BLURT is back. I just accessed the chain through blurtter.com. The screen shot shows a post from this account.
My last post ( Blurt Went Poof ) was about my feelings on seeing the blurt platform go down for several days. The blockchain simply disappeared and all of the sites with a dependency on the blockchain showed errors.
I burned several hours sifting through all of the blurt resources that I could find hoping to discover what was going on with the platform. The platform failed to inform people about what was going on.
BLURT has an interesting twist. Every transaction costs money. The Blurt Explorer shows all transactions and their costs. This page shows my transactions .
Writing a post cost me 0.666 BLURT. Writing a comment cost 0.118 BLURT. Casting an upvote cost 0.025.
Because every action has a cost, one needs to think more about the return for each action. Charging for using the blockchain has the immediate benefit of reducing spam. This should improve the quality of the content.
Since I rarely get upvotes for my posts, I noticed that my account was going down in value. The poor interaction that I have with my account doesn't stop me on HIVE. I will just say what I want when I want.
But the fact that I have to pay for my interactions on Blurt makes me think.
So, it costs 0.025 to upvote on BLURT. Well, this tells me that I need to have enough BLURT in my wallet so that my upvote is worth more than 0.025 before I vote.
Now, I would like to jump into rant mode. BLURT does not have an upvote calculator.
BLURT, Hive and SteemIt all fail in that they do not give users the information that they need to know to use the services.
So, I had 250 BLURT in my account. I burned up 50 BLURT trying to figure out what my upvote was worth.
I looked at other accounts and tried figuring it out. but couldn't.
I then decided to buy BLURT through Steem-Engine.net.
Anyway, I bought BLURT on Steem-Engine. The site does not give any information on how to send BLURT from Steem-Engine to the blurt wallet. I found a post indicating that the swap account was @blurtcoin. I sent my BLURT to @blurtcoin and it disappeared.
Steem-Engine is a dying platform. So, I guess the swap service doesn't work on STEEM. That is fine. STEEM is not kind to people offering swap services. Ask @blocktrades about their experience.
So, I bought 1000 BLURT on hive-engine and transferred it to @blurtlink. This worked. I got 990 BLURT in my account.
My BLURT wallet says I now have 1200 BLURT.
Unfortunately, the value of my upvote is still worth 0.000 and I am still in the dark as to how much BLURT I need to buy to have a positive vote. This shows the result of my last attempt to upvote on the platform:
I bought another 1000 BLURT. I sent it to BLURT just as the blockchain was failing. That 1000 BLURT disappeared. I am now out of money.
I am not upset that they charge for accessing the blockchain.
I think that charging a fee for each transaction is extremely interesting. But if the platform charges people, the platform must give people information on what they are getting for their money.
In the case of upvotes, people need to know the amount of BLURT they need to have in their wallet so that the upvote is worth more than the cost of the upvote. Without an upvote calculator, I can't figure this out.
The idea of charging people for their transactions is intriguing. It forces BLURTers to think about their interaction on the blockchain.
In conclusion. I am happy that BLURT is back online. The fact that blurt charges users for accessing the blockchain is quite intriguing. This might overcome the problem on HIVE that most HIVE users never buy HIVE.
Unfortunately, the site needs better documentation to convey this information.