Posts

Hive Wallet Social Experiment Results

avatar of @geekgirl
25
@geekgirl
·
·
0 views
·
4 min read

Image by @doze

If you have been following my blog, you are probably aware of the Hive Wallet Social Experiment that was started this week. It was planned to end in seven days but teams were eager to get the wallets unlocked and obtain the funds and were successful in unlocking wallets in three days. Some were able to finish the task in a day and the latest it took was three days.

This social experiment was about playing a game and having fun. While dosing so, participants would be able to network with other Hive Bees, and in most cases people they have never interacted with. Also, they would be able to explore the powerful technology we have here that is Hive wallet. It was a fun game to play but also and educational endeavor, I hope will be useful in the future for those who participated and those who followed the progress along.

Hive wallet is truly unique in crypto space and everyone who masters how keys work can responsibly keep their accounts/wallets secure. To read more on this feel free to read the experiment announcement blog I wrote or just explore the wallet.

What we learned from this experiment is that there are different ways of using the Hive Wallet. Some preferred PeakD front-end over the HiveBlog. I personally default to HiveBlog for unknown reason.

Initially, the experiment was only about unlocking one newly created account/wallet and funded with 50 HBD - @hivegiftcard. There is a reason I named it giftcard. I have some ideas to reuse the giftcard account in the future for a different purpose.

The idea of the experiment was to split the private active key into five pieces and send them out to five Hive Bees who showed interest in participating in the experiment. They would have to figure out a way to cooperate to unlock the wallet and obtain the funds.

However, many more than five people showed interest in participating. Only picking five out of 20 interested didn't seem right and actually felt like a great opportunity to have a bigger experiment. This lead me to create @hivegiftcard2, @hivegiftcard2, @hivegiftcard3 accounts funded with 50 HBD each so that everybody who showed interest could participate. Why not? This is fun!

We ended up with 4 teams of 5 with designated wallets to unlock. Some teams were faster than others. But it was never about the speed. It was more about networking and using various wallet key features. It was amazing to watch teams working together. Feel free to read through the comments in original post and the update posts.

All participants were able to use private memo keys, some had initial issues but figured out very quick with the help of teammates. After they were able to read encrypted messages, they figured out how to communicate them to each other. Some chose the blockchain and experimented with sending encrypted messages to each other, some used PeakD Beechat, and other discord.

Then, they had to figure out the amount combination it would take putting the pieces back together and finding the correct private active key. The number was 120.

One team even utilized automating, another team used excel spreadsheet, others used different methods. But all were able to get the all 120 combinations.

There were no rules. In fact I specifically stated it was ok to trick the teammates and steal the funds. lol. Just to make it more interesting and see how trust would work. Unfortunately :) all participants ended up being trustworthy and nobody ended up stealing all the funds and they all shared.

Last part of the experiment was - "Double or Nothing". I offered participants and teams to decide if they want me do another experiment with doubling the prize amount. For that to happen they had to send the 50 HBD back my account. Then I would double it to 100 HBD and restart the experiment. However, the catch was that there was no guarantee initial participants would be selected.

None of the teams decided to risk going "double or nothing". Nobody sent 50 HBD back. If they did I had a plan to make it even more interesting.

If all or any team took this option, I was going to double the prize and have as many teams depending on the interest shown. But the difference would be all teams would compete to unlock the same wallet. So, whichever team got it done faster would win.

There was a potential that this next round would have 400 HBD if they all returned the funds. That would cost me a lot more. So, part of me is grateful that they didn't. :) lol.

Another great thing about this experiment was, as we can see happen on Hive all the time is that some other Hive Bees also like the idea and contribute to the prize pool. @soyrosa and @selfhelp4trolls were super generous and increased the prize pool by 55 Hive. Thanks a millions!

Thank you everybody who participated. You are the reason Hive is awesome. Thanks to everybody who followed the experiment. You are the reason Hive is a success.

Another great thing about Hive wallet is that, some private keys can be shared for various purposes. But once that purpose is fulfilled, the owner of the accounts/wallets can reset the keys. I will be resetting the private keys to all four giftcard accounts shortly, and those private active keys used to move the funds will become useless. There are many use cases for such features in the real world. Not many crypto wallets can do that.

For example, these accounts/wallets can be used as giftcards as they are named and as soon as funds are cleared keys can be reset automatically, refilled with more funds to be reused as giftcards again.

This was an awesome and fun experiments. Thanks again!

Posted Using LeoFinance Beta