Community post
What happens when we run out of human readable account names?
Right now, we have the privilege of choosing our account name. It's pretty easy to secure the one you want.
Say I wanted the name quierotacobell, because it's been my username for all my online games since middle school. Right now I could have it.
There will come a point in time, however, where account names won't be available either because they are being used by an active user or it was created by someone who abandoned the account.
Sure, I might be able to find alternatives like...
- quier0tacobell
- quierot4cobell
- quierotacob3ll
But, will a new user want to go through all the possible combinations or will they just shrug and go back to TikTok?
Have we thought about what to do when that happens?
As an additional question, could display names become higher priority?
In other words, I could always be called Decentralized Creative, but my wallet could be something like x4f7ytx8s9alwer. I could have multiple wallets linked to my "display name".
Let me know what you think.
Replies (24)
its 3 x 10^16
In other words, we is good!
hahahaha
but of course, some names will be quite crappy.
I can read: Imanidiot, but i doubt people would want that username or maybe they will...
Wait, I should say... this number is not the variations of usernames we can make, its the ones we can make and pronounce.
Let's say you really wanted the name imanidiot but it's taken, Would there be a way to suggest similar usernames?
etc? That doesn't happen currently. I just have to guess.
Easy, people will just start using combinations of emoji as their username, and we'll regress to a rosetta stone type language civ. :D
Or, perhaps the code could be modified to get around the current restrictions in username length and complexity? :D Would be a hard fork, wouldn't it? But as suggested in meno's comment, probably not a problem we'll have to deal with
I think people will always come up with unique usernames. If all the usernames are finished, I think it's a good thing for Hive because that would mean we would have attain mass adoption.
This is already happening, lol.
I think the fact that usernames have numbers, letters and two symbols (. and -) provides enough combinations, but maybe we can consider something where display name can be human readable and associated wallets can be anything.
I wonder if this can be achieved:
There could even be a private feature where you don't display the wallet associated with my username.
There's also a possibility that an old account would be sold or gifted to your son. Imagine... you in 30 years, you are "retired" so to speak. You give your keys to your kid. It's got your influence, your sweat and tears... the legacy continues... in a way.
There was a guy here, I'm trying to remember. He sold his account for a whole bitcoin back in 2018. He was done with legacy chain, and wanted out, but had a high rep and such. Funny thing, his account had very little stake.
I'm not going to assume @meno would be valuable, but accounts like @decentralized I'm sure are. What about brand names?
What a good deal! haha
I wanted the "Decentralized" account. Obviously can't have it now. hasn't been active since 2017.
If people start seeing value in accounts like "ethereum" they'll start squatting for sure.
If we had the
Display name
--> Wallet
--> Wallet
--> Wallet
Structure, we'd be able to do it; Even include spaces in the display name.
I mean, my username has a zero, but only because that's how I've always had it :D
Well, I need to check the statistics but i thing that exists a lots of many word human-readable when by each human there are 20-30 words. Empirically i said
Wouldn't it be easier than a hard fork to have a similar name generator added?
Personally I wouldn't like having the display name option because then we could have hundreds of accounts with the same display name. I'd get a headache trying to figure out who is who 😂 Not to mention people could change display names on a whim. I used to hate it when that was allowed on forums, lol. Some people would have a new name every week or two.
hòló
^angry holo owl
orz
^a person from the side on all fours
fffff, someone had already taken the latter username
I just claimed @heyya trying to look for unclaimed usernameas, lol
@alex-rourke, I paid out 11.232 HIVE and 0.000 HBD to reward 6 comments in this discussion thread.
There could be a cost associated with changing display names. Burn 3 HIVE or something like that.
Well yes, but that doesn't mean it's a good user experience. I'm already thinking of having an alt for a particular podcast theme. I think it would be great if they could be tied to me.
We could look into suggesting names when they are not available. If the name Jamesbond is not available, it could make suggested variations:
Something to help find a similar account name.
Lol.
See? You wake up in the middle of the night with the perfect user name only to find it's been taken by an orz who doesn't post.
It could be a problem.
I'm not an owl! I'm not angry either, not yet at least, I haven't been in the created feed yet today, I am procrastinating editing photos.
I think some people have been grabbing accounts with celebrity and brand names to potentially sell. They could easily get lists of these from other platforms. We had an advantage by getting in early. New people may just have to be more imaginative. You really want a name that's memorable. If Hive suddenly grows then it will bring a few challenges.
Well, I don't know how it'll work, but I still think we have options for many usernames because most people here don't even go for conventional usernames
That works :) I'd make it a little higher though, and maybe have it so no two active users had the same one. Personally it would confuse me like crazy if there were two people in the same post chatting with each other and both decided to have the same avatar and display name 😂