Hello Steemians!.
Its been a while I used this salutation. I felt the need to use it today again. It gives me the sense that I'm conversing with everyone directly. This helps me to create my blogs with you as my audience in mind.
Three weeks ago, I decided to begin a series I titled "STEEM TREK (My journey on Steem)".
The aim of the series was to recount my experience on the steem blockchain, across several apps or dApps. I opted to discuss the ones that are open source. Most of the steem based projects, I actually use are open source.
So far, I have published three (3) articles in the series.
I began the series by discussing Steemit. The pioneer dApp on Steem blockchain.
In that article, I discussed four (4) points about the project. The points are;
- What is steemit?
- Steemit misconceptions
- Steemit features
- Steemit benefits(My opinion)
The next article I published in the series was about STEEMGIGS. This is a project I'm so keen about.
The project has a direct link to my daily activities and that's why I'm interested in it.
In my publication about Steemgigs, I had some great talking points. The talking points in that article are;
- What is Steemgigs?
- A general overview of the concept of Steemgigs
- How the platform works
- A very brief review of some of its features
- Suggestions & where improvements can be made.
After Steemgigs, I moved on to talking about another cool project, DTRIP. This year, I began having fantasies of traveling around the world with my spouse. This made the Dtrip platform all so important to me.
There were few talking points in that article. They are;
- What is Dtrip
- Features of Dtrip platform
- Why traveling is fun, and why I want to engage.
So far, these are the three projects I have discussed in this series. Links to those publications will be available in the links section below.
Today, in this article, I will be talking about a new project I just discovered. This project wasn't listed in my original list of project's to talk about in this series.
The project isn't ideally the type of project I planned to discuss in this series anyway. But, since this series is all about sharing my thoughts and experience about steem based apps, I decided to include this article in this series.
The project I will be talking about in this article is STEEM WALLET.
Almost every steem based app has a wallet in it. So what's special about this one?
The answers to this question, you will find in this article.
These are the talking points in this article;
- What is Steem wallet?
- Features of Steem wallet app.
- Why the app is amazing. (First Impressions)
- Benefits
- Summary.
I will cover as much as is possible about the project, within these talking points.
STEEM WALLET: Fast, secure and open source wallet for the Steem blockchain.
One of the components that comes with a blockchain is a wallet. This means that having an account on the steem blockchain, means you have a steem wallet. To access your wallet, you have to use an app that can access Steem front-end. There are a lot of those apps today, and more are still under development. But, the most common dapp is Steemit.
I don't know how else people conduct their transactions. But for me, Steemit has always been my goto app when I want to use my steem wallet.
A few days ago, I got wind of an app that lets users access their steem wallet and do other things with it.
What is Steem wallet?
Steem wallet is a fast, secure, and open source wallet for the steem blockchain.
That is how the project owner describes it.
According to the project owner (@roelandp) in his annoucement post, the app was launched 4 months ago. I didn't get to know about the app until this update, which the project owner recently announced.
The app simply lets users perform wallet transactions. Either to transfer Steem, or SBD, or receive them.
That is not the only feature of the app though. The app still does other things. You will out in the review of the app's features.
Features of Steem wallet app.
The features of the app are not so much at the moment. I didn't expect the app to pack a lot of features though. In my opinion, the app's features suit its operations perfectly.
In this section, I will be reviewing all the app's features that I can. The first feature I will be reviewing is the app's user interface (UI).
Steem wallet's User Interface.
The User Interface is the first feature I always love to talk about when reviewing an app. I've stated my reasons so many times, so I won't be talking about that.
Steem wallet's interface is sleek. I first saw a sample of the UI on the project owner's announcement post. To be honest, the UI sample was what drew my attention to the article and then the app.
After I read the article by the project owner, I immediately downloaded the app without any delay.
The user interface was exactly the way it was shown on the post. The only difference was that my device doesn't have a notch. That's a hardware thing though.
The user interface is just perfect. This might sound creepy, but after I downloaded the app, I sometimes launch it just to stare at the interface.
The project owner also decided to bless users with theme choices.
There are four themes you could choose from. They are;
- Light
- Dark
- Navyred
- Yungpink (weird name for a theme though)
By default, the app uses the light theme. But, I'm currently rocking the navyred theme. My preferred theme would have been "dark", but I didn't really like it. It's cool but, it wasn't dark enough for me. I was expecting a clean black screen with shiny white texts. The dark theme is somewhat grey.
Here is screenshot of how the app looks with the different themes.
Another thing I liked about the UI was how my profile avatar was displayed. I think part of the coolness had to do with my cool avatar. emoji smile.
Overall, the user interface of the app is great. Thumbs up to the developer.
Steem wallet's functionalities.
These are the things you can do with this app.
Send & receive Steem or SBD.
This is the basic function of the app. It would be pointless to call it a steem wallet if all it did was display user's funds. To perform any of these transactions, you'd have to import your private key. Either by typing it manually or scanning the key's barcode.
To be honest, I was quite skeptical about the fact that the security protocol to perform a transaction wasn't steemconnect. Inasmuch as I have paraded myself as someone who's not overly conscious about the security of my keys, I was this time.
But, after having a group conversation with different versions of myself, in my head, I succumbed.
I scanned the barcode of my private key and I was able to perform a transaction. That is after inputting my passphrase.
One-click account creation.
To have a steem wallet, you need a steem account. The most common dApp people use in creating a steem account is Steemit. But, there are a lot of steem account creation tools. Steem wallet is now the latest member to join that group of tools.
Steem wallet offers fast account creation. But it's not free. You will have to pay for it. I see no problem in that. Considering the fact that free account creation takes time to be approved.
I think this feature will mostly benefit people who seek to have steem tokens but don't want to interact. They can simply create an account and perform trade transactions with it. Either to buy from a user or sell to another user. They don't have to be part of any community on the blockchain.
Aside from that, there are people that just like to have multiple accounts. Either for good or bad intentions. But, I can't really judge that.
When converted to my local currency, the cost of creating an account is #1,200. This is barely $4. So it's not expensive at all.
Multiple accounts.
Do you know you can become a CIA agent with this app? Just teasing!
This app lets you add up several accounts you wish to track. So if you have more than one steem account you can keep track of your wallets. The reason I said you could be a CIA agent with the app is that you can also add and track accounts you don't own.
Multi-currency counter value switcher.
You can decide to check the value of your funds in other currencies. By default, the currency conversion of SBD or Steem is USD(US Dollars). But in this app, you can view the equivalent in your preferred currency. Currently, there are 40+ currencies you could switch to.
The feature is cool but, I didn't see my country's local currency. Quite saddening. I hope the project owner includes it soon.
These are the major features of the app, or the features I'm concerned about.
There are other functions like API-node switcher. The project owner says there are other translations of the app too.
First Impressions.
I won't say much in this section. But, I would love to say that I was greatly impressed with the app.
The User Interface was the first thing I was impressed about. The interface is smooth and sleek. The themes are cool too. I hope the project owner works on delivering a better dark theme though.
Furthermore, I was impressed by the functions of the app. Everything about the app was carefully thought out and executed.
The app is multi-platform. It has an Android version and iOS version which is great. iOS wouldn't feel left out of this great app.
I also loved the fact that I could also see recent transactions history.
The app is perfect. But, being an Oliver Twist, maybe more could be done too. I'd ideally love for these features to be added to the app.
The features are;
- Power up/down
- Steem power information
- Delegation
- Steemconnect security protocol.
I think the app would be more perfect if these other features are added.
Benefits
The benefit of this app that is peculiar to me is;
Speed
With this app, performing transactions would be easier for me. Before I downloaded this app, I perform transactions with steemit. Using Steemit had no issues, but, you'll attest that with this app it would be faster.
Apps tend to thrive more when there is a poor internet connection. This, I think, is a benefit of the app to me.
Summary.
In this article, I've been able to review the steem wallet app. Furthermore, all my talking points were touched.
From my review, you can tell that the app is really amazing.
The app has some minor let downs in my opinion but I'm sure the project owner will attend to them soon.
Download the app, and see for yourself how amazing it is.
You can share your own thoughts or reviews of the app in the comments section.
To learn more about how the app works, more information is contained in this post
Thanks for reading.
Links
- Project repository: https://github.com/roelandp/steemwallet
- Project link: https://steemwallet.app/
- App download link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=app.steemwallet.roelandp
Resources:
The images used in this article are screenshots from my PC or mobile phone. Other images used, are properly sourced.
Series backlinks:
- Steem Trek. (My Journey on Steem).
- Steem Trek (My Journey on Steem) Part 2.
- Steem Trek (My Journey on Steem) Part 3.