We have many amazing new artists who have joined HIVE via @nftshowroom to create NFTs, but many of you haven't explored the rest of what the HIVE ecosystem has to offer so this post will serves as a basic guide to the HIVE blockchain and teach you how to use https://peakd.com/ to create a monetized blog and get involved with some of our vibrant art communities!

BASICS: Passwords, Hive/ Hive Power / HBD and RCs

PASSWORDS

When you create a Hive account you are given 5 passwords! This may seem a little confusing but it adds a great deal of flexibility and security for your account.

Most account creation services will give you a .txt file with your keys, make sure to save this and make a secure backup (paper, external hard drive, USB ket etc.)

Here is a breakdown of what each key does:

Posting Key This key is used for social activities (posting, commenting and voting). This key has a limited set of permissions and it is not able to be used for monetary actions. So you can't lose money if someone else gets access to this key.

Active Key This key has additional permissions for more sensitive monetary-related actions, like transferring and exchanging tokens.

Owner Key The owner key is required to change the other keys. This key has additional permissions to recover your account or change your other keys.

Memo Key The only thing the Memo Key can do is encrypt and decrypt private messages that are sent through the blockchain.

Backup (MASTER) This is your seed and is sometimes needed for actions on various interfaces, such as revealing all your keys in the PeakD wallet.

We recommend all users set up the hive keychain extension and import all their keys, that way you can securely log in to most hive based dApps without copying and pasting your keys, also the keychain extension will automatically detect what key/permission is needed and ask your approval before proceeding.

HIVE coins

HIVE coins are the main form of coin on the Hive blockchain. These can be spent, transferred to other accounts, traded for other cryptocurrencies and more.

Hive Power Hive power or HP is a term that means you have powered up or staked your Hive. Powering up locks the tokens in so they are not transferrable. The current staking time is 13 weeks meaning if you want to unstake the tokens you will receive 1/13 of the amount each week for 13 weeks.

HBD is a Hive Based Dollar. HBD coins are meant to always be valued the same as one US Dollar (USD), which is meant to mean that you can store your money in them without fear that their value will crash. The value tends to fluctuate but there are mechanisms in place to attempt to keep this coin close to the 1$ peg.

You can use Hive's built in market to exchange between Hive and HBD quickly.

Resource Credits and staking

Hive is a Proof of Stake PoS blockchain, financial transactions on Hive are FREE! You can send money to any other hive account globally for free, in 3 seconds or less. Pretty awesome!

To prevent spamming of the system users are required to have a small amount of HIVE staked. We usually recommend 10 - 15 for the average user (more if you intend on heavy posting and commenting. Having HIVE powered up into HP allows you a certain amount of free transactions per day which are always regenerating!

To stake on Hive Keychain:

• unlock your keychain extension using your personal password
• click the dropdown arrow next to your HIVE balance
• choose power up

• this will take you to a new screen where you can enter the amount you would like to stake and click power up
• as noted in the above screenshot you can see your RC availability in your keychain extension. If they get too low you may begin to experience errors and failed transactions. In this case you either need to wait for them to regenerate or power up a little more HIVE.

Blogging and Art Communities

Now for the fun part, blogging!

We highly recommend using https://peakd.com/ as it has the most robust and beautiful interface.

On Hive, there is something called a Rewards Pool. This is a pool of tokens that are derived from inflation on the HIVE token.

The Rewards Pool is used to incentivize content creators and content curators to utilize the social aspect of Hive to create, distribute and dig up great content.

In simple terms a portion of HIVE coins are allocated to rewarding content curation through upvotes. Remember above where we discussed Hive Power? Each user who has HP is able to allocate some of these rewards to content creators via voting.

• All payouts occur after 7 days (this is for both blog posts and comments)
• 50% goes back to the curators (the voters)
• This means you can earn both by creating content and by curating content
• Payouts can come in any combination of HIVE, Hive Power or HBD depending on current economics

The PeakD interface

After logging in using hive keychain, we suggest having a browse around the interface, adding a profile and banner image and subscribing to some communities. Communities on Hive are groups that have a similar interest and communities are a fun way of organizing and discovering content.

To post in a community it is best that you subscribe to it first. You can do so by visiting a community page and clicking the subscribe button on the top right. You can browse and search all communities here: https://peakd.com/communities

Since this is a post for artists we will recommend you two art communities:

1 Alien Art Hive: A creative community for all the alien artists and musicians on Hive!

2 Onchainart: OnChainArt is a Community for serious artists.

Making your first post

To make a post, navigate to the upper right pen icon and click create a post
This will open up the post editor. If you subscribed to some communities you can now choose where to post directly from this page:

After choosing a community it will display a button include also in blog. By default any post made to a community will not appear on your main blog page unless you click this button. This is a helpful way to organize your blog or keep topics separate if you so choose.

Add a title, body text and images (drag and drop images under 10 mb directly into the post) and tags. You can add up to ten tags, use descriptive tags to help people find your content! The post editor has a preview window where you can see what your post will look like so you can make adjustments if needed. There are also formatting features at the top if you want to add some flair and make your posts more readable.

Once you are satisfied click publish.

Congrats, you have made your first blog post :) A great way to get to know other artists in the community is by visiting their blogs and commenting, this is a very social blockchain and there are lots of very fun people and projects to explore!

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Visit the site and browse art: https://nftshowroom.com/

You can follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/NftShowroom
or Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nftshowroom/

For any questions or support please visit us in discord NFT Showroom discord