As many of you may be aware I was able successfully muster massive STEEM community support with my proposal to get SBD and STEEM listed on popular payment gateway Coinpayments.com. Together as a community our upvotes raised over $875 SBD which will be used alongside pledges from @sigmajin and @berniesanders to achieve the amount of funding needed to have both SBD & STEEM implemented on their platform!
Earlier this morning I went ahead and paid just under 0.85 Bitcoin to Coinpayments.net in order to get them started on implementing SBD onto their website and payment gateway. I decided to send them a follow up email to see if I could get an estimate on how long it would take until SBD was implemented on their service..
Funding isn't holding us back from expansion and adoption...
Complete lack of proper documentation is!
The very fact that the Coinpayments.net admin wasn't even able to find enough documentation to want to even attempt to implement SBD or STEEM is an incredibly serious issue in my opinion and raises a very pertinent question:
How The HELL Does STEEM Not Have PROPER Documentation?
While I'm sure many of you have read to this point and are thinking to yourself "Well, this KLYE fellow and his Coinpayments.net lover must just be blind and lazy! Tons of well written documents exists to reference for steem RPC stuff!" I assure you that I've now spent a total of 8 hours today searching on Google and Steemit.com for something that even remotely resembles a full list of the available RPC and API functions that steemd and cli-wallet feature. Now while I've found some pretty good examples of a few commands that seem to have had STEEM users properly document them as a whole we are lacking what some would refer to as necessary documentation.
I must say that for STEEM being such a well crafted and executed idea the very fact that nobody has bothered to take the time to write a proper RPC/API manual listing all available features and functions of our wallet seems downright absurd! While I understand some documentation can be accessed via the steemd or cli_wallet as a community we need to get together and focus on creating this much needed reference guide.
We're currently ranked #7 on Coinmarketcap.com but seemingly left out the part where we hire someone to write the instruction manual for network valued nearly $110,000,000..?
Well That's Just Bad For Business..!
The fact that even when paid $500 USD to implement the STEEM wallet into their system the Coinpayments.net's Administrator refused and was unsure about STEEM due to it's lack of proper documentation...
This is a HUGE Problem for Adoption!
So How Do We Go About Fixing This?
With all this being said I've taken it upon myself to research & compile the necessary information about STEEM's RPC and API calls in order to get the necessary documents needed for current and future developers to quickly and easily reference. While I've only just recently started using steemd / cli_wallet and find it very much different from the "standard" Bitcoin and altcoin wallets I've ran slowly but surely I'm learning the ins and outs of this new technology.
I personally ask anyone who's already started compiling a complete list of all RPC functions or can point me in the right direction in the cli_wallet that would be appreciated. Currently getting a seed and witness node running and going to dive into the nuances of steemd and attempt to make some RPC reference compiled and made public here in the upcoming days.
Yeah, I'll get right on that.
But, they should be aware, that lots of sites are able to figure out the RPC without documentation. Why didn't they stipulate this requirement?
Not entirely sure. A wee bit of a let down and eye opener to me though.
It's kinda hard to find the tools, sometimes. Like this is pretty good when there's no official documentation:
http://steemroll.io/api-explorer/
There are others that might help on steemtools:
http://steemtools.com/
Thanks for the info inertia. I'm currently going through cli_wallet help as well..
It's not pretty and it's going to take a while to decipher all of this output into something normal humans can understand.. <3
granted there seems to be a lot of undocumented stuff, but im not getting whats really super complicated about what they need (which is just the transfer part of the api, right?)
Don't get me wrong, i kind of wish the documentation was better too, but it seems like they have what they would need to make it work.
They may of honestly not been willing or able to figure it out on their own..
Granted I don't think they probably didn't put much of an effort in either.
What the hell ? So they just took the money and said "nope too hard" and they're keeping the funds for nothing ?
What a shitty borderline scammy business model..
I agree that the documentation is lacking, but come on - if they're giving us a hard no then the funds should be returned and put into a bounty for documentation for example..
I was returned the funds after asking nicely. I see no foul play in that.
Oh okay, if the funds are returned that's fine - I'll swap my outrage at coinpayments for annoyance that they couldn't be bothered..
I think that the funds raised for this purpose should be put towards a documentation bounty, and we should find another way to do this without coinpayments imo.
The only problem is.. Is that coinpayments is very popular with eh woocommerce crowd (over half the e-stores on the web) so I'm going to bite the bullet and put in the work needed to properly document the API unless someone beats me to it.
Fair enough, but fyi shapeshift can be used with woocommerce already https://www.cryptowoo.com/shop/cryptowoo/
Replying to ausbitbank.
Shapeshift takes something wild like 10%... Not a haircut I'm willing to take to accept SBD or STEEM for any goods or services I'd like to sell.. :/
Now that is a little disappointing from coinpayments to be honest.
What business accepts payments and afterwards tells the purchaser that they nees more info to implement it, when other exchanges haven't had any issues with it?
Seems kind of unprofessional to me, they should atleast return your payment in that case.
Yeah I did get a refund on the amount and I'm sitting on it until we come up with enough documentation so STEEM isn't too confusing or whichever excuse they figured merited the not enough info response. :/
I completely agree, @klye. The lack of documentation has been very inconvenient.
From steem's readme:
It's really supposed to go the other way around: The consensus rules are documented, and the code is supposed to reflect them. How can there be alternative implementations if the protocol is defined solely in terms of the reference implementation?
This is something Steem will eventually need to get past, and it will likely not be a fun process.
It's got to happen so happen sooner than later if STEEM wants to get to it's fullest potential.
Sort of a shame they spent so much time and effort on the platform only to toss us the wheel without instruction and basically let us fend for ourselves.. Have to sort of wonder who thought that was a good idea.
In my opinion proper documentation should be written up as a project evolves so you're not left scrambling at the end or after it's been launched.
This is completely backwards. Even if you are going that way, at least comment the code heavily, so you can autogenerate the docs. :-/
this kind of sucks for those of us who don't know how to code.
Great, bravo steem
Huh?
I think he is being the sarcasm? :D
Sorry, I didn't pick that up.
Did you mean nuances? :)
I did! thanks for that.
Obviously, there is no time like the present, since we can't change what didn't happen in the past.
Hopefully this can get the ball rolling, and again, great initiative @klye!
Let's do this!
Be the change in the world you wish to see. :)
great initiative @klye!
Sounds like a good opportunity to create a bounty and post it up. Maybe broken down by each individual chapter/paragraph/item ?
I'm working on it now!
@klye: please have a look at this: https://media.readthedocs.org/pdf/piston/stable/piston.pdf
Is this still needed? I think I could put up some API docs.
(I'm not a Steem developer but I can read the code)
Yes it is still needed. The docs are like reading braille on an ocean of octopus legs.