To make the most common operations on the Steem blockchain, like posting, commenting, voting, following or resteeming, you need resource credits.
When you create a new account on Steem, you receive a minimum of resource credits (RC) with your account, even if you don't have any STEEM powered up, because you (or somebody else) paid something for your account. But those RCs are definitely insufficient for most use cases, plus, there are two major problems that affect the onboarding process:
- not many people are willing to pay for an account on a new platform they know little about, even if they receive good references about it
- there are and never will be enough 'free' accounts claimed, and it's still not possible to put them together to onboard bigger communities at once
A light Steem account would resolve some issues.
It would be an account on the Steem blockchain, that only allows transactions with STEEM (and SBD), and nothing else. No votes, no comments, no posts, no witness votes, not even a username yet? Hmm, I don't know about the username, it's easy to make transactions when you can remember a username.
I don't think the light Steem account can be designed without a minimum RCs requirement, otherwise two light accounts could send back and forth 0.001 STEEM between them forever in a loop, since Steem is fee-less.
I think that's why the introduction of the light accounts, if that will (hopefully) be considered, will be empowered if at the same time delegations to and from RC pools would be possible.
Here are two posts I read recently supporting light accounts (see their comments too):
https://steempeak.com/exyle/@exyle/short-idea-pitch-light-accounts-for-the-steem-blockchain-creating-a-better-onboarding-process
https://steempeak.com/steem/@theycallmedan/the-steem-light-account
Tomorrow @jongolson re-launches his website. About 200k members, both actives and inactives. Onboarding to Steem is one of the things he's wondering how will it go. Would free instant onboarding improve the rate of people coming over from his website right away? For sure. But we don't have that.
A few months ago I had the idea that bigger Dapps create a pool of usernames to use as 'guests' by people without a Steem account. I believe this is now possible on some Dapps from what I read, which would be great.
But a light Steem account would be a step forward in adopting STEEM as a cryptocurrency, and maybe put some buy pressure as well on it.
The two ideas can actually be used together and they are complementary. A light and free Steem account for immediate STEEM transactions, guest accounts to allow engagement within communities. How does that sound?