bandwidth to operate.
All that said, in Hive, you also have the choice of only delegating Resource Credits without delegating Hive. This means you can help another account transact more without reducing your voting power in the slightest.
Let's do a quick recap of RCs for good measure. We need to make sure we understand this well.
🌱 What are Resource Credits (RC)?
RCs are a bandwidth system on the Hive blockchain. They replace transaction fees with a fair-use system that allows users to interact with the blockchain without paying per transaction.
⚙️ How Do RCs Work?
Every Hive account has a pool of RCs that gets refreshed automatically over time (like phone data plans recharging).
When you broadcast a transaction—like posting, voting, or sending custom JSON—you spend RCs.
The RC cost depends on:
✅ The size of the transaction (bigger JSON = more RCs)
✅ The blockchain resources used (e.g., writing to chain vs. just reading)
✅ The current load on the network
For the sake of this Lesson, we will explore delegating Resource Credits to an account using Hive Keychain.
Go to your Hive Keychain wallet and locate the field displaying your Hive Power (Staked tokens).
Your Hive Power tab can be expanding with a simple click, and as you can see now we have three choices. Let's go ahead and click on RC Delegation.
Since I created the account @ankashops without any resources, this will be the time when I can truly give it life, so to speak. Here, you can type in the precise Resource Credits (different values from HP) or preferably, you could select the preset buttons on the bottom.
I selected 10 HP, which comes out to 16.707 Resource Credits. Since this account will only be used for my wife's @distriator purchases that makes sense for me, but keep in mind that if you are onboarding a very active, very friendly user, this might fall short for them.
Now all you have to do is press "Delegate to user" and sign the transaction with your keychain. And you are done!
That was easy, right?
All About Account Recovery
Unlike other blockchains, Hive has a system that allows you to regain control of your account if it is compromised. This is why we have often stressed the importance of keeping your keys safe. On Hive, each account is linked to a designated recovery account, usually the one that created it. As the onboarder, this is crucial information to know.
If your keys are stolen, the recovery account can help you reset your keys within 30 days of compromise, as long as you can prove you are the original account owner.
Please note: although you can change the recovery account at any time, it will not take effect until 30 days have passed.
Best Practices
This is a great opportunity to talk about safeguarding your account or accounts.
It almost goes without saying that the recovery account you choose should be someone you trust, but sometimes that trusted person is you.
As a matter of fact, there are many Hiveans who own multiple accounts and use one of them as their designated recovery account. In my opinion, this is not only clever but also aligned with the ethos of self-governance—a common theme among crypto enthusiasts.
All that said, just like with account creation, there are a few different apps you can use to set your recovery account. For this tutorial, we will take a quick look at a nifty tool built by @arcange, one of Hive's top witnesses.
Let's visit this page: Hive Account Recovery
It might be obvious at this point that using this app, not only will we be able to change our recovery account information, but also perform the process of recovering an account. In other words, this is precisely the tool you need to bookmark for these tasks.
For the purposes of this tutorial, I will be changing the recovery account of @menoshops. I created this account for my @distriator purchases, and I used @aliento's account creation services to do so.
After entering my account @menoshops on the field and hitting the green button, I can click on the first red button the bottom left, and proceed.
Please note.- for this process you will need your master password and at least 0.01 liquid Hive in your balance. Otherwise, you will get an error.
After succesfully completing this process, you should see an orange button on the top. It should display the amount of days left for the change to take effect.
Important Note:
Safely store your secret passphrase. You will need it later if you ever need to recover your account!
Account Recovery, the worse has happened
If the absolute worse has happened, and your keys have been compromised, stolen by a bad actor. The good news is you can fight back. The bad news is you need to do it before the 30 days have passed.
As we just learnt, the recovery account can be changed, and it's possible that the attacker would do this to keep the account all to himself. As you might imagine, the 30 day delay is precisely set like this to give us Hiveans a fighting chance if the worse happens. Since we used @arcange's service to safeguard our account, let's go there and request the recovery.
You will first visit: https://tools.hivechain.app/recovery
Once you are there, you will enter your information in the correct fields. Listen, this may be a stressful moment in your life, but don't worry this process will be painless, you made sure of it.
I'm using an image from @arcange's blog, but it will be very serviceable to illustrate the next steps.
- Enter your username, don't use the @
- Enter your secret passphrase (remember we saved this when we did our setup)
- Enter the Public Owner Key (As the name implies, it being public means you can see it, even if you are locked out of the account)
After entering all this information, the field at the bottom will be auto generated for you. After clicking the "Generate Email" button, your email client should open all ready to go.
If it doesn't open, you need to do this manually, and send this email to recovery@hivechain.app with this exact information. Copy the recovery request payload text and paste it into the body of the email. Don't worry, the subject doesn't matter.
WARNING: If you provided an email address to your memo when setting up the recovery account, you must send the email from the same email address!
When receiving your email, @hive.recovery will parse this payload and:
- verify it is the recovery account of the provided account
- search for the micro-transfer with the encrypted memo
- verify it can decrypt the memo using the provided passphrase
- verify if the account name in the email matches the account name in the decrypted memo
If an email address has been provided at step A, verify if the email address used to send the payload is the same as the email address in the decrypted memo.
If all these tests pass through, @hive.recovery will then initiate the recovery procedure using the new public owner key.
The last thing you will need to do is confirm the recovery request within 24 hours.
Call to Action: Put Your Skills to the Test!
A lesson would not be complete, if there is no homework assigned. With that in mind, let's lay out precisely the steps you need to take to complete lesson 12 with five stars.
Now it’s your turn! For this exercise, you will create a brand new Hive account using the steps outlined in this lesson.
👉 Your task:
Choose one of the account creation methods explained in the lesson:
- Using Hive Keychain (with Account Creation Tokens)
- Using Ecency
- Or using D.buzz’s free account creation
Follow the step-by-step instructions to create a new account.
Document your process!
- Take screenshots of each major step (e.g., getting ACTs, setting up the account, confirming its creation).
- If you used a paid method, include a screenshot of the transaction.
- Once your new account is live, write a short post on Hive about your experience:
- What method did you use?
- How did it feel to onboard a new account?
- Any challenges or tips for others?
- Include the screenshots in your post as proof.
Finally, reply to this lesson with a link to your homework post.
You are now on your way to becoming a Hive Master!
End of Tutorial
What is this post?
If you are a little confused, I understand. A list of us hiveans have been asked to write out detailed tutorials for a massive idea @starkerz and his team are putting together, and this is my contribution to it.
More information about this task can be found here.
The Journey to be a Hivean
You might have seen this post in the trending page the last few days, but you might not know not all tasks have been picked up. If you feel like contributing, you can reply to the post and offer to help.
After all the lessons are completed, corrected and perfected, they will be compiled into a single account, and they will live there forever. That account will be set to burn the earnings, as to now dip the chip twice in the sauce, so to speak.
All that said, I welcome any corrections that might be needed here. If you feel like there's a typo, or like something was not explained to clearly. I'm more than willing to put in even more work to make this as good as I can.
I should thank @ravenmus1c for the cool banner. As she always does, she rocked it.
Ok, and back to the regular scheduled programming now...
Much love
MenO