Splinterlands will be updating its process for creating Hive blockchain accounts when new players join the game. This change should not affect any existing players, but we still wanted to give existing players a heads up about the change and how things will work going forward.
We expect the change to be released tomorrow, Wednesday, October 7th, at around 10:00 AM ET / 14:00 UTC. There will be a short downtime while the update takes place.
UPDATE: Downtime will be around 12:00 PM ET / 16:00 UTC
In the past, a Hive blockchain account was created every time a new player signed up for Splinterlands but the player could not get access to the keys for that account unless they purchased the Summoner's Spellbook in the game.
Since the majority of sign-ups do not end up buying the Summoner's Spellbook, we have been creating a significant number of Hive blockchain accounts that never get used. This was not a big deal for the amount of sign-ups that we have typically had in the past, but in the near future we plan to announce a number of potentially very large player acquisition channels which could increase the number of sign-ups significantly.
As most of you are aware, creating Hive blockchain accounts is not free - even using discounted account creation tokens does have a cost, and the number of them that we can create are limited - so we need to change our process in order to be able to accommodate significantly increased sign-ups.
Going forward, a Hive blockchain account will not be created for new Splinterlands players until/unless they purchase the Summoner's Spellbook. This means that the player will not choose their account name when they first sign up to the game. Instead, a random account name will be given to them, such as "acolyte_10532".
These players will still be able to participate in the game exactly as before, but any transactions they would make to the Hive blockchain will be sent from one of a number of proxy accounts managed by Splinterlands. Additionally, other players can still send cards, packs, delegations, DEC, etc., to these accounts by entering their account name just like normal.
The following are some technical details of how the new process and proxy accounts/transactions will work, so anyone not interested in that can stop here.
When a player who does not yet have a Hive blockchain account needs to publish a Custom JSON transaction to the chain, they will request - via an API call - that a Splinterlands proxy account broadcast the transaction for them. The transaction will be exactly the same as a normal Splinterlands transaction, however the JSON will have an additional proxy_acct parameter with the name of the player on behalf of whom the transaction is being sent.
The Splinterlands protocol will be updated such that a specified list of accounts have the authority to publish transactions on behalf of any players who do not yet have their own Hive blockchain account. The game will process those transactions exactly as if they had been broadcast by the player themselves.
When a player who does not yet have a Hive blockchain account purchases the Summoner's Spellbook, they will be asked to choose a unique account name and the corresponding Hive blockchain account will be created at that time.
Then the player will publish a new sm_upgrade_account operation to the Hive blockchain via the proxy API with the name of the new Hive blockchain account to which the current account should be upgraded.
When this new operation is received, the name associated with the Splinterlands account will be changed from the randomly provided one (ex. "acolyte_10532") to the new Hive blockchain account name specified in the sm_upgrade_account operation.
Please note that this is simply a name change. All ratings, balances, cards, packs, and everything else will be unaffected and remain in that player's account just as before.
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