Today I'm proud to announce the release of chainBB v0.3, which encompasses many familiar and new social features. This post will go through these features one by one, outlining the changes and describing some of the rationale behind them. But first, since every post seems to require answering the question:
What is chainBB?
chainBB is a discussion forum style interface on the Steem blockchain. It's a completely standalone alternative to steemit.com, and built by me, @jesta. It uses many of the same mechanics that steemit.com uses, but presents the information in a much different way. All posts on the Steem blockchain are available via chainBB, just as they are on steemit.com.
The beta is available here:
Want more information? Here's a few posts to get you started:
- chainBB - Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- chainBB.com - a blockchain forum platform for Steem (by @jesta)
- ChainBB - A Review of what may become way bigger than steemit.com (by @cryptoctopus)
- Diversifying My Steemit Experience: In Over My Head With Awesome ChainBB (by @prufarchy)
v0.3.0 Change Log
This update includes the following new features, improvements and bug fixes:
- You can now follow/unfollow users from their account page or the tooltip that appears when hovering over their name.
- A navigation has been added to the sidebar of the forums containing links to different forum areas, your account feed, any replies you've received and any forums you've subscribed to.
- A new "All Forums" page has been added that lists every forum in alphabetical order.
- The "Activity Feed" is now available to logged in users, which shows new posts by the users you are following (just like steemit.com).
- If logged in, a "Post Replies" menu item will be available on the side bar. This new page loads replies to any post you've written in chronological order. You can read/vote/reply directly from this interface.
- You can now subscribe to forums, which will add it to the left-sidebar menu for quick access. This feature will be expanded upon in the future.
- Every forum now has a blue button in the upper right that lets you subscribe (or unsubscribe) from it.
- The "Out of Sync" message that occasionally appears on the top of the page is now a lot more accurate and doesn't jump around in numbers.
- Each user's account page now also displays any replies they've received.
- A bug that would cause the cursor to jump around in the editor while you're typing as been resolved (YAY).
- A bug that caused adjusting voting power to not update has been resolved.
A full list of changes can be viewed on github.
- Please report bugs here: chainBB Bugs Forum
- Please submit feedback here: chainBB Suggestion Forum
v0.3.0 Feature Walkthrough
New Forum Headers + Sidebar Menu (UI Change)
The main page headers are all a lot more defined and the left sidebar is finally in place and functional.
The sidebar contains links to the following sections:
Navigation
- Forum Index: The homepage you've grown used to on chainBB.
- All Forums: An alphabetical list of every forum indexed by chainBB.
- Activity Feed (if logged in): The activity of the accounts you follow, which should be identical to steemit.com's follow feed.
- Post Replies (if logged in): A chronological list of everyone that has replied to one of your posts.
Forum Subscriptions
Below the navigation is a new "Forum Subscriptions" area. This isn't the final home for it, but is where it ended up for v0.3. Any forum you subscribe to will be displayed here, in the order you subscribed. More information on this below in the "Forum Subscriptions" section.
All Forums (New Page)
This new page lists off every forum that chainBB indexes alphabetically, while the Forum Index (homepage) will remain a categorized/curated list.
With this new page I can stop worrying about "where a forum belongs" and just create new forums when asked. If you've got a request for a forum, let me know! I'll try to go back through a lot of the other requests, but feel free to remind me. It's been hard to keep up with all the requests (and hopefully in one of the next versions I'll have a system in place for it).
In a future version, you'll be able to Subscribe/unsubscribe from any forum from this page.
Activity Feed (New Page)
If you're logged in, this page should be a somewhat similar sight, except now it looks more like a forum :)
This page mirrors what you'd find on your homepage of steemit.com and is a collection of all the content created/resteemed by the people you follow.
The icon in the left-most column indicates whether this was resteemed or not, and if you hover over it, it will show you who resteemed it and why it's on your list.
Post Replies (New Page)
One of the last reasons I was personally using steemit.com was to make sure I noticed everyone who had replied to one of my posts. No more though, as this "Post Replies" page now mirrors that same functionality. This page will list every reply written to a post you created.
Each individual reply has a header (with the blue line above it) showing you who replied and what thread it was, as well as a button to jump directly back into the thread. The content of the reply is displayed, as well as a quote of what you said that they were replying to.
You can vote or reply directly from this interface if you choose to do so as well!
Forum Subscriptions (New Feature)
In the upper-right of each forum there's a new button: Subscribe.
This feature currently acts like a bookmark/favorite and will be expanded upon in future versions. If you click the Subscribe button, it will add a link to that forum into the left-sidebar, making it incredibly easy to revisit it.
Here's how the page changes once clicked:
The button is now orange and is an "Unsubscribe", and the "General Discussion" forum is now linked in the left sidebar for easy access.
If you were to subscribe to another forum, it would be placed below it like so:
Note: This feature currently saves all the subscriptions to your computer, so if you login on a different machine, your subscriptions will not carry over. The subscriptions themselves will be ported to a blockchain operation at some point to allow for mobility.
Replies tab, Network Status, and Follow/Unfollow while viewing an account.
This screenshot shows off three different things:
Following
You can now follow/unfollow a user from their account page, if you're logged in. The button is right below their username in the left hand column and will update based on your current relationship to that account.
The Replies Tab
Every user's account page now displays "Replies", which is just like "Post Replies" (for you), except for their account. This tab shows the people who have replied to the account you are currently viewing.
Network Status Message
The message at the top of the screen will now better reflect the status of chainBB (and how out of sync it is, if at all). The old version of this code didn't always display, and would jump around in terms of status (counting down from 1k -> 0, then jumping back to 500). It now displays the true distance it is from being completely caught up with the current data on the blockchain.
Follow/Unfollow from user Tooltips
Ever hovered over someone's account name and seen the tooltip popup that appears? It was kind of useless before, but now you can follow or unfollow someone directly from it! This tooltip will gain additional functionality as more features start coming online.
What's next?
chainBB Development
To finish off this week, and all of next week, I'm moving into bug fixing mode. I figure with the upcoming holiday weekend here in the US, I shouldn't push things too hard. No new features will be developed during this time and I'll be trying to participate a bit more on them forums themselves. I'll also be trying to engage and collect feedback from pretty much anyone willing to provide it.
During this time, I'll also be evaluating what comes next feature-wise and working out some of the more business aspects of chainBB. I feel the site itself is almost at a point where I'd consider it useful.
The short list of features includes:
- Giving users the ability to create their own forums.
- Adding support for custom domains aliases (for the custom forums).
- Modifying the beneficiaries system to allocate portions of rewards to those who run their own forums.
chainBB Curation Trail (continues)
I started a curation trail about a week ago, and after a little tweaking, it seems to be working well and maintaining my voting power. I have a bot that votes on most posts that are created using chainBB, with a few anti-abuse parameters sprinkled in there. I've increased my vote weight to 0.1% from 0.05% for this trail, and to be included, all you've gotta do is use the site to write some posts!
I've also been trying to cast some larger upvotes for the posts providing meaningful feedback and unique/new ideas.
chainBB Infrastructure
As I was writing this post, the steemd blockchain server behind chainBB stopped running. So I had to stop and go get it started again. If you've used chainBB in the last few hours, you might notice it fell roughly 3 hours behind the blockchain. This is why, it stopped working :(
Luckily the new status message at the top lets you keep track of how far behind it is!
I need to spend a couple days setting up another server and rebalancing resources. The growth of the Steem blockchain over the past weeks has been insane and hardware is quickly becoming obsolete. I'm going to have to add more servers to prevent this sort of things from happening again.
non-chainBB, more jesta
Besides chainBB work, I also plan on taking a long weekend or two. I've been going pretty hard on my projects, almost non-stop (7-days a week), for the last 2 months. I need a breather! So July is likely to be a quiet month with not as many massive updates.
Putting aside how intense the last 2 months have been - it's been the most fun I've had with Steem over the course of the last year. So many of you have taken a look at what I've been building, providing feedback, telling me what you love and what you hate, and engaging in such a positive manner. I appreciate that, thank you.
I wonder why not much developer follow your example. Steem could fund their work too, they no longer need to work on boss. Just write code and put updates regularly.
I wonder that sometimes too. With so few other developers right now, it makes me question whether or not I'm crazy. I just can't understand why there aren't more :)
I might want to try this actually, I have many ideas...
Wow, this is really great @jesta thanks for sharing. UpVoted and followed.
You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand.
Great work @jesta . Keep it up
Hey check out my post Virus 666 that can kill you click here
5 strategies for success - the art of war click here
I logged in on ChainBB, but no content loads, there's just the spinning circle. =(
Should be all fixed now - sorry it took so long!
I can confirm it is work. Looking good, off to give it a spin. =)
Ah... thought you might be working on it. ;-)
Pretty cool!
Thank you for sharing the project of updating chainbb.I think chainbb is a good social platform for each other to share their own opinion and have some discussions.It helps to promote the post of steemit.I hope to see that there are more latest version to strengthen the function of chainbb.T
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by Eric from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
Thanks for sharing!
Whether the Chain application on the Steam blockchain can be used by all registered distemem @jesta. If i use this app, is there any influence of our follower, as i new disteem, so very less will knowledge about such problem, thanks for sharing @jesta
This seems like a very exciting project. I love the concept and the fact its powered by Steem!
Thanks for putting in the hard work to code this. I'm thinking your interface may be preferable for me. Cheers!
I am using Chainbb since 20 days . Its working ok for writing only upload images is not working then I upload my images from Esteem application.
But overall it's user friendly.
Amazing, genius, brilliant @jesta
Thanks for this, a useful tool for social media interactions among other things that it can be used for.
Great post @jesta
I absolutely love the user interface on ChainBB. Very clean and professional. As far as beta software goes, you should be INSANELY proud, as I am yet to come across a single bug that stops me from using it!
Hats off to you sir, and thank you so much!
Sub-forums look very neat. Great work.
Going there right now to subscribe to the basketball forum. Thanks!
I'm getting an invalid account name error.
Hrm, what are you putting in as the account name? Did you try putting an @ in front of it or something? That may cause an error. I should probably validate and allow for that if that's what was happening.
Wow I love this idea:
"The short list of features includes:
Giving users the ability to create their own forums."
Yes please!
That's quite an interesting and detailed overview of the chainBB forum. I have not yet tried out but yes, you're article has convinced me to check chainBB out next time I log into steemit via PC/Laptop. First thing tomorrow morning, I'm using the #eSteem right now to post this comment from bed!
The new bersion and I am still trying to figure out chainbb forum. There is so much to browse and I will get all functions understanding one day.
This comment has received a 0.19 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @cryptokraze.
Wow, this is cool! I'm particularly interested in the forum subscriptions since it's more difficult to keep up with non-trending topics of interest on Steemit. I'm going to keep up with this. So far, I would prefer this over Steemit's current interface to be honest. nice work!
Well done post You deserve for getting Upvote from me. I appreciate on it and like it so much . Waiting for your latest post. Keep your good work and steeming on. Let's walk to my blog. I have a latest post. Your upvote is high motivation for me. Almost all Steemians do their best on this site. Keep steeming and earning.
This comment has received a 0.05 % upvote from @booster thanks to: @hamzaoui.
thanks chainbb, @jesta, you're awesome! :-)
This is all amazing!
And when these hit you will be a god among men! (Assuming you're not already... perhaps just a demigod right now...)
They'll be critical features for adoption, that's for sure! Excited to get started on them, I just want to make sure the forum experience itself is alright before we balloon out too much further :)
ooooo, wish I was smart enough to run a forum, lol
chainbb sounds SICk.. will check it out.. thx..
I'm so ready to setup forums on this platform I can't even contain my excitement! It'll be the perfect way to my 40k person libertarian community engaged on this platform in an organized way. Seriously can't wait for it to be ready!
Would be cool if there was a way to sort by replys or posts or even latest replies.
chainbb would be great again!
was so glad to be able to follow from chainbb and not have to go back to Steemit to do so.
Damn, you're really doing some great work here @jesta. I'm a developer as well but haven't really dived deep into Steemdev forums yet. Hopefully soon!
It's a deep, deep rabbit hole once you dive in. I've been at it for about a year now and I'm still learning new things :)
Has the curation trail stopped working since last few hours? It looks like even if I am posting genuine comments, it is not curating my comments.
It had stopped, I restarted it again. There have been a lot of disconnection/latency issues with the API's the bot uses today.
Yeah, it looks like there are quite a few issues regarding APIs which is preventing the system to work fully as expected. Definitely this is still in beta version so we can't hope to work exactly as per our expectation. But you are really building this great interface which will be helpful to many people!
Oh... In above comment it worked. Looks like you have made the abuse filtering stringent by validating comment length ;-)
I suppose you may remove the 5 minutes limit now :D coz if we are going to write longer comment then it is obviously going to keep check on abusers :-)
Keep up the good work @jesta. Loving to use your chainbb.
My biggest beef with SteemIt, right now, is that it's visually boring and needs to have some features built-in to make it easier to search out an authors' original content vs. their Re-Steems.
I have heard of & seen mentions of ChainBB around SteemIt, several times. This post right here makes me really want to check it out, because it may have some features that SteemIt doesn't. We will see... I'll have to write a blog about my ChainBB experience and first impressions.
And, thanks for all of your hard work, in advance.
This is now so much easier to navigate just using chainBB.
Many Thanks!
YAY! I think busy.org has this bug too, last time I checked. I thought maybe it was a Chrome extension or something.
Yesss!
This is what we've all been waiting for! Getting forum subscriptions on the blockchain will be nice, but localStorage is definitely good enough to try it out.
Excellent work. I love the UI. Now that the feature set is more complete, I'm definitely going to be using it more.
The jumpy post thing is happening still occasionally - seeing if I can track it down right now. It looks like it's happening at the same time it's querying the account for rewards, so hopefully I'll have it completely solved soon. At least it's only happening about once a minute right now (the rate it updates the account), haha.
wow... with all these new features, i guess the lag of steemd earlier is more than made up for... hehe...
keep on doing God's work @jesta!
The "Activity Feed" and "Pots Replies" might just get me a good bit closer to using chainBB full-time
Wow, @jesta, this is fabulous. Thank you for putting so much work into creating a great interface for us.
Nice project. I am going to try it.
I have some questions if you don't mind:
1- How are you funding this? And how are you planning to make money out of this? In short: what is your business model?
2 - How are you going to guarantee the security of the users' accounts and keys? I mean, we will be using our user and private key to login. How do we know they are safe?
Update: I have just read the FAQ and found the answers to some of my questions. They are in summary:
1- Funding: not mentioned.
Making money: the ChainBB will take 15% of the rewards of every post created on it!
That is too much for me! Anything more than 5% is a deal breaker
2- No guarantee of safety is mentioned. You need to trust them. But the good thing is that they only require your Posting Private key. This key is only used for posting actions. It can not be used for wallet actions. Moreover, they do NOT store the key. It is stored on your browser cache.
5% wouldn't be enough to pay my cost of living, let alone an entire team to really push this project forward. 10% is the number I am aiming for, which could cover me and probably a few part time contractors. I went up 5% more to 15% in advance so I had 5% wiggle room and some space to allocate funds to community owners without having to hike the rate in the future.
If I had a mountain of cash like steemit.com had, I wouldn't be using this feature at all. Unfortunately though, I don't have a ton of money, just some time and skills to try and make this happen. I know I already responded to your other post, but figured I'd leave a couple more thoughts here.
Thank you for the extra clarification.
How did you decide that 5% is too low? How many articles do you expect to be written on your platform? It is not the percentage only that matters. Volume is much more important.
I think if you lower the %, you will get a much higher volume and your income will be much more.
My 2 cents, wishing you the best of luck.
You're absolutely right, the volume is what matters the most.
Here's some assumptions and goals I based the calculations on:
So if we say 10% of daily rewards (
50k * 10% = ~5k/day/value) is what the users are generating via chainBB, and 10% of that value goes to chainBB via beneficiaries, that's around5k * 10% = ~500/day/valuethat chainBB can generate. 500/day is roughly 182k/year in earnings, which is enough for:Looking at 5% in this equation, you can basically cut it all in half. So 5% rewards @ 10% of network traffic would be ~90k/year, which would include a pretty low developer salary after hosting costs and some contract work are removed.
All of this thought was pre-hf19 (when distribution was stable) and assuming STEEM is approximately $1.5. Currently after HF19 the rewards pool is unstable and I'm waiting for it to become stable before I rework the math - it's fluctuating pretty wildly right now.
Your calculations are reasonable. But you should take some factors into consideration:
1 - Steem is expanding daily and the number of users and posts is booming and expected to continue like that.
2 - After hf19, the rewards has increased dramatically.
Best of luck.
Both are true currently, but not guarantee's for the future.
Thanks for engaging me on these topics - they're important discussions and I really appreciate the thought you're putting forth towards this!
clear on that wish he gets it and work true
Thanks, and I don't mind at all. I've answered a few of these things already in other posts - but it's so hard to keep on top of things the information just needs to be repeated :)
posting keysfor chainBB, which have no access to anything critical on your account (aka funds). In the scenario where someone does compromise chainBB somehow and manages to get the key from your browser, the worst case scenario is they can post and vote as you now.Hope that covers your questions well!
Yes it does.
Thank you, and I hope you the best of luck.
Just excellent. I am definitely trying it out and you will get loads of feedback from me. Thanks for your hard work.
Thank you in advance for the feedback!
Upvoted due to awesomeness!
Now I can use it every day.
Nice! Finally, we can have some ANN threads that will boost steem blockchain!
Your projects can/will change your life mate. You are on the right path. Good job.
Cheers!
Love the interface. I even post it from chain-bb right now.
The new additions, like overview on repplies is gold. Also the follow/unfollow button.
You got my witness vote for the work you do.
To bring more value to this, a nice feature would be to see if the user follows you. That would be gold.
Thank you
Thanks @jesta! Chainbb definitely a good platform.
Weldon, detailed information on the new changes in chainbb.com. you have don a great job by setting this forum up. The need to take a vacation is very important as there is need to relaxe a little and give yourself a treat. You have inspired me alot.Nice job as usual, upvoted and following.
Just saw this post now but still gave you my upvote @jesta to send in my support and appreciation. Glad that am following you because your posts and projects add value to me and all our members. Is Chainbb a competitor of Steemit? will the upvote reward stop and if yes, is there any incentives to use the site? and can steemit members invest in chain bb?
It's sort of a competitor to Steemit - though a true competitor I'd imagine would have it's own blockchain (like LBRY, Synereo or NEOS). I'd call it an alternative interface more than a competitor, since we're not really competing against one another as much as we're just providing alternative ways to look at the same blockchain.
There's a number of alternate interfaces between Steemit, eSteem, Busy, and chainBB.
If you're talking about my curation trail that autovotes, I have no idea how long it'll last! It's a big experiment and a way to invite people to try it out. The incentive to use the site is that it's a discussion forum and inherently more organized because of it. It's a matter of preference and personal opinion as to which Steem Interface each user prefers.
Currently no, though it's something I'm looking into.
Thanks for your response @jesta
How can we stay in touch because I would like to be part of early investor in your projects any time you wanna go for ICO
Is there an interest in Western Europe ?
I am very impressed and thankful on your work at steemit and Chainbb , wish you more success, bless you.
Dont forget to check out my post for a link to collect free crypto..a once in a life time opportunity.
I'll make posts via this account if anything, I'd say following me would be the best way to keep up to date :)
There's also blog.chainbb.com which syndicates all my post about this project.
Great, thanks. Chainbb wasnt loading today...from 1PM Berlin time...any issue with it? wish you a happy holiday season, you deserve it
Yes, it was down for a couple hours, sorry about that. It's back online now.
Thanks and wish you a blessed weekend
yes its back, thanks buddy
Chainbb definitely a good platform for steem!
Great improvements. Congratulations. This is a very interesting alternative to the main interfase, and I hope it will thrive.
Wow! I will have to start using chainbb more than the other steem clients. Awesome work... It is really coming together.
Wow! I'm always impressed with not only the speed, but value of the updates for ChainBB!! Thank you @jesta