Account & Keys

It is important to understand how security of your blockchain account works.

When you upgrade your Splinterlands account by purchasing the Summoner's Spellbook, a Hive blockchain account/wallet is created for you. This is what enables you to own and transfer Splinterlands assets, but it also allows you to transact in many different ways on the Hive blockchain, which consists of many Dapps and projects outside of Splinterlands (see also Hive Dapps).

Your Account

When you purchase the Summoner's Spellbook upgrade and your Hive account is created, you'll be asked to choose a unique user name. This user name will not only be your in-game name for Splinterlands but the name and address of your Hive blockchain wallet.

Your Keys

Every Hive wallet has multiple keys with varying levels of permissions. Not only are these keys required to interact on chain, but if you lose them, you can permanently lose access to your Hive wallet. Take great care to keep track of all your private keys, specifically keeping multiple offline back-ups.

Each of the 4 keys below (excluding the Master Password) has a public version and a private version. The private version is for your eyes only, while public keys are visible to anyone and publicly identify which key was used for a transaction. Some block explorers like hivehub.dev will tell you which public key signed the transaction.

For more information about Hive keys, visit THIS WIKI.

Posting Key

The posting key is used exclusively for submitting posts, applying upvotes and downvotes, selecting and deselecting followers, muting accounts, and claiming reward balances.

In Splinterlands, transactions such as battles, claiming rewards, and combining cards require only posting permission.

Active Key

The active key is used to confirm token-related transactions or trades or change user settings.

In Splinterlands, the Active key is required for most transactions of monetary value, such as sending assets and making market purchases, as well as transferring cards and using the rental market.

Owner Key

The owner key has the highest permission level. It is required to change all other account keys, and recover an account. This is the key that should be most carefully safeguarded against loss or theft because it can be used to change all of the other keys.

Master Password

The master password is used to derive all of the keys above. Do not use the master password to log into Hive.blog or any other Hive application. Never copy the master password into posts or transaction memos. Whenever possible, use the lowest level key to maintain the security of your account.

You will never be required to use your Master Password within Splinterlands, and it should be kept backed up safely offline at all times.

Memo Key

The Memo Key is used for handling private messages and encrypted transaction memos. This is going to be the least commonly used of all keys.

The memo key is not used within Splinterlands.

Requesting Your Keys

Until you are ready to manage your keys yourself, they will be held safely by Splinterlands. Once you fully understand your key management responsibilities, you can request your keys from Splinterlands. Open the drop-down menu by clicking your username in the top right corner of the site, and click “Account Security”. You can then request your keys from that page.

If you lose your keys, they can be requested again through this method; for security purposes, after requesting keys, there is an option to Delete Keys, so they can no longer be requested. We always recommend users utilize this so no one can gain control of their keys simply through a compromised email login.

Account keys can and should be changed in the event of your email being compromised, but after this change, Splinterlands will not be able to recover your keys.

Once you are in control of your account keys, it is highly recommended to use Hive Keychain (a browser extension and mobile app) to interact with Hive Dapps like Splinterlands.