Here is few major changes we want to tell you about.
1. Giving back apps accounts
If you have an application running on SteemConnect you been through the process of creating a Steem account for your app. We call this Steem account the proxy app account, this account is currently owner and managed by SteemConnect and has delegated posting authorities of your users. In the process of making SteemConnect more decentralized we’ve decided to give you ownership of this account. We want each application to be responsible for their users delegated posting authority instead of having a single entity (SteemConnect) managing all the apps.
If you are an user of SteemConnect we recommend you to review the apps that you authorize to post on your behalf here: https://steemconnect.com/apps/authorized and revoke the app(s) that you believe are not trustworthy to manage this responsibility without SteemConnect consentment.
On 15 February we will start the process of giving back app accounts and will temporary disable app account creation and edition on steemconnnect.com. The app accounts keys will be changed with the current app owner keys. By default the app account will delegate posting authority to the account @steemconnect thus making your application still working as usual without breaking changes.
After that if you wish you could build and run your posting API server without going through SteemConnect posting API. We will release along with SteemConnect 3 a code open source to setup your own posting API server.
2. Open standard for apps on-chain
Currently SteemConnect use a private database to store all the applications settings, this is also a part of centralization that we want to tackle. Instead of using a private database we want to store the apps settings on-chain. The apps settings will be stored directly on the Steem app account using json_metadata field, similar than how users set their public profile on Steem. With this change, it will be possible to create or edit an app without going through steemconnect.com and anyone will be able to gather the apps data from Steem chain and create their own store or app directory.
Here is more details on the format that we want to use: https://github.com/steemscript/steemscript/wiki/Proposal:-open-standard-for-apps
This does not require any action from you, we will automatically populate the apps settings in the apps accounts json_metadata in the same time that we give you back the apps proxy accounts.
3. Introducing fees and looking for sponsors
Starting from this month we will add some fees on the comments and posts operations broadcasted by SteemConnect posting API using beneficiaries rewards. The fee will be from 0 up to 2.5% of the total rewards. If you are an user and don’t want to pay this fee i recommend you to use Steem Keychain (or wait that we release the SteemConnect 3 signer apps). If you manage an app on SteemConnect and don’t want your users to pay a fee i recommend you to setup your own posting API server.
If we introduce these fees it’s because we didn’t get any funding unfortunately and we need a way to sustain the project. The fee generated will help pay for the infrastructure and the continuous development of SteemConnect 3.
We are also looking for sponsors and partnerships, if you are willing to help SteemConnect or see some opportunities for your business to partner with SteemConnect please share your ideas with us.
Need help? Come talk with us on SteemDevs Discord https://discord.gg/NCZMVev
Best!