This weekend at NFTOPIA, I accidentally became a Hive ambassador. One of the conference attendees was struggling to set up a Hive account. I had to jump in and assist, and we were able to set up an account in Hive Keychain.
I want to elaborate on this experience and brainstorm solutions. Onboarding to Hive is still challenging at times.
Part of the challenge here is that onboarding took place at a live event. At live events like conferences, attendees are trying to set up an account to demo an app quickly.
Here's what happened to the Hive onboardee. Joining through CryptoShots, which uses the HiveInvite service for account creation.
Onboardee generated two sets of keys for their desired account. They accidentally deleted one set of keys and somehow ended up with only a Posting Key for the account.
It's a hard lesson learned. Losing keys on day one. New Hivers also have no understanding of the difference between Posting, Active, Owner, Memo keys, and the master password (seed phrase).
Different apps call the "password" various things. Backup password, master password, seed phrase. Technically, they are all the same thing. But most users don't understand that the other four graphene keys are derived from the seed phrase.
HiveInvite works well. In this case, the inviter needs to approve the account creation. When the invite link is used to create an account, the account is not created immediately. An email is sent to the person who made the invite, and they must approve the account creation.
This makes sense. Someone could abuse the invite and spam account creations, burning through the inviter's resource credits. They should have some control over which accounts are created.
However, due to time constraints (the attendee at the conference wanted to try the cryptoshots game during a break), it took too long to get the account creation approved.
Onboardee turned to a different account creation service - InLeo. It worked instantly, and I recommended that the onboardee add the account to HiveKeychain using the backup password. Adding the account to HiveKeychain also worked instantly.
Onboardee was up and running with the second account. The first account with lost keys will be unusable forever.
Let’s set two goals:
Decentralized account creation is complicated. You or I can create an account for a friend using Resource Credits or paying the 3 Hive fee. We don't have to rely on one entity as the gatekeeper. And then there is no common, gold standard solution for creating accounts.
It's a little awkward for an app to send a new user to a different site to create an account. Ideally, all Hive apps have a built-in account creation widget. It could be a standard widget that each app configures to select its preferred pool of Resource Credits.
I remember when HiveOnboard was funded by DHF, and it came online. It was a significant step forward, but in recent years, it has been barely maintained. It's also not tightly integrated into front-end apps; a different website has to be redirected to.
Abuse is still a problem. HiveOnboard tried to solve it by using IP address quality checks, but that caused other issues for some people in some countries.
I encourage each major app to have a built-in account creation service. That will create the best onboarding experience. No matter which Hive "front door" someone arrives at, we can provide a good entry experience.
New Hivers lose their keys all the time. It's hard to continue using your account after losing the keys.
This is a tough problem. Account creators can warn users about backing up keys. But what if someone backs them up to their laptop only, and then the laptop is stolen? Or they back them up to a free online email account, and their email account gets compromised. These scenarios happen often.
Should Hive account key custodial service be a default option for new users? Maybe it's best to let users take full custody of their keys once they understand how Hive works.
A custodian holds someone's keys for them, in case they lose them. Of course, give the option to opt out of this and take full self-custody.
Encourage Hive apps to create a great "front door" experience for guests. And design safeguards to prevent those guests from shooting themselves in the foot. And
Thanks for reading my rant. What do you think? Do you have similar onboarding experiences?
Onward,
HT
