Concepts — Hive

There are a lot of new unusual concepts and terms that you will deal with sooner or later. On this page you'll find brief descriptions of several key concepts.

All of them are related to each other, so we recommend first to read everything, even if something seems incomprehensible, and then more to understand each term. Although the easiest way to deal with the VIZ - to start using it.

Social capital

Digital social capital is the most important thing in the VIZ. Social capital is the rewards you have received and the rewards you have received (thanks) for users.

The size of your social capital depends on the size of the reward, which you thank other VIZ participants. This means that the more your social capital, the more interesting it is for other participants to do something useful for you.

Unlike in normal life, in the VIZ social capital is represented in digital form, it has a "size" - the number of viz tokens in your capital. Data on the amount of social capital of each participant and all transactions with him are stored in the VIZ blockchain and can not be changed without the permission of the participant.

Digital social capital can not be instantly transferred to another account, first it must be gradually - in equal portions for 28 days - to withdraw into the wallet. The reverse transfer - from purse to capital - takes place instantly. But it can be delegated to another account, that is, "give to use" and then recall. In this case, the recipient of the delegated capital can reward them, but cannot withdraw, spend or sell it.

Reward

The award is usually a small digital appreciation in the form of viz tokens, which receives in the social capital of a member of the VIZ, if you reward it. At the same time, you do not spend your social capital, but only tell the blockchain how many tokens should be received by another participant from the constantly running emission.

The size of your reward to another person depends on the size of your social capital, the energy of rewarding (which you set yourself, while you have 100% energy for 5 days) and community activity over the last 5 days (the higher it is, the less your rewarding capacity - but up to a certain guaranteed limit).

It is very important to understand that the reward is not a fee for the service, it is your voluntary gratitude to the person who did something useful or pleasant for you for free. The reward is "thank you," "like" or "smile," only in a slightly more valuable and digital way than simple words.

As we know from life experience, gratitude of some people for us is more valuable than others (it is not about family and friends, but rather about colleagues, acquaintances or influential people). So it is in the VIZ: a reward from a participant with high social capital usually increases your social capital more than a reward from someone with low social capital.

VIZ token

Viz - a unit of measurement of digital social capital. Length is measured in meters, volume - in liters, current strength - in amps, and social capital - in vizes. Technically, viz is the only token (asset) of the VIZ blockchain, which is at the heart of the VIZ ecosystem. The viz token is either in the form of social capital or in the form of liquid "coins" in the wallet, which can be freely and almost instantly transferred from the account to the account and transferred to social capital. Tokens in the wallet do not affect the rewards.

Accounts and subaccounts

The account is a user account in the VIZ blockchain that works in the entire VIZ ecosystem: in any application, service or when directly accessed to the blockchain. Viz tokens and all transactions that are carried out by the user of the account are "tied" to the account. The account in the VIZ has several differences from the usual accounts in email, social networks, online stores and other Internet services:

the account in the VIZ is anonymous, its creation does not require any personal data. Some services that offer to create accounts in the VIZ may request user information, but it is up to you to decide whether to provide it or create an account through another service;
the account in the VIZ is wholly owned by the person who owns its master key (see the next section). If an attacker recognizes the master key and changes it, no one will be able to return the account;
information related to the account is recorded in the blockchain and stored in it unchanged. You can't delete an account, erase your account, or change it. You can update the information at any time and make the old version irrelevant, but it will still remain in the blockchain (as if in the "archive" with free access).

Subaссount - account of the second, third, etc. level. Similar to the domains of the sites, the names of subaссounts in the VIZ are written in front of the name of the previous level. For example, a smith account may have subaccaunts bill.smith, jenny.smith, facebook.john.smith, etc.

Returning to our example, the subaccount john.smith can only be created by a smith account, but the creator of the subaccount facebook.john.smith can only be john.smith, but not smith.

Unlike the Internet domain system, each subaccount in the VIZ has its own set of accesses and keys and is essentially a separate independent account. The previous level account can only create a subaccount, but in the future can not affect it, except in the situation where the owner of the subaccount gave him access.

In the VIZ ecosystem there are commercial services for self-creation of subaccounts with "beautiful" or "functional" endings (accounts of the previous level). For example, for a small one-time fee, you can create any unoccupied subaccount for .com, .blog or .xxx (and many other accounts). Create a subaccount through such a service and just in case changing the keys, you become the sole owner of your subaccount.

Subaccounts are convenient to use both for business in the VIZ ecosystem and for personal purposes. If you have accumulated a significant amount of vizes for you and are afraid of losing it when using the keys in the applications, keep social capital on the main account and delegate it as needed to subaccounts, such as social networks or games. In this case, if you compromise the subaccoiunt key, you will withdraw the delegation and lose nothing (or almost nothing).

In our example, Bill Smith securely stores his social capital of 10,000 vizes on the main bill.smith account, which he created for 20 vizes through a commercial service that owns a smith account. To safely use social media, Bill delegated 8,000 vizes to the sub-account soc.bill.smith. And the other 2,000 viz delegated to her schoolgirl daughter on the jenny.smith account so she could use them on gaming apps.

Accesses and keys

Accesses and keys in the VIZ is an advanced analogue of passwords of "regular" accounts (mail, social networks, Internet banks, etc.). The access and key system allows you to use your account flexibly and safely. At first glance, it is quite complex, but it is worth once to deal with her device, as it becomes clear that everything here is logical and reasonable. And if you want, you can reduce access to your account to the usual pair of login password (but do not do so).

The easiest way to understand what you're talking about is to imagine that "access" is locks to different account functions, and "keys" are the keys to these locks. Accesses can be configured with any level of security - according to the importance of the function.

There are four types of access (or in our analogy - four "castles"):

communicative access (memo) - allows accounts to exchange encrypted messages through the blockchain. In practice, it is not yet used;

regular access (regular) - to reward users, vote in the DAO Fund, change some account data and send text transactions to the blockchain;

active access (active) - is mostly needed to work with viz tokens, and also allows you to vote for delegates and do all the same as regular access. Don't ask why it's called "active," it's a long and sad story;

master-access - allows you to do anything with your account, including changing the keys to all other accesses.

In a simple version (most of the participants of the VIZ) for each access there is one separate key, which looks something like this:

5KTuTQjc3dqrN5N6ha6othbSKoSRiZ3sEzY4r13ZkMqQv1W1ipc

The key is generated by a certain algorithm, you can not "invent" it at will.

In a more complex case, you can set, for example, two or three keys, each of which "opens" the usual access. Or to make sure that you can "open" access with only two, three, etc. keys at the same time - it can be master access to a large corporate account. Conversely, nothing (except for common sense) prevents you from setting the same key to all access at once.

Finally, you can use a user-invented password that opens up all access. This is a familiar but very unsafe option. In addition, not all services and applications will accept your password, they may require you to enter a certain key.

I thank Perfect for the translation into English.
Original article
Award through the VIZ