LeoGlossary: Resource Credits (RC)

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Non-transferrable credits that accrue to each Hive account based on how much Hive Power (HP) the wallet has. Resource Credits are what allow users to interact with the Hive blockchain.

Accounts acquire RC by getting the $HIVE coin and staking it through a process called "powering up". The converts the $HIVE into what is known as Hive Power (HP). HP translates into the amount of Resource Credits the account has.

Each activity on the Hive network requires a certain amount of RC to perform. If the user does not have enough RC, the blockchain will reject the transaction.

Some of the activities that can be performed:

Posting an article or comment
Voting on content
Governance voting
Transfer of $HIVE or the stablecoin, HBD
Delegation of HP

When a user lack the RC to conduct a transaction, he or she can buy more $HIVE and power it up or simply wait. Resource Credits replenish at a rate of 20% per day. Hence, exhausted RC will go from zero to 100% in 5 days.

The RC for each activity will vary both by the day and the activity itself. The ability to interact with the blockchain is based upon resources available. This is dependent upon:

blockchain size
compute time
state size

As resources available go down, the price to transact goes up. The reverse is also true.

Resource Credits are what allows Hive to operate without any transaction fees. Unlike other blockchains such as Ethereum, where users pay based upon each transaction, Hive eliminates this by simply having enough RC. If the accounts does, either through owned or delegated HP, transactions are processed.

How Resource Credits are calculated