Cryptocurrencies & Wallets

A cryptocurrency wallet is a device or an app that stores the public and/or private keys of a cryptocurrency account. Each user on Renderhive will have at least one account on the Hedera network, which contains the money in form of tokens earned by or reserved for render jobs. The Renderhive project will leverage the native cryptocurrency of Hedera – the bar – for payments. However, users are free to convert all or parts of their hbars to their local fiat currency (e.g., USD, EUR, etc.) at any time via external services and cryptocurrency exchanges.

Never give your private key to anyone. If you lose this key, you lose your tokens.

Each cryptocurrency wallet/account consists of a public and a private key. The public key is the address of a wallet, which is much like the account number of a conventional bank account. The private key of a wallet is something like a password or a pin, which is required to make transactions from this specific wallet. This private key is stored on your computer alone. Nobody – not even the Renderhive project developers – have access to it or any encrypted form of it. Thus, the Renderhive project cannot help you to restore the key in case your computer is damaged or you loose access to your key. So, always make sure you have a backup / copy of your private key in at least one additional safe place and that you always follow the golden rule of cryptocurrencies:

"Not your keys, not your coins!"

Hedera Accounts

Crypto wallets on Hedera are called accounts. There are several wallet apps which can be used by users to manage their Hedera accounts, the hbars and other tokens in these accounts. With regard to payments on the render hive, the Renderhive Service App will only prepare payment transactions, but never execute them automatically. Instead, it will either directly send them to the user's wallet app or provide a transaction ID for manual signing procedures. The render hive will require the user to have two types of accounts.

User account

Each render hive user will need to create at least one Hedera account externally and connect it to the Renderhive Service App and the Renderhive Smart Contract. This connected user account will be the only Hedera account accepted for deposits or withdrawals of the user's funds by the Renderhive Smart Contract. This ensures that only the owner of this user account can deposit or withdraw funds. Each connected user account will be associated with the user's unique identification number and the user's node accounts.

The Renderhive software components will never see or ask for the private key of the connected user account. That way, user funds will remain under the user's control only.

Node Accounts

The Renderhive Service App that locally runs on each node will have fundamental features of a cryptocurrency wallet to enable the required, automated network communication (e.g., render job distribution and job execution). For this purpose, the app will create a node account for each node and store the private key of this account in an encrypted keystore file on the node. During runtime, the app will use this account to sign all transactions (except transactions to deposit or withdraw user funds). The node account will be associated with the unique node ID of a node on the render hive and also to the owner's user ID.

Each node account will have to be authorized by the user's main account manually by calling a registration function of the Renderhive Smart Contract. That way, a user may run several separate nodes under the same user ID and organize all fund deposits and withdrawals with a single main account.

The node account will also be used to pay for Hedera's network fees during the operation of the node. Consequently, the node operator will need to take care that the node account always holds enough hbars.