Hello, Steemians!
It's been almost 2 years since the original version of AskSteem was launched. At the time it provided a valuable tool for searching through the millions of posts on the STEEM blockchain. To date, AskSteem has served nearly a billion queries via our user-facing front end and our API used by applications like DTube, DLive, and Busy.org.
Unfortunately, due to the current cryptocurrency landscape, AskSteem can no longer sustain itself and on January 1st, 2019 will be discontinued.
Why are we doing this?
Historically, AskSteem has survived the cryptocurrency market's turbulence by keeping several months worth of operating costs in cash reserves (USD). This alleviated the concerns of other cryptocurrency market crashes. However, the long-term downwards trends of cryptocurrency prices over the past year have limited our ability to refill those reserves at the necessary rate. The most recent cryptocurrency crash was, in essence, the straw that broke the camel's back. For the first time since AskSteem's launch, it's cash reserves are not enough to continue running the service.
Supported Clients
In some cases, specific terms for continued support have been negotiated with some AskSteem enterprise customers. For these users, AskSteem (or an alternative service) will continue to work.
Concluding Thoughts
@hoxly, the company behind AskSteem, would like to thank each and every one of our users. We have accomplished some amazing feats over the years such as becoming the default STEEM search option on DuckDuckGo, adding user search, and being integrated with many of the top STEEM apps. We look forward to doing continued work on the STEEM ecosystem even if that work does not include AskSteem.