It’s been just over a week since I made my post of why I gave my brother STEEM for Christmas and also explained why I think it could be very positive for STEEM to have a significant number of people introduce family and friends to the blockchain that way.
I was very happy with the results of the post. I did not expect to reach 3000 views in just one week, nor to see such a large amount of comments from people saying they were inspired by the idea to do the same for their family or friends. While the recent surge in the price of STEEM may not have been entirely due to people rushing to buy their friends and family STEEM for Christmas, I really hope this means that many new people are getting introduced to STEEM not just during the holiday, as well as going into 2018 when those who have received this as a gift talks about it in their social circles.
So over the course of the week since my post, I’ve spent some time looking at how to expand on the idea and build a platform where it is both convenient and fun for people to give someone STEEM. The idea of a gift card seemed obvious as a natural supplement, as it looks a lot more tangible than just getting a note saying “I’m going to give you virtual money!” I’ve also been very lucky to have come to know fellow steemian and Parisian @howo since joining steemit. We've had plenty of ideas for applications we would like to build on the STEEM Blockchain and so it was really cool to finally get to hack something together. As the developer, Martin has done all of the hard and time-consuming work to get the web applications up and running.
So, we are both very happy to present you our 2017 edition STEEM gift card!
The 2017 Christmas Steem Gift card design!
The card displays the steem account name that you have created using the account creation service that we made to allow for the creation of gift cards. It also displays the amount of STEEM given with the card, which comes as STEEM Power on the newly created account. Finally, the generated password to the account is displayed at the bottom.
An online gift card application
So in the course of a week, we've hacked together a web application and got a working product up and running on steemgifts.com. Please consider the website and the current service as our “minimum viable product”. We wanted to launch it in its current state to receive the feedback from you the community on what you like about it and what you think is terrible.
Here is how it looks:
The web interface of steemgifts.com where you can make a Steem gift card for Christmas!
How it works
Enter the name of the account you would like to create
To give the gift card a unique identity, we will create a new STEEM account to hold the amount of STEEM that you will give. This also offers you the ability to find them a good name now while the blockchain is still young! I recommend that you don’t spend too long over thinking what name the person would like to have once on STEEM. If they would like to be active on steemit and have another account name, they can always sign up themselves and then delegate the STEEM Power from the account that you have made for them and later transfer it over if they decide to do so.
Enter the amount of STEEM you would like to give
To make a gift card, you will need to hold the amount of STEEM that you would want to give liquid in your wallet (not Powered up or in Savings). Upon creating the Account, this amount will be given as STEEM Power to the account. Be aware that this will lock the STEEM to that account! The minimum amount of STEEM that can be given is 6, as this is required for the account to have the necessary bandwidth to do anything on the blockchain. We made the decision to make the gift be 100% STEEM Power for the added simplicity of not needing to delegate any STEEM to the created account.
Enter your account details to authorize the transaction
In order to transfer STEEM from your account, an Active key is required. I am hesitant to ask anyone for their Active key while it is still an early version of the service. I would therefore like to offer you the option of contacting me either in the comments or on steemit.chat if you would like to have the card with the design for the account you want to create, and the amount of steem you would like to give, and for you to then complete the remaining steps yourself.
Create your Gift Card!
Once these steps are done, the account will be created, the STEEM transferred from your account and you will receive an email with the password for the new account displayed together with the amount of STEEM that you are giving. Make sure that the gift card is saved securely and kept with the same level of security as you would apply to your own master key. I would recommend the person receiving the gift to change their password later to replace any versions that have been sent online.
Inviting artists and designers to submit their designs for holiday cards, an idea going forward
One of my ideas for the website is to allow all the great artists and designers that we have on STEEM to make their own designs. We will make the code for the current gift card open source and would invite others to make their own versions. My hope is that we can build a library with cards relevant for birthdays, different holidays, or other occasions where giving someone STEEM might be relevant or fun. We will be happy to give votes to submitted designs and hope that it can allow the artists and designers to profit off creating something that in turn can benefit the value of STEEM.
If this sounds interesting for any of you, do feel free to contact me directly.
Feel free to ask for a free gift card!
As we are just a few days off Christmas, I would be happy to let anyone who would like a card to supplement your gifts. So if you go to the website and complete the form without entering any information in the fields asking for you account name and active key, we’ll make sure to send you a card. You can then set up an account on your own, or transfer the desired amount of STEEM to the account of the person you will give the gift to, on your own.
Credits to the people making this possible
The awesome design was made by @nitesh9. I think he did an amazing job in the very short time-span that he had and would like to give some attention to his skills. As STEEM witness @timcliff has been saying recently: We need to make use of all the unique skill-sets that exist on the platform to collectively grow the value of STEEM, and having skilled designers like him who are quick to respond to quests is really valuable to the platform.
But if there's one who spent an awful lot of time getting this up and running, then it's @howo ! Sorry for keeping you up late getting this done mate, I hope you had as much fun as you claim ;)
Anyways, I hope that anyone who has already purchased someone STEEM for the holidays and would like to print a gift card to give on Christmas eve or day will get in touch with me either in the comments or message me on steemit.chat. As I've stated over and over, I really think it takes all of us to do all the small things that we can to promote STEEM to get the organic growth and network effect going that a social platform so desperately needs.
I look forward to hearing any questions some of you might have about the gift card service, any suggestions for how it could work better, more securely or add more value, are of course also welcome.
Again Meery Christmas to you all!
Update
SSL has now been added to https://steemgifts.com/ to improve safety.
We also added https://steemgifts.com/create where you can make a gift card without needing to create a new account removing the need to use the Active key of your main account. This does, however, mean that you'll have to set up an account yourself manually. For more information on how to do that, see my previous post here
I was actually joking about STEEM Gift Certificates in a comment today! And here we are, wasn't a joke after all! This thing actually exists!? Glad to see it's open source on GitHub. However...
NOTICE: The steemgifts.com website is not using SSL! Use with EXTREME caution.
You know what to do guys, setup a SSL certificate! It's a must for any website nowadays.
Updates have now been made to address this.
Again thank you for your feedback.
I invite and encourage everyone to express concerns or inconveniences they see with the current version. It is meant to be a first prototype to generate feedback.
Great. Also, edit the post to reflect the new change :)
We got it up and running yesterday, works fine :)
Edit: thanks for the feedback. As mentioned in the post (but which I could perhaps have highlighted even more) this is meant to be a proof of concept. I am more than happy to provide the card only with the requested account name and amount of steem, with no password written on it, for someone who would like one to give the card and then do the account set up and transfers themselves.
Any other comments on the general idea are also welcome.
Yeah it's more of a proof of concept than anything else, you're free to get the source code and run it yourself locally if you don't trust us ;)
Yes I saw the source code :) But it would be wise to offer the users a secure website. People will click blindly on anything without checking if their connection secured or not. It's very easy to setup a free SSL certificate, try https://letsencrypt.org/.
Of course it's planned, but here we were rushing to put it out before christmas ^^
@drakos! Hero of the 'hour'!!!!
You've earned a tip! for this important looking out!
Peace.
Hi @drakos! You have received 0.1 SBD tip from @spiritualmatters!
Check out new tipuvote! feature :)
Let's Encrypt is free and easy to set up and renew. Takes me 1 line of copy-paste code to sort out. Thanks Drakos for looking out.
This would be cool to do for other holidays and birthdays. Well done!!🤗
Don't worry I did have fun working on it ^^
If you are interested in the technical parts, you can find my posts about it :
the source code here
And the technical details here
I am really happy to be a part of this awesome project. It will really give a boost to steem and steemit.
Lets share this steem giftcard with more and more people. :)
Let's spread love and awesomeness of steem on this Christmas. :)
Thanks @fredrikaa.
Omg that is superb. ! great idea
Thanks!
Excellent idea, well presented and excellent timing for someone who has an inability to get their shopping done as well.
Thank you whatsup! Hehe, yes I've found myself in that place numerous times where you need a last minute resort :D perhaps we'll get a last minute Christmas gift FOMO ? ;)
perfect last minute idea for chronic couchpotatoes! : just print the giftcard and add keys later!!!!
"My hope is that we can build a library with cards relevant for birthdays, different holidays, or other occasions where giving someone STEEM might be relevant or fun."
Yes, please! ^^ Also, this is epic!
I think this could be amazing for STEEM. It would be a way to channel all the amazing creative talent that we have to build bits and pieces to strengthen the blockchain.
I'm sure we'll have something cool early on the new year :)
We are waiting for your card ;)
Amazing idea! Very original gift for this holidays and create awareness about this amazing platform and community
Keep up the good work!
Congratulations @fredrikaa, this post is the fifth most rewarded post (based on pending payouts) in the last 12 hours written by a Hero account holder (accounts that hold between 10 and 100 Mega Vests). The total number of posts by Hero account holders during this period was 395 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $9343.49. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.
If you do not wish to receive these messages in future, please reply stop to this comment.
Amazing idea! This would bring SO many new users!
Very cool idea! Hope this is a fully functional physical product by next year!
The gift that keeps on growing.
really great initiative guys and if you wanna go a step further you can use analytics to check how many cards you actually made and later on how many of those account created are active an long term how many people you helped entering steemit!
Thanks! That's a great idea! Thanks for sharing it :)
We have quite a few things we would like to build around our core idea, which is making onboarding more fun and convenient. Hoping it can help the blockchain in some way :)
Great post thank you so much for sharing
Interesting indeed, I was actually planning to make a similar post today!
I even rendered few concepts few days ago.
Creditcard size giftcard.
That's very cool ! I'll post in the following days to explain how designers can post new designs for the website.
That looks pretty neat!
I hope we can make it easy for anyone with good ideas or designs to submit those and make it a community effort to improve the convenience, fun and professional look of gifting someone STEEM. It could really be a win win :)
Let's stay in touch!
Looks cool. Credit-Card styled Steem GiftCard. Looking forward for more contributions from steemit graphics experts. :D
Great Initiative!
How smart! Let's get in contact, I'm interested in doing some graphic design for this project.
Poor thing is the steem power, meaning human that get's the gift is stuck and can't use funds right away...
Thanks for the feedback!
Yes, we considered this, but my thought is that you give it as a long-term gift, like you would give someone a number of stocks. Making it STEEM Power also made it a whole lot simpler to create the account without the added need for delegations.
It's not ment to be used right away, it's more of a stylised way of inviting someone to the platform :)
What a great idea!
Thanks!
That's a great innitiative! I wouldn't think about Steem giftcard but it could become a thing. Resteemed.
Thanks a lot for the resteem! Yes, I think this can be very positive for STEEM.
Awesome piece of tool my friend, great design and concept, keep up the good work here
Thank you for the positive feedback :)
You are welcome my friend no prob its great
This is awesome! I'm giving my friend Steem for Christmas and never even though of the idea of a gift card. Awesome addition to the platform
we added the opportunity to get a gift card only :) so if you would like to get one with his name, and the amount you're giving him, then you can get that at https://steemgifts.com/create
If you don't want to enter his password on the card then you can leave that space empty and add it yourself.
Wow it will definitely be the most welcome gift of all... original and profitable!
Merry Christmas to you!
Pretty cool!
Merry Christmas!
Ho ho ho ho ho!
I think this be great way to get new people into steem! What a great idea!
HERE IS MY DESIGN
Someone Please Send Me A Gift Card ;p !
thats good, keep doing the good job. nice post
Great idea to grow the community and get them off the Facebook spy ring
Absolutely!
The most cost effective, exchange friendly of the cryptos is going to preserve the long term value. This is a revolutionary thought, very very well conceived. This increased liquidity to strangers to join the market is otherworldly in strength creating instant value to the holder, as well as a mandated explanation of steem, steemit, etc. There is a clear paradigm within introductory sales of lesser increments due to the lack of familiarity. It would be my hope that someone who didn't know what they have would simply put it up on ebay.
Great job @fredrikka :)
Nice, dude. That's exactly what I've waited for. The best "Last minute christmas gift" ever!
this is really cool.....
Awesome way to spread the Steemit Success !!
Thank you
@robertmannino
This is a good way. He would be happy if someone steem someone as a gift.
Bonjour à vous, j'adore votre contenu sur votre blog, cet article est très passionnant comme d'habitude je n'imagine pas le temps que ta du prendre pour le faire. Je suis très triste que ton travail n'est pas apprécié à sa juste valeur car tu mérites 100 fois plus de popularité et je ressens que tu fais ça par bonheur et moi j'ai énormément d'administration, je te souhaite une très bonne journée et je suis impatient pour ton prochain article. Salut l'ami et porte toi bien ;)
Sympa, mais fais attention même si il habite à Paris, il ne parle pas français ;)
excillent post..thanks
great idea! Thank you @fredrikaa
Great post !
this soooooooouper coooooool
Excellent overview good post glad to be in your team
OMG! This is brilliant. Now I have a simple way to buy STEEM for friends and family, and hopefully pique their interest in the project and get them involved over the holidays.
And it really is the gift that keeps on giving and giving!
Great job here @fredrikaa
Indeed, you did not promise too much last week
Good job ;)
What a fun idea!
Dude this could be revolutionary for this platform!! I'm about to ask for steem gift cards for Christmas now!! Wowww, this is just simply fantastic
Neat :D
Whoever sends a gift, I will be thankful to him :gift::heart_eyes:
Can giftcards be made for existing account holders?
It will soon ;)