How were the first accounts created on Steem?
A public blockchain is like an open history book. One that cannot change.
Well, that's not entirely true, because a fork can be designed to reverse a blockchain to a certain block in its evolution. But that's an exceptional case. And versions of the unforked blockchain would likely still be available to consult if anyone wants to see what was reversed.
I like history. And while human history has often been re-written to suite one party or another, blockchain is impartial and records history as is.
I sometimes dive into the history of the Steem blockchain. That happened here for example.
A few days ago I began having a rather unusual curiosity: which are the very first accounts created on Steem?
...and I hit a roadblock.
That's because the first accounts created on Steem don't seem to have account_create transactions on the blockchain. I checked the first 10000 blocks and there isn't such a transaction, although there are accounts acting as witnesses or miners by then.
@steem only started to create accounts on the blockchain using the known account_create transactions in block 983,986, that's after more than 34 days after Steem started, if I didn't mess up at the arithmetic.
In the meantime my question evolved from:
Which are the very first accounts created on Steem?
to the question in the title:
How were the first accounts created on Steem?
The first question is rather easy to answer if you make a few connections. In the first 100+ accounts there are multiple accounts of the same few people/entities, used for mining, since that was an option then. Still a curiosity would be who are the two accounts before @initminer, which has id #3. :)
For the second question I don't have an answer. Was there a different procedure to create accounts in the early mining days, that didn't involve broadcasting an account_create transaction to create an account?
Anyone knows how those early accounts were created, meaning what is the transaction on the blockchain matching those account creation operations?
Or anything that can help. Like a piece of code... :)
Very interesting. I, too, like reading and learning about history and would also like to know the very first Steem accounts.
Yep, we can lean a lot from history. Including from Steem's.
More so for newcomers on STEEM. It's a little overwhelming to get a good grasp of all the different things that one should be able to understand to navigate the platform and other STEEM Apps.
Yes Steem can be overwhelming at first. But with focus and often with help or with the right resources, one can relatively quickly move past the initial period of "what am I doing here?" questions. And Steem becomes easier to understand, at least on the surface.
I'm taking it one step at a time though. Today, I tried steemmonsters and steemconnect. I had some success with the game but not with steemconnect. Sigh. Still, I'm glad that I find something interesting each day on STEEM. :-)
Steemmonsters might work better with Steem keychain, since they created Steem keychain and keep updating it.
Steemconnect version 3 became more secure, but at the cost of user experience, which dropped significantly.
If I find the time and don't find a proper guide for it, I'll write one, since SteemConnect is widely used and can be difficult when you first start using it.
Thanks for the suggestion @gadrian. I will take a look at Steem keychain.
Wouldn't there be addresses first that could operate on the blockchain and then later people attached accounts to those addresses? I have no clue just a wild guess
No, they seem to use the Steem accounts directly.
For example, my first account entry in steemd is
account_create_with_delegation.For steem account, their first entry is
pow(mining proof-of-work).To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
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Maybe ask @berniesanders? He was there in the earliest of days.
Yes he was! Even before Ned actually. :) I would appreciate as we all probably would, insights from those days.
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Awesome, thanks for this response!
@null makes sense. Does @temp still have a special meaning?
So, to create a new account, the actual operation was vesting? A miner used his rewards to vest to a non-existent username?
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Thanks! That explains the unusual test-like posts on it. Lucky it doesn't have too much STEEM/SP/RCs! :D
By the way, I discovered another account, id #0. That's @miners.
Hi, I'm @temp, AMA :)
Hmm, I'd better make it count, you only have 1 comment left with your RCs.
When moon? :D
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Gotcha! ;)
The account was created automatically if the miner specified in the config file didn't exist yet when it received a mining reward. If you look on steemd, there is a "Mined" field which tells you if the account was mined or not.
In the days of pow mining, it was basically a requirement for a person to have multiple accounts, otherwise you'd be fenced out of mining for hours at a time
Yes, good remark about the mined field. I thought that field meant that the account mined in the early days. It makes sense what you say, that it actually means that it was created through mining.
That sounds interesting. So, there was a config file for every user back then?
Miners had to run their own steemd nodes. Most people did not mine, just like most people now don't run witnesses.
It was sort of a two-step process. Step 1 was to complete a proof-of-work and get added to a queue for a turn to validate a block. Step 2 was for the miner at the top of the queue to witness a block as the 21st witness.
If I recall correctly, it was step 2 when the account got created.
Thank you, this gives us a better understanding on how the mining process worked.
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Thanks @gadrian. This is very interesting. How did a blockchain all begin? This is fascinating. It wasn't a big bang of course 😆 Did the blockchain begin with binary codes of zeros and ones? I will have to google that.
Have a great rest of the week! Barb !BBH !CTP