Vessel 0.2.6 - Server selection + disconnected status message

in #vessel6 years ago (edited)

The reoccurring theme lately with Vessel updates seems to be just staying connected :)

This minor release (0.2.6) is primarily that, with one potential security vulnerability also patched, and a few minor bug fixes.

Before going too much further:

What is Vessel?

Vessel is a desktop wallet for the Steem blockchain, which can be downloaded and run on your computer. Vessel is free to use and open source, and is designed to be a way to help secure your account on the Steem blockchain. While using Vessel, your keys/password never leave the app, transactions are signed locally, and then broadcast to the network much like any other downloadable cryptocurrency wallet.

Here's a few of the other most recent updates, as well as the original announcement:

Download Vessel

Vessel is still beta software and it's recommended that you treat it as such. Before committing irreversible actions on your account (such as large outgoing transfers), please test with smaller amounts to ensure it's working properly on your computer.

Download available on github for macOS (.dmg file), Windows (.exe file) and Linux (.snap and .deb files).

What's new in 0.2.6

  • Vessel now actively monitors it's connection and notifies you if you're disconnected.
  • When Vessel is not connected to a server, a red status message will appear at the top indicating it's attempts to reconnect.
  • From within this status message, users can choose to force an attempt to reconnect or choose a different server.
  • When choosing a new server, a pre-populated list of servers are checked against to see which are operational, and reports a UTC datetime of the last block that server has processed.
  • Security Fix: removed an external dependency (semantic-ui.min.css) from loading externally.
  • Fixed bugs involving the dsteem library and it's incorrect server usage (preventing account creation).
  • Fixed a display issue for both VESTS and SP when estimating the account creation cost.

Maintaining connectivity

There has been a flurry of support requests over the past couple days surrounding Vessel and users being unable to do one thing or another. The vast majority of support requests have been because a number of RPC servers have recently experienced downtime, and users were simply disconnected. Last week's quick fix to allow users to specify which node they'd like to connect to from the welcome screen - but this has only highlighted another UX issue:

Users don't really care or know what server they should be using.

To this end, I've changed the behavior of Vessel and it will now provide a list of currently available servers for users to choose from and highlighted the fact that you're disconnected when it occurs.

https://steemdb.com/vessel/45.png

This red status message will appear at the top of any Vessel window should the connection drop for more than 30 seconds. You have 3 options from here:

  • Wait, as Vessel still automatically attempts to retrieve it's connection every 15-30 seconds.
  • Click Reconnect, which forces an API call immediately in an attempt to restablish it's connection.
  • Click Change Server, which lets you choose a new, available server, from a prepopulated list.

You're also free to visit the Settings page and specify whatever server you'd like.

Selecting an available server

https://steemdb.com/vessel/46.png

When choosing a new server to connect to, Vessel will attempt a simple query against every predefined server within the application and display those it's able to connect to.

The "Last Block" column in the center will display when the last block on that server was processed in UTC time.

Clicking the blue Connect button will change your preferred node to this server and attempt to connect.

Security Fix

A couple days ago, @sneak pointed out in this github issue that Vessel could potentially have a security vulnerability by including an external resource. I sat down that day to figure out how to bundle that resource directly in the app and have included it in this release. Vessel now has no external dependencies (besides the RPC nodes it needs to connect to) and all the required code (CSS included) is now bundled directly with the application itself. Thanks to @sneak for identifying the issue!

Also thanks to everyone else for the bug reports - I'll be making the rounds on all outstanding connection related issues and addressing them soon.

Sort:  

Always have my support. Love your work.

I was wondering if you have plans on adding the ability to create new accounts without delegation?

It'd be a nice to have, that's for sure. I haven't really put any plans in motion to accomplish it though.

Well, I'm glad you did for the additive delegation, that was a big one.

LMAO! Cassey down there just copied your comment. First time I've seen that.

There are a few people using bots that do it, they also will mix up comments from two people into a new comment.

love this idea !

hello how you create an account without delegation?

I use steem-python in Linux, you can also use Steem Connect.

thank you for that and that I learn from the big ones I will follow your advice

collaborate with someone who needs help @jesta @ themarkymark

This is a great work, will like to learn from him. Am happy to be here

I just tried Vessel for the first time, and I already love it. I tried it a month ago but had connection problems. Glad to see that this got fixed so fast. Cheers for everything @jesta. Keep up the good work for steem!

Hey @geronimo, just wanted to let you know that I nominated you take part in the Seven Day Black and White Challenge in my last post.

Thank you very much.

A killing feature would be a "send a encrypted message to account xyz". It's annoying to log into steemit.com with memo key to read encrypted transfers.

Congratulations @jesta, this post is the sixth 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 401 and the total pending payments to posts in this category was $14160.16. To see the full list of highest paid posts across all accounts categories, click here.

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looks promising

Amazing, what do smart people eat for breakfast? Thank you is not even close for all your hard work in advancing the formation and usefulness of the platform. Best of Luck. Will click on the learn more button.

Lunch is for breakfast :D

Good idea
Thanks brother

I'm new in steemit, help me @rizkisyahmaulana, follow me and vote me @jesta

Help and support your workers always, to gain useful knowledge in this regard,

Hey jesta any plans to Android?

No plans for mobile/tablets at this time, waiting to see what Steemit Inc does with their mobile app before I commit the effort.

Right!

Good one @jesta... i like your resilience!

Appreciate your work. Could you please add de-authorized third parties using the posting key feature? Some app request to add posting key but they dont have de-authorized button.

I know that we can do it in cli-wallet with update_account_auth_account command but please add that feature for ease to use as a normal users. Thank you.

I agree, there needs to be management of those authorizations in one place that's easy to manage. I ran into issues implementing the feature and didn't get it fully working, but it's on my radar.

Thank you jesta for all the great efforts on your Vessel tool.

jesta my favorite witness keep up the good work bro
always glad to here from you.

Awesome. Thanks so much for this @jesta! Vessel has been a tremendous resource for us and for our work recruiting new Steemians to the platform. Thanks again.

Thank you for the information.

this is really cool. something I have been waiting for. thanks

if I think they managed to correct the errors

Thanks for great information ,I liked it thats why i followed you.

just explored vessel. really great work, thanks! im starting to love steem :D

@jesta you seem to have much experience developing on steem. I have asked myself whether it is possible to run the steem-blockchain in a local dev-environment. I want to explore as much functionality of the steem-api without spamming on the network. best case would be to have a docker-compose file which allows to run the blockchain locally.

do you know how to do that and could you provide a guide for that? this would be great :-D

Thanks is a good contribution.
Best regards.....

thanks @jesta of love for your post is very useful all for our steemit lover is now easy to use it, so we can secure our account using vessel

Follow me @mukliss

People and Apps should be able to get a list of RPC nodes and their witnesses with this call to steemfiles: https://www.steemfiles.com/cgi-bin/getsteemnodes.cgi

I can't seem to login. I keep getting a wrong Wif error even though I use the correct key and account name.

Are you using the correct option on the first screen?

The top option is if you're using the password (starts with P), and the second option is when you're using a key (starts with 5).

I believe I was. I was using the active key. It worked with the owner password though. I am loving Vessel so far. Great work on building such an amazing tool sir.

Thanks for the info I was wondering what was happening with the red notice that came up and though maybe something was wrong with the account. i will digest this post and take action on it. Its still quite all new to me but seems like good advice thanks :)

Wow I'm getting to know your work, what an impressive thank you for contributing so much to our community I love it I hope your successes continue.

Greetings from Venezuela I hope we can continue reading

your post is great and interesting for me ... I like your post. thank you for sharing your experience. we also need your suggestion and visit in our post.

Well done. I hope you will still make a Steem powered forum which you will sell to other webmasters, so they can run it on their own domains...
Are you still working on something like this or does anybody know, if someone else is integrating this into the normal forum softwares like WPForo, Xenforo, SimpleMachines, PortaMX or Elkarte Forum software ?
Many thanks. Regards, Stefan.

nice work...resteemed n upvoted!keep going...

introduce my name @saifulabubakar, i am from indonesia province aceh. I am a newcomer in the world of steemit. I like very much like you guys, have lots of friends, have lots of knowledge and have lots of money ,,,,,,,

the application you created is very good and great ,,,, but unfortunately I do not know everything yet.

I hope you can fallow me

thank you very much and good luck always

Hi @jesta

A small feedback

Could you implement in your Vessel wallet a function to show how much and when will receive a reward (SP and SBD) for all posts during the week?

This is done here https://steemstats.com/#!/ , but there are only 20 posts...

New features in Vessel (example)
Full expected reward: 30 SBD, 10 SP
Will arrive in a week: 20 SBD, 5 SP
Will arrive today: 5 SBD, 2 SP

It would be cool

Works fine. Nice GUI. All the missing shortcuts i desperately searched on steemit or busy were in your vessel.
I love it and made a french article on it . (feel free to see on my wall, no obligation so I don't put link here) :-)

its just amaizing great work

$ grep 0.2\. package.json | head -2
  "version": "0.2.2",
        "Version": "0.2.2",

Isn't it time you update the versions in package.json @jesta?

Suppose I should, still not used to this double package.json business it seems.

The one in the root folder is actually for the electron builder itself, where as the one inside the app folder is the one that actually indicates the version of Vessel (which does say 0.2.6).

I'll get them in sync next version though.

I am new to using JavaScript outside a browser. Maybe this kind of thing is just too slow for x86 boxes.

It's definitely a sub-optimal way of building desktop apps. Electron's resource consumption having to fire up it's own instance of chrome in it's own sandbox causes a world of hurt on a lot of machines. An unfortunate side effect of going this route but hopefully it'll get better as electron evolves a bit.

It will get better as users upgrade. 💻

I am slow here so forgive me for asking but what benefit is it to use vessel versus directly on a web page or steem.connect? Thanks.

Just to let you know, there is a warning message about poloniex in the trasnfert tool in your wallet.
I don't know why, as I am used to work with polonix with no problem, you just need to populate correctly your memo, and boom, a few seconds after you get your steem on the site, and in the other way around, type your account name without @, confirm email and you get the steem on your account

Poloniex was probably down more than it was up in 2017. It may be working now, but I'd recommend ever keeping any funds there.

using it almost exclusively since 2016, never got any issue, i am maybe lucky, but it's true i never leave my cryptos on third parties wallet, i only use them as exchange, exception for the lending

The issues I'm referring to where specifically for Poloniex/STEEM, so it's very possible you didn't experience it if you weren't into Steem at that point.

correct

https://steemdb.com/@poloniex/transfers

The days without any transfers were the days it was down, and then you can see the panic withdraws each time it came back up :)

While there was no need to withdraw :-) Human factor again :-)

Hey Jesta,
you have a nice website - I like the bar at the bottom, which gives me access to your phpinfo. Maybe you should disable the extensions mongo and mysql since both are depricated.

Nah, old server and old apps still need em!

The whole point of having that there was to illustrate what the open source engine was doing and how the page was rendering :)

Always have my support. Love your work.

I was wondering if you have plans on adding the ability to create new accounts without delegation?

Always have my support. Love your work.

I was wondering if you have plans on adding the ability to create new accounts without delegation?

Would it be possible to support storing the keys on a hardware wallet like the Ledger Nano S? Is there a way the community could support the development? I'd be willing to donate for the effort. Who's with me?

@netuoso I believe is looking into this right now :)

I am happy to see you every day to receive dollars from steam, please teach me how you first did it, until you can as it is now.@kirana

creative interesting should be developed

Hi am zaharadeen I enjoyed reading g your work, will also like to learn from you

wow very interesting and well explained @jesta

Vessel sounds awesome! I am going to look more into it. @cabo
2015-06-14 15.34.27-1.jpg

Good your post