The mystery of null
Bitcoin has its "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto mystery?" On Hive, it might be, "Who is @null?"
In crypto, there exists the concept of "burning" tokens. That is, destroying them. Usually, this is to reduce the monetary supply. The idea is simple and works, in theory at least:
- If the token has a capped token maximum, burning means those tokens permanently reduce the max supply forever.
- If the token has an infinite token supply, burning tokens reduces the circulating supply.
With a reduced number of tokens out there in the wild, simple economics says each remaining token should gain value.
On Hive, HIVE and HBD can be burnt. This burning is really nothing more than sending to the tokens to an account that is one-way only. This account is supposed to be a cryptocurrency black hole where tokens go in, but never come out.
This is the same for Hive-Engine tokens. If you send the H-E token to the black hole burn account, it's gone. Several Hive tribes and Hive-Engine tokens advocate the burning of their tokens to hopefully boost value.
The general feeling
The somewhat de facto account used to burn tokens on Hive is the @null account. It's simple: send a token to @null and it's gone, it's burnt. The name fits for this purpose, null. My initial thinking: @null is simply an account like any other Hive account. It's just like your Hive account that you're using right now. (Don't have a Hive account, see the bottom of this page.)
Note: My initial thinking above was changed as I wrote this post.
The general feeling on Hive is that no one holds the keys to the @null account. And therefore, tokens held there cannot ever be sent back out. They go in, but don't come out. They're burnt. Gone. Finito.
This general feeling got me to wondering...
- When did @null start?
- Is the @null account a regular account or something special?
- Does anyone have the keys to this account?
- How much does @null hold?
- Are there other ways to burn tokens that don't require the trust that, "No one has the @null keys"?
Let's investigate
Let's take the questions above and try to dig just a little bit.
1. When? If you go to https://hiveblocks.com/@null you'll see some interesting things.
The "Created" date of 1970-01-01 jumps out. Obviously, there was no Hive January 1, 1970. If you enter your own hive username and check it, you might see 1970-01-01 somewhere (I do), so something is defaulting to Jan. 1, '70 for some reason. But, the "Created" date for me is the date my account was actually created, not 1970.
The "Mined" being true is interesting. For my account, it's false. I'm not sure what that means though.
Under "Reset account", I just noticed that for my account, my Reset account is set to "null". Wait, what? Does that mean null as in, "It hasn't been set yet, it's empty/null." Or does that mean the "Reset account" account is actually this @null account? (And what actually is a "Reset account"? That sounds serious!) This mystery is broadening as the rabbit hole spreads.
2. Regular or special? This question/answer blends with number 1. I couldn't nail down a start date. So, step 2 is to check the beginnings of @null. Back at https://hiveblocks.com/@null, go to the very bottom, click the highest page number (the oldest page), scroll to the bottom of that page.
The first user to send to @null was @val on August 26, 2016. Just from the screenshot below, I count 1 HIVE and 10.01 HBD sent to @null.
I expected that I'd see a lot of HIVE and HBD in the @null wallet, not zero like in the image above.
3. Keys held? My gut initially told me that the @null account is a regular account like any other and, therefore, someone holds the keys or held them at one time. Now, I question my initial guess. If indeed it was a regular account, at least a regular one that no one has the keys to, then it should be holding a lot of HIVE and/or HBD (that cannot be sent out, but should be in there.) There seems to be something different about @null.
Back on https://hiveblocks.com/@null, under the section with keys, there are some oddities unique to @null.
4. How much? As mentioned above, @null holds zero HIVE, zero HBD. However, there are lots of Hive-Engine tokens held by @null. The H-E holdings can be seen at https://hive-engine.com/@null/wallet. Be cautious about the dollar amounts though. Those numbers are really not reflective of real-life dollar values. Those dollar values shown are just token supply multiplied by last traded price...they can be wildly manipulated.
5. Other ways? I don't know the answer to whether tokens can be burnt in other ways or not. One lesson I've learned in my amateur-hobbyist tech and coding is that there are usually several ways to solve any problem that you might have or task you wish to carry out. My gut here tells me that there must be other ways to burn. If anyone has ideas, leave a comment. (To be clear, I'm not burning! Just wondering if there are other ways. ๐)
Summary
The @null account seems different indeed. I was first skeptical that "no one owns the keys." I thought it was simply a very early account, but a very regular account. I suspected that there must have been private keys at some point and that therefore, if those keys re-surfaced, any tokens could then re-emerge.
Now, I lean toward that not being the case and that @null is indeed different somehow.
If anyone has anything enlightening on this, I'd be curious to hear.
๐
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