Yesterday, a first account was claimed by @share2steem. Still a long way from allowing people to sign up directly on the website and bringing loads of people from Twitter, Instagram and YouTube, but that's a first step.
I also created an account via @steemhunt (useful for the rest of the story) - sorry for that.
With our current Steem Power, we should be able to claim an account every 3 days, and the process has been automated to maximize the account claiming.
But doing this raised questions:
- How to make sure people creating an account via our website will use it for geniune purposes ? (posting via the app, or more generally just steeming)
- How to delegate to these people ? (as 3 comments every 5 days doesn't seem enough at all, especially for @share2steem)
Thoughts
For this, I would love to have input from anyone who has something to say.
Allow me to cite some people to get some visibility and potential opinions : @steemhunt (who are the firsts to make account creation a reality for anyone), @teamhumble, @aggroed with @steemmonsters, @cardboard, @onepercentbetter, @patrickulrich, @abh12345, @steem-ua and any other app (or dApp) that wants to create accounts (@dlike, @steempress-io, @fundition, @steepshot, @dtube).
How do all of you see account creation by apps ?
The two solutions we are thinking about
1) Verification process : Like @steemhunt, we could do a Phone Verification, but it has its downsides:
- Doesn't work well : had to resend 3 times the PIN to eventually receive it, and I don't know exactly how it works, but it must have a cost. I think something like Instagram would be better : no Phone Verification at sign up but phone verifications in case there's some unusual (botting) activities on the account,
- Is easily circumventable, a lot of services on the web allows receiving codes on various phone numbers from various countries (and all this for free). A system identifying proxies, IPs and such would be much more efficient in terms of detecting fraudulous attempts,
- The system of shared database proposed by @steemhunt is good, but some guarantees for other dApps must be put in place (especially the guarantee that phone numbers aren't stored unencrypted by @steemhunt). Wouldn't like our users to receive unsollicited phone messages after signing up.
But as the account, on the Steem blockchain, once created, becomes instantly the property of the user, making such verifications (like Instagram), is not relevant. So is a phone verification useful for us ? I don't think so. "Normal" people will just create one account, and PV won't stop any fraudster to create multiple accounts.
The main reason (if I understood well) that @steemhunt is using this system, is because of their SMT, as they will put in place Account-Based Voting rather than Stacked-Based Voting when SMTs are implemented. They should then put in place a IP verification / proxy detection system (don't know much about those but a lot of major social networks use them), as the PV on sign-up won't stop fraudulous activities, so it might be a stumbling block for the Account-Based Voting system. But I'm sure they already thought of that and have solutions ready.
This solution "Phone Verification on Sign Up" doesn't seem to work for us. We are not planning any SMT (for now), the system doesn't prevent fraud and the idea of a shared database (even if it's a good one) is for me, unconceivable for sensitive data such as phone numbers.
By the way, does @steemhunt will, in the future, delegate something to the new users (as no SP gives almost no Resource Credits) ? Or are they waiting for the possibility to delegate RCs to implement it ? And until then, just create "unsuable" accounts ?
2) Delegation-based verification process : We need our created accounts to have some Steem Power (15 seems a good number as it allows enough interactions with the blockchain). We will talk about SP delegation here, as RC delegation, even if announced, has no delay attached to it, nor any certainty it will ever be put in place. So let's speak about what is actually possible.
If we choose this solution, we will do as Steem does : maintain the SP at 15 by delegating a new amount each time the user powers up.
This solution allows us to create account only with an email verification, and if the behaviour of the member doesn't seem geniune (unused account, circle voting, vote selling or resteem services) - we don't consider not using our app not geniune as the goal here is to attract people to Steem - we just undelegate. OK that might make us "lose" some claimed accounts, but if the rythm of creation becomes quite fast, it won't cause any problem.
With no SP, really low RCs, the utility of such an account approaches zero so will people create accounts just for the sake of creating accounts ? I doubt it. Seeing the number of pending claimed accounts on the @steemhunt account, it seems that fraudsters understand that. And making them for having followers for resteem services, as these services are utterly useless and no one uses them, the answer is the same.
Does @steemhunt already has any numbers on their created accounts ? How many were created ? How many broadcast something on the blockchain ? Retention rates ? etc...
@steemmonsters is different as the account creation is associated with buying a starter pack, so the account isn't free.
The downside of this is that we will need (maximum) 15 SP multiplied by the number of accounts created, and that might amount to really big numbers... Of course, sponsors would be able to replace us and delegate some Steem Power to their affiliates, alleviating us partly. And if RC delegation becomes a reality, it would eliminate the problem altogether.
So for now, we're thinking on using this second solution for @share2steem account creation system.
So what do you think ? Which solution do you prefer ?
Or maybe something completely different ?
Please tell us as we need to define our account creating strategy before beginning to offer the service.
Share2Steem Halloween challenge results
Yesterday we launched an express challenge for Halloween. We were quite happy to see so many entries !
But now time has come to announce the result. And the winner is......
@janicechua !
She wins a SBI share, which will be validated soon, congratulations !
See you soon for another challenge !
Winner was selected by a random draw between all posts with the #s2sboo tag
Want to delegate ?
Delegators get up to 25% APR !
| 50 SP | 100 SP | 200 SP | 500 SP | 1000 SP | 2000 SP | 5000 SP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Click | Click | Click | Click | Click | Click | Click |
Want to delegate more (or less) ? Just copy and paste the link below, taking care to change the amout of SP you want to delegate at the end of the URL :
https://steemconnect.com/sign/delegateVestingShares?delegator=&delegatee=share2steem&vesting_shares=youramounthere%20SP
Let's go ! See you soon on https://share2steem.com !
