Steem Apps Explorer Launch

Since my last launch of steem proposals I figured that I love building products for communities, not companies. I was never a fan of working in an office simply because of the same routine and environment. But when you have a chance to choose your work and life location, you become more excited and energized, which leads towards more creative and awesome things.

Today I’m announcing my third product which is a Steem Apps Explorer. With a rising demand for apps and dapps that leverage Steem blockchain it is simply impossible to ignore the fact that we need a better way of presenting data that is coming through this powerful blockchain. That’s why I decided to make something simple, yet elegant for you to browse through recent or targeted transactions within various apps a Steem blockchain has to offer.

Why another explorer?

You might wonder why to create yet another explorer when there a few already? Simple, alternative. The existing explorers (steemd, steemdb, steemblockexplorer) haven’t updated their UI since the first launch and if you look at their target audience, it’s mostly nerds and tech people. I want to create something that anybody can use and understand without going deep in research in what is required_auths is.

Moreover, I’m not creating this to compete but to give you an option to choose from when you need to check the details about certain transactions. Some people love lists, the others prefer cards and there are table addicts so there’s a room to expand for sure.

Besides, at the moment you just simply can’t find transactions that belong to a certain application built on Steem, it’s not the main focus of current developers since there’s a huge incentive deficit for any developer. You can do an app but you it takes more time and effort to maintain it without any funding whatsoever.

Lastly, my plan is to expand this explorer to SMTs, tribes and communities that you all are excited about.

What is the official link?

If you're really impatient, you can just go straight to steemappsdb.com

An overview of Steem Apps Explorer

So here’s a brief overview of explorer.

First things foremost, I didn’t add all of the available apps on the network because this is simply impossible due to the fact that I don’t know each of their custom_json operations. I will add them gradually as I receive more requests and approach apps developers by myself. At the moment the website supports Steemit, @steemmonsters, Steem Engine and @nextcolony apps since they consume the most amount of transactions.

While it would be great to search using a transaction id, I haven’t found a way to do so using Steemit condenser api (the current functionality is simply deprecated). However, this is something I’m curious and need on my own, so I’ll do my best to make it happen at some point. Therefore, you can search transactions by a block id which should be enough at this point. I also want to add a search by account name which will be so much more fun to implement so stay tuned.

By the way, all of the data loads only when you make a change to the block id which means it doesn’t make an extra api call when you switch from one app to another. This is very handy and prevents from redundant operations that can be done of a client side. Don’t thank me, thank Vuex for this one.

Sometimes you might encounter performed an unknown or performed operation_name operation which simply means I wasn’t aware of its existence. If you find such things, just ping me and I’ll add it.

P.S. I's a fully mobile supported, since this is where we live in right now in any case.

How do I add new apps?

Currently my approach is simple as it gets, I use custom_json for determining which app does this transaction belong to. It’s a straightforward model but it seems to be working cause most of the apps use it as a standard. I will consider adding account addresses to monitor bots and other apps that rely on exchanging assets only so expect for a bot section soon because it is heavily unfortunately.

How to add your app?

In order for me to add your app here, just simply provide me with your custom_json you’re using for your operations. If you don’t use them, then give me some alternative on how I can track your app. I would really appreciate a support and collaboration here because I see it as something that can help lots of people. Let me know what is important for you and your customers, so that I can present it in a simpler and sophisticated visual form.

You can reach me out on discord (dmitrydao#1568) or twitter.

In any case, love you guys. As always, have fun while doing something.

If you like what I do, make sure to vote for my witness
(via steemit or steemconnect).