Steemit Applications Team Update
Today’s @steemitblog post is brought to you by Steemit’s Applications Team. In this post we will highlight some recent changes we have made to two of our front-end applications: condenser (steemit.com) and the faucet (sign-up system). We will also talk briefly about some of the other changes we have been working on.
The Applications Team
The Applications Team is currently focusing on three areas:
- Front-end products, such as the faucet and condenser
- Backend services, such as Hivemind (Communities) and SBDS
- Development and Operations (DevOps) / systems engineers
Paid Sign-Up Options
We’re doing a lot to improve the sign-up process and mitigate bots on the platform. In addition to that work we now present users with alternative third-party paid sign-up options when they go to create an account. This allows users who aren’t comfortable providing their personal information an easy way to create an account, and provides users who want to get started right away an option to skip the line.
We know it’s wordy, but we wanted to be very clear about why the two options exist and the fact that we are not profiting from the paid sign-up options.
Transfer Confirmation Step
Because token transfers are irreversible, we wanted to help users avoid making erroneous transfers. We've now added a step which displays all the details of the transfer before the user signs the transaction. This additional step should help prevent people from making payment errors. We plan to make the user interface more appealing in the future, but for now it does the job.
Upload Image Buttons
Thanks to a community contribution from GitHub user @voorash, you can now finally change your cover photo or profile images by uploading an image file directly from your hard drive! Simply click “Upload an image” in your Settings page:
Payout Options in Settings
We moved the dropdown for selecting payout options (Decline Payout, 50% SBD / 50% SP, and Power Up 100%) away from the posting interface and into the settings page. This was an “advanced user” option that only created confusion for the majority of users. We also added the ability to select a payout option for comments.
Any users interested in toggling their payout options simply need to select the new setting from their Preferences, and it will immediately take effect for new posts/comments going forward.
New Bandwidth Option
Whenever anyone transacts on the Steem blockchain (posting content, commenting, upvoting, etc.), computational resources are used. “Bandwidth” is the resource that regulates this usage to ensure that we are not making unsustainable demands of the network. During times of heavy usage, or if the user performs too many actions, they can use up all their bandwidth allocation and become unable to transact until their bandwidth recharges. We wanted to give these users an “actionable” that would explain why they are running into the error and help them resolve the issue in order to continue interacting through steemit.com.
Now, when a user is unable to perform a transaction due to a lack of bandwidth, a modal will appear that clearly explains the issue and displays a “Buy Steem Power” option. The Buy Steem Power link takes them to BlockTrades, the only interface through which users can purchase Steem Power directly. This is necessary because a user cannot power up purchased STEEM if they have run out of bandwidth. We are currently researching more ways to improve the user experience relating to bandwidth.
Miscellaneous
Other changes we have been working on include boring (but important) bug fixes, and highly technical changes. Users interested in learning more about these can track our development in the steemit GitHub repositories.
We’ve spent a lot of time strategizing about how to combat bots+spam on the platform, how to continue improving the sign-up process, how to better protect the ecosystem against attacks, and how to improve overall performance. We expect to make a lot of progress on those fronts and look forward to telling you more about our work moving forward.
Thanks for reading.
Steemit Applications Team
Direct buy is fantastic news! Great update
I agree 100% and give you a 100% Upvote in leu of the upvote of this post since its decline payout :D and your comment was like 60 cents so my now 40 cent upvote was perfect for pushing your comment over $1 :D
Oh and LOOk what I made! A THIRD option for the Free Signup and Instant Signup Paid option, I made a THIRD possible Free Instant option with APPLICATION, if you already have an existing social media with good content, followers or a demo reel or a resume,
In my possible third option, I personally do what I already do, which is use around 500 SP to create a few new signups a day, and if a few others joined in a few hundred SP, you could probobly take care of all the 0.1 steem and 14.5 SWP delegation for 1 week needed to help instantly create an sccount using https://steeminvite.com by @pharesim so I volunteer my SP, I have been creating accounts for people and I had to start making people apply to get them for free because too many users just createdn an accouynt posted once or never and it was a waste... So if you just make people apply and ask for a simple proof of value, either proof of existing social media account with valuable content followers, or a demo reel if your an artist or a resume or just an essay or even a video youtube link of you explaining why you feel you deserve an instant steem accoiunt at a time when the blockchain cannot handle giving everyone free acounts, when they are limited, basically what you can offer to make paying the 30 cents plus 14.5 Styeempower delegated for one week which is around $50 worth fo steem, so although that is just for one week, it still costs money to rent that amount of steempoiwer even for a week, and even if its just a few dollars worth , it still costs money, and we do have a paid option, BUT if you are willing to come on board and really work to promote steem I'm willing to use my own steempower to create yoru account and I have been doing this and I only stopped getting requests because I havent put out any fresh offers to do it but I still will help people from time to time with steeminvite I just havent been adevrtising it as a service on instagram and steem posts but I swear there is a demand, and I feel a group for helping people get instant accounts already exist, many of them do, we could poolthat p[ower intoone fuynnel right here at the signup page, I propose we do this to help curate the shiny gems of humanity that we may miss if they don't have money or just don't have any crypto, I believe you can only pay with crypto and many people don't have a way to buy bitcoin very easily so we may miss some nice users who may have money but can't get the btc to pay the steemit account creation fee on blocktrades. Anyway I think an application system, just until HF20, would be nice but don't get me wrong, I am very very happy with current changes
the new system is amazing and I am very very grateful thank you so much steemit application team!
Thanks for the upvote :D
An actual good idea for sure! I'm definitely in favor of helping get bigger actors on the platform as well, if tons of big social personas got on STEEM it could easily explode the price.
What is the instant account creation fee?
No it ain't free. What would be the difference between the two sign ups?
I think that this is a great idea, this way the giants will get into action who doesn't like to wait for ages to sign up.
Something that explains on the list how fast the processes is for each site would be a good idea. This way people can be clear what their option are if they want it now or possibly weeks.
Thank you for your contributions and updates Steemit Applications Team. It would be nice if you could take a precaution to not send users' passwords as posts or comments or memo. Some malicious people follow these posts and comments and hack their accounts. Lately, many of our friends have lost their accounts because of this issue.
Unfortunately, such a thing happened to my friend. This is a very bad situation. I hope nobody lives in this situation again. He even wrote post about himself.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@canburaksimsek/steemit-hesabim-calindi-simdi-ne-yapmaliyim-steemit-my-account-is-stolen-what-am-i-to-do-now
Sorry about your friend's loss,it also happened to my close friend,within seconds his account was emptied(i have read that post and damn...that was so much Steem.)
The suggestion he had is the one i also had in mind,disable any content in comments that starts with "P5...." probably bring a mesaage before a person presses the post button.
There is already a warning when posting with strings that look like WIFs (formatted private keys). I was giving away credentials for a testnet account. Such a change would possibly only require modifying a single string.
I believe the wallet page already prevents that. The main issue is when users put their keys in to external (non trusted) websites.
hey @timcliff. I have a question: do you use this board or is it outdated?
And as a second question, if you have some extra time, how can people run jenkins on steem?
Thanks a lot!
Afaik, that board is still accurate for HF 20.
I do not know how to run jenkins. It is part of the check-in process in GitHub. It is not required to run a steemd node though.
As far as I know, this feature is only on the wallet page, not posts or comments. Yes, as you say, it's very important to keep the keys safe.
Good suggestion. Do you know how to open a community enhancement suggestion in GitHub?
Yes, I know if you can send the required project link I would be very pleased.
https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues
Thanks a lot. I write an issue https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/2786
Ahh thats good to know that the official steemit page already prevents the sending of what it sees as a key in the memo field, that's nice. Well I guess one day we may have some hypothetical 2factor authentication system for steem, or we may have some sort of culture of just never leaving much liquid SBD or Steem in your wallet, so only SP is there, and maybe have a faster account recovery system since Ive had a friend steem4depoor now steemgh loose 180 SP after his 30 days went by after no response from steemit , but yeah stolen accounts and all the phishers is a problem but I feel one dya steemit inc will just start blocking KNOWN phishers and scammers, like people withouta doubt have been phishing, just block them from the front end, block their messages from even being displayed, I feel like that si an easy simpel answer, and I bet it 3wil eventually happen one day :D That way theer will be no more links for users to get phished from OR BETTER yet make it so at least the official steemit front end doenst even allow a known phishing lnk to be posted in their text box maybe?
2factor would work if the transfers occurred through steemit.com. Steemit could add 2f, but since an attacker can always just go directly to the blockchain API and submit the transfers there - there is no way to really enforce it.
No. The blockchain can do 2nd factor. I am developing a wallet for that. You need one or a number of third parties for cosigning that do one time passcodes and special software that can send these partially signed transactions to said parties. The wallet needs to be manipulated by the owner key to weaken the authority 9/10 power and then give 1/10 power to the others. Once set up, The third parties cannot misuse the power because they do not have enough authority. A hacker with your active key cannot misuse without the 2fa.
Interesting. That seems like it would be really beneficial. Good luck with the project!
No. The blockchain can do 2nd factor. I am developing a wallet for that. You need one or a number of third parties for cosigning that do one time passcodes and special software that can send these partially signed transactions to said parties. The account needs to be manipulated by the owner key to weaken the authority 9/10 power and then give 1/10 power to the others. Once set up, The third parties cannot misuse the power because they do not have enough authority. A hacker with your active key cannot misuse without the 2fa.
This is all great news! But let's be honest, we were all kind of hoping some little nugget about SMT's would be dropped.
As far as I understood they're devided in three teams who update us on their specific doings (see list on beginnings of the article). SMTs would belong to the dev team I guess. The changes communicated here were improvements on the front-end side.
Mm. I knew this. Still, I was hoping that some tidbit pertaining to them would get dropped.
that's what i'm talkin' about! what's up with #SMT's!
Thanks for the update! These changes really improve the handling of the interface.
It'd be fantastic to read more about this one here soon:
The save function does not work on https://v2.steemconnect.com/apps/@steemhost.app/edit
Where does one get tech support?
The signup delay has been a big issue. I have many friends who wanted to join Steemit but when they heard that they had to wait for days to weeks before they could have a new account, they became discouraged.
With the new "paid signup" option, everyone will have an opportunity to skip the queue and start earning STEEM right away.
This is good news for all potential Steemians.
I also appreciate the fix on funds transfer, now I can double check where my funds is going to before I tap the send button.
My heart is red for the payment settings introduced in the comment section. I have always dreamt about this. Congratulations to us all.
Theses developments are good for the user experience but i think most users are waiting for more information on SMT's. we really shouldnt be worried about more signups until we can work on Retention of the current users. what is the point of gtting 500 signups a day if 80-90% of those users are deterred by false hopes and a realtivley corrupt system?
Your post is very helpfull. Some cent's for you.
Nice job. Regarding the paid signup, does that mean users can create multiple accounts without the need for phone numbers?
Thanks