chainbb.com - going offline

in #chainbb6 years ago

It's a hard decision, but at this point I feel it's the right one to make. As I alluded to in my potential witness roadmap, I'm currently focusing on other needed aspects of the ecosystem and haven't given proper attention to chainbb.com or it's users. This has been a constant source of stress for me, as morally I feel that I can't just ignore problems when they arise with the site.

Today, after running into issues with chainbb's servers and the steemd node powering it, I decided to shut down the site and refund anyone who's actually sent any funds to create/fund a forum.

If you're one of the chainbb users who has created a forum, you'll find a refund transfer for each transfer you made to the @chainbb account with a memo explaining what it was a refund for. These refunds were sent back to the account sent the transfer, or in the case that it was sent from an exchange, sent to the owner of the forum.

All pages on chainbb.com now display a message about the site shutting down, and I'll very likely shut down the servers in the near future (before the next billing cycle).

The code for it's backend is open source as well as the frontend interface. I'd welcome anyone to use it to learn from or build something with it!

To date it's still my favorite way to interact with the Steem blockchain and while I'm sad to see it shut down, this will give me breathing room to move onto other priorities while not feeling a sense of neglect towards a platform that I feel I should be maintaining better. I still believe the chainBB model is a solid concept and may revisit it as some point, but I make no promises. If and when it is revisited, I imagine the next version of it will end up using the tools that I am creating today, which will allow it to do all the things that I wish it could do today.

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I don't use ChainBB, but the tech behind it is awesome. Always amazed how lightning fast it was compared to anything Steem related or most sites on the Internet.

It's sad to have to kill a project you put your heart and soul into.

Don't worry I have a feeling some people will come buy it and resurrect it with some extra stuff ooooh weee I'm so excited thinkin about it man! Ill be on discord if you want to talk about it call me anytime man, it was cool seein you in steemspeak.com discord i see a lot of promise in sooo many dapps for steem its so fuckin cool an I can talk about it for so long I can just make anything that may feel boring look SUPER exciting man I swear! Lol

i would like to bring you witness to my w/(h) ea L/L (t/h) D https://steemit.com/g0fig/@xubrnt/ned-steemit

@jesta you are the man. @chainbb was brilliant and helped me grow drastically in the time I used it. It was much easier to search for specific content than other gateways. Call me a greedy capitalist but I will forever cherish those days when you were auto-upvoting every comment made through chainbb. It motivated me to reach out and comment on other peoples work and it was a big factor in my account growth. I look forward to seeing what else you have in store! Thanks for the refund on the forum category and thank you for providing us with ChainBB (and the source!)

You're very welcome and thanks for the kind words!

@jesta,

Too bad, but I know you have many useful projects to support the steem blockchain.

I have not fork chainbb, I will try to play around and maybe I can continue the service.
What do you recommend for a server specs to run Chainbb?

i would like to bring you witness to my w/(h) ea L/L (t/h) D https://steemit.com/g0fig/@xubrnt/ned-steemit

Naturally, I just started using it. Sorry everyone.

Ah, bummers. I know this was your baby, and you put so much into it. It's certainly sad to see it go, but you do have to set and maintain priorities in order to stay as effective as you have been. You are a productive machine!

I hope someone else sees the value in this technology and takes it upon themselves to run with it. I wasn't personally a big fan of the forum style comment threading (too many lost days in bitcointalk, I guess), but I loved supporting and promoting ChainBB because I believed in the work you were doing and thought it was an excellent example of what's possible with the STEEM blockchain beyond just Steemit.

I'm sad to see it go, but proud of you for making a tough decision.

Yeah, I poured a lot of time and effort last year into it and had some high hopes.

The learning experience alone was worth it in the end, giving this entire situation a net positive from my point of view. Actually building a social interface for Steem has really helped me evaluate what I believe a platform like Steem needs to succeed.

It's indeed a tough decision to make, but I'm pretty sure it was the right one.

I really liked chainbb.com for how it was showing vote history on each post chainbb.com/post_identifier/votes with all the details. I will miss it.
Good luck with work on further projects!

I'll try to adapt that same UI to the next version of steemdb, I really liked it as well.

I was wondering what happened! I got refunded. Thanks for all your hard work on this :(
If anyone wants to take it over let me know as I own steemitforum.com and can set it up there.

I have a team ready to pick up chainBB and I hope all existing sponsors will please contact me on steem.chat or telegram or wire.
I have chatted up jesta but did not hear back yet so far.
I would love to speak with anyone interested in working on it or sponsoring it, or working on new features design, UX, etc.
I can set up QA, tech support and do it right, but i'd like all the input that exists today to start it.
we have it running in docker, but need a lot of hosting consulting, and current user issues priorities list, known problems, etc.

Hi, @surfyogi great to hear actually. Hopefully, we can get some peeps together and make it happen. I haven't heard back from @chhantyal on anything yet. I'll let you know!

Hi, @steemitqa how can I contact you? I sent you message on Discord, I am chhantyal#1365 there.

Yes, just let me know! thx.

Sorry to see it go down @jesta. It was a very nice project, we at zappl can't wait to see what else you have planned.

Good job with it, an awesome front end. Making these decisions is never easy but I always respect people who do it up front. Kept it up 🚀

Damn, it was the best interface to steem for me... I understand your reasons though, and I really appreciate your being so clean and honest: people refunded, project open sourced, you are walking out of it as a sir, hands down.

All the best with your path!

Sorry to see it go. I talked to you about skinning it but then xmas and steemcleaners happened and I never got a chance to sit down and work on that. Chainbb is one of the best frontends the blockchain had, far better than everything came after it.

Sorry to hear this. The forum style seemed rather retro, but you were ahead of Steemit with the potential to onboard communities and share revenue with them. I hope someone with business acumen considers this because it really could be expanded, though I know you are busy with a lot of projects.

Sometimes you gotta hang a hat up to put on a cooler hat. Ya did well!

I think you and the other witnesses should lower the payout threshold to 1 cent from 2 cents. It's frustrating that 1,000+ of my upvotes were worthless. :(

It's sad hearing this but i believe it's for the best.. And i look forward to see any other project you will bring to the community.

Shame. Apart from the forum structure, had some very useful info on voting and the vote button. Nowhere else has that level of breakdown in a useful format.

In another comment, you said you may add those features to steemdb :-)

Best of luck with the current projects.

Well, at least steemstats.com is still running - I use it every day. Thanks for dealing with refunds appropriately.

Im sorry you had to put the project down, seem like it was going to be really good

Thank you for your efforts!

You did a great job with ChainBB while you could @jesta, I was impressed with your leadership. It might have been a little ahead of its time. Good luck with the next one.

Is there already any plugin or solution for other normal forums to use the Steem blockchain for rewards of its users ?
I need a solution that I can rrun on my own domain.
What about the SMT tokens ? any solution now already to put them into a forum like Elkarte.net ot SMF or simular Forums ?
Is anybody offering already a solution for this ?
where can stay informed about this, as I need to restart my forums now and would like to integrate Steem into them.
Many thanks.
Regards, Stefan.

No, there's no plugin you can just add to an existing forum to use the Steem blockchain currently. It'd be a complicated integration, which is why chainBB was it's own forum software and not a plugin for something existing.

Many thanks for the info @jesta

Do you know someone or is here someone reading who could port the new Smart Media Tokens
to the
https://elkarte.net
forum software ?
This I will now going to use, as it is a very nice and better version than simplemachines forum software
that I used before and also has good mobile phone support...
But I really would like to have also an option to upvote postings inside the forum via the steemit blockchain, so my members could be rewarded for their postings...
I am also willing to finance such a plugin... Maybe it would be easier to do the synchronisation only once
per day with the blockchain via a cronjob that collects the internal Elkarte Like button statuses once every day and puts it onto the blockchain...??
Please contact me, if someone is willing to put work into this.
Many thanks in advance.
Regards, Stefan.

Dear @Jesta, I'm sorry you had to make this difficult decision but I honor and respect you for doing what you feel is right. I also am thankful for the refund for https://www.chainbb.com/f/myhuntingfishing and the other forums I had started for our small but growing community @myhuntingfishing. I am sure your work will continue to benefit us all as you re-prioritize. Thanks for being a class act.

I picked up courage to move on in steemit through chainbb. It is so sad to log in now to do my post and read this. Thanks for the time anyway. All the best in your next endeavor.

To bad, @jesta! I have a pretty good idea about how much you put into making it sing. I really hope you don't give up on steemdb which is the only explorer I can interact with without being alienated.

The plan currently is to replace steemdb with a better version of itself :)

I've been working on ways to more efficiently process blockchain data for the last couple weeks. I've hit a few bumps in the road with it, but am talking with the Steemit devs on ways to fix those issues.

It's understandable. You have done a whole lot for the platform and if you need the breathing room, take it.

I'm sure we'll see someone take over and keep chainbb alive.

I didnt use chainbb but i just visited the site and was awsome @jesta i am feeling sad for the reason it has been shutdown. I hope you will reipen in future bcz great things are always take more care and energy to handle.

I also do not use ChainBB, but the technology behind it is amazing. Always amaze how fast that flash is compared to anything related to Steem or most sites on the Internet.

It's sad to kill a project that you put your heart and soul into it.

@jesta
I just logged on to chainbb to do my replies as it's the best platform for me to follow up comments and replies in steemit but I was shocked to find this post. Reading through your reasons makes me understand the immense pressure you on currently on many other projects. I must thank you for using chainbb to touch many lives in steemit through several upvotes of which I and many folks I know benefited. You always my top witness and now in near future you come back strong with chainbb concept or handover to someone you trust.
In anycase, withing you more success

Sometimes making hard decisions is the best thing to do

Thank you for sharing! Links to your post and info about the service going offline were included in the Steem.center wiki pages ChainBB, Steem Ecosystem and Steem Ecosystem: A - L. Thanks and good luck in your new projects again!

Targets are changing over time. I totally understand this. Good that you draw a line and made it public.
All the best for the next project(s).

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It was an interesting project, but I'm kind of glad you have decided to focus your time elsewhere because I look forward to checking out your future projects.

And here I was waiting for an "April fools!" message at the end.

your service was great please do not stop it

Very interesting @ jesta.friend

We will really miss you, but is for good

Sometimes ya gotta do whatcha gotta do...
Thanks for all you are doing.
Will be watching to see if you decide to do chainbb again.
It's a great idea!

  • Have the refunds already been distributed?
    • I don't see anything in my wallet yet...
      I just started a forum last week.

The refunds have finished distribution - you may have looked at the script was still processing :)

Yes, it's there now. Thanks!

Damn. Going to miss it. Thanks for all that you've done, jesta. I'll keep an eye out for whatever is next on your horizon.

thx for putting in the time & effort. the way i c it, u did ur part to better steem. now u can use the experience for something even better!

The really difficult decision that happens in the Forum Xi strange

It's sad to hear this, but I hope to see your new project on steemit soon. Thank you.

Hey @jesta ... I was surprised to suddenly see a refund and came about this announcement. Chainbb is a very unique platform and thanks for sharing it on GitHub . Looking forward to seeing your upcoming projects as I'm sure it would be a great one ! Cheers

Steady your posts, knowledgeable, innovative and I like, thank you for sharing

what? why? I just paid for a bb for my group...

How sad. But i can understand all the stress with this digital slavery. Nice, that you put the code public! Would be cool if it's not down, because the great idea behind. Thank you for your work on this project!

Stay steemed!

Steem is a very distinct blockchain where there are posts and votes. There is value therefore in providing a way to work with these kinds of transactions as you did with chainbb.

On the other hand, a crypto-currency must have some local way to send funds and use the owner and active keys. The idea of putting private keys into a website like we do makes my stomach turn. That is why Vessel is an important project. Of course being a witness should be your core concern. Are you going to keep maintaining Vessel?

I'm planning on releasing a new wallet to replace Vessel with. In the short term, yeah I'll make sure Vessel is still working, but long term it'll eventually it'll be discontinued too.

One of the things I'd like to do is make an easy export from Vessel and into this new wallet process. Try to make the upgrade easy.

Why not join forces with me and make a gui front end for steemboat. I will put it up on github. It uses python so it runs on 32 or 64 bit. It should work on Windows too!

sister please share my post. i see many sisters that vote i want to be like brother

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