The problem with removing the payment for accounts in general is the fact we've got named accounts which are worth something in themselves.
I've got no problem with charging for accounts. I give free accounts to my students, but I don’t think they should be free, because of bots and squatters. In fact, I think 3 HIVE for an account is way below the true value.
I would like to see 1- and 2-letter prefixes and suffixes enabled, and the exclusive rights to each sold, perhaps as NFTs. And possibly do the same with 3-letters also.
100,000 HIVE for 1-letter, 10,000 for 2-letter, 1,000 for 3-letter.
That would enable new tribes to guarantee authenticity. For example, I create a new tribe with QED token and purchase the qed.xxxxxx prefix. That way everyone knows that an account starting with qed. is an official account.
More importantly, though, it would enable businesses that want to build on Hive to reserve exclusive Hive account “domains”. For example, Twitter could purchase the t.xxxxxx prefix. Then they could create Hive accounts on behalf of their users that are t.existingtwitterhandle. Twitter could manage the private keys for each user until such time each user is ready to do so on their own.
Having exclusive control over a block of account names could be a big plus for certain future app builders.
What you mean is that there should be exclusivity to some naming combinations. Right now I can make a bunch of
qed.accountsbut the distinction in naming means nothing as its still within the name parameters allotted by the protocol. So new names would need to be longer in general or the addition to the name wouldn't be part of the name itself but some other field, which is more plausible.Yes. For 3-letter prefixes and suffixes, since those are already allowed, there could be some confusion. Moving to exclude them in the future in order to offer them to new tribes might not be worth it due to that potential confusion.
I first thought of this when I created a new tribe and token (VYB) and started creating accounts for special purposes, all using
vyb.as a prefix. Then I noticed someone posting with an official-sounding account using the prefix. That’s when it occurred to me there could be real utility in acquiring exclusivity for that 3-letter prefix and/or suffix.For example, I could use
vyb.xxxxxfor all official accounts and let anyone create ahivename.vybaccount after they prove they controlhivename.Providing exclusive access to 1- and 2-letter suffixes and prefixes would be easy, because they are already excluded. We would just need to provide a mechanism for purchasing those rights and tying the account-creation rights for a given suffix or prefix to a given account.