WAX Introduces Account Creation Fee to Deter Bots

frens, as play to earn gaming on the blockchain has grown, the amount of bots has too. The play to earn gaming space exploded recently and continues chugging forward changing the way we view gaming forever. This attracts nefarious actors though, as anything that makes people money tends to, and it's time to try to prevent that.

WAX Cloud Wallet Improvements

The WAX blockchain has risen to the top as the best blockchain for NFTs and gaming. It's proven this multiple times with some of the most played blockchain games in the world and recently completing the largest NFT airdrop in history. All of this achieved in a scalable and eco-friendly carbon neutral way. WAX has truly achieved some amazing things as a blockchain and has been solidified as one of the greats, if not the greatest. The King of NFTs. With great power comes great responsibility. It's time to start deterring bots. I wrote a post yesterday about NFT scammers on AtomicHub, one of WAX's largest NFT marketplaces. With an insanely fast, feeless blockchain, there's going to be spam. That's just what happens. People will find a way to take advantage of something and find a way to exploit it. Enter account creation fees. I agree with this model, it's very similar to Hive. You pay a small fee to create the account and pay no transaction fees vs. creation unlimited free accounts and paying fees for transactions.

The account creation fee is 5 WAXP. Little to nothing. Hive's account creation fee is $3 but only if there's account creation credits left. Which currently, Hive Onboard doesn't have any. Ecency might have some, but my point is there's generally a fee to get an account. This approach deters bots and gives new accounts some resources to do transactions. You can think of the 5 WAXP as purchasing resources for your account. Transactions are free, but your WAX wallet has to have network resources such as RAM and CPU. You'll notice this quickly with a new wallet after mining on Alien Worlds all day lol. CPU is acquired by staking WAXP and RAM is a limited network resource that costs WAXP. Previously it was free and instant to create the WAX wallet but you need to stake WAXP to do transactions anyway. This kinda does that for you and deters botting because it adds another step.

This brings a new layer of community engagement as well. Games and Dapps will be able to offer free accounts for their communities. This way, when a new user wants to jump into Blockchain Brawlers, they don't have to go ahead and spend the 5 WAXP to get an account. They can essentially earn their WAX cloud wallet account by playing the game or using the dapp. It'll be cool to see how this is implemented. I think Splinterlands does this with Hive accounts, but don't quote me. It's really cool. They reward the user with the free wallet and we get a potential new user on the blockchain. It's a welcome and a much needed change. What do you think?