A Video Introduction To @SteemPassport - A New Project To Decentralise Account Creation & Onboarding For the Steem Eco-System.

Steem Passport is a new project that aims to improve the signup process for new accounts in the Steem eco-system. We aim to solve all outstanding challenges faced by Steem when it comes to quickly and easily enabling new users to access Steem and to start using Steem powered sites!

Hey! @ura-soul here - Welcome to a brief introduction to the project I have been working on behind the scenes for a couple of months during my spare time. I've included a video here for you at the end of this post to give an overview of some of the details of @steempassport - check it out if you want to learn more details.

I had the idea that we really need to improve the signup process for new users on the Steem blockchain. I have only ever had difficulties when attempting to use the Steemit.com signup process and many users give up after waiting for weeks, only to find they never receive an account at all (or any explanation as to why not). Since Steemit inc. agrees to the value of decentralising Steem more and since we, the community, have an investment and interest in that happening too - I decided to take the bull by the horns and research ways that the community might best be able to manage the onboarding process professionally and reliably.

After speaking with many people, including witnesses and dApp operators, I have put together a list of objectives that this project aims to complete as soon as possible. Initially I intended to tackle marketing and user education on top of the technical features that are missing from Steem's current signup options, but since we now have @steemonboarding handling these issues, I have slimmed down Steem Passport to focus more closely on the technical side of things.

The very short version is that we will be creating software to facilitate account creation using an account incubation strategy that means that new users can have accounts created that cost them nothing but which also have minimal risk for the blockchain and for dApp operators too. A generic incubation process is being designed currently that all dApps will be able to use and which will simultaneously also help new users to get started on Steem.

We are also looking at creating software to manage the account recovery process and also other ways to create new accounts efficiently - though incubation is the highest priority since no such system currently exists for Steem that we know of.

So far we have had offers of support from @promo-steem and @oracle-d and we are definitely looking for any dApp creators and other groups who want to help out with coding and support in whatever ways they choose to offer.

More Information

---

I created an initial project overview, including some early research and background information - it's on HackMD, here - (You need to log in to HackMD to read it). This answers many common questions about this project, however, I am working on a more up to date document currently to specify the specific software requirements for the project and aim to have that online before xmas.

We currently have a few interested people congregating in our Discord server - so if you have any questions after watching the video and reading through the document, then you are welcome to come and ask me / us in there. :)

Also, we are very much open to any delegations that anyone may wish to provide us to help pay for the costs involved in the development process. In the longer term we aim to provide returns to delegators who sponsor the project - possibly being generated through curation payouts as we will be helping to upvote the best new users to get them started. Other options also exist for return on investment that will be described in more depth in later updates.

For now, here's my first video update on this project - injoy!

Wishing you well,

@Ura-Soul