Sometimes People Surprise Me!
Anyone who has been following me here on Steemit.com has likely realized I'm a sucker for tinkering and building cool new services for our community / ecosystem. I love to STEEM.
Recently the STEEM seed node and faucet which I built at STEEM.GLOBAL had a few users take it upon themselves to create +200 accounts in an attempt to get a larger share of the daily free STEEM I give away to the faucet users. It was known to me this was a possibilty and I'd hoped that the "honour system" would keep people from doing as such. However the honour system doesn't seem to work on the internet and in light of these few users grabbing more than a handful of STEEM massive changes of how the faucet runs needed to be implemented. In a later post I will outline the changes as well as better explain how to use the new design.
Honour Among Thieves
It's well documented in our history that if given the opportunity to exploit a system for their own gain most humans will gladly do so. The rarity of a person returning their ill-gotten loot is somewhere up there with unicorns or hot women that cook and clean.. BUT, former STEEM faucet exploiter @writeratheart who managed to make well over 50 accounts and grab roughly $5.00 USD worth of STEEM with his multi account endevours blew me away by actually apologizing and offering to return the STEEM they got by skirting the daily limit using their accounts. You impressed me with this admittance and apology @writeratheart.
If you need that $5 worth of STEEM to feed yourself or pay looming expenses you are welcome to keep it but I'd prefer next time that if you are hard up that you just ask.
The Way The World Works
While I might not be able to change human nature one thing I can do is change the way my faucet system works in order to try and protect it from those who would take more than they are supposed to, which is essentially explioting a good thing and my kindness which pisses me right the f**k off. Hopefully with the new method of operation the faucet isn't attacked.
Rather than just a sign up and get STEEM free-for-all as the previous design was STEEM.GLOBAL users will now have to purchase a 30-day Fauceteer subscription in order to gain access to the faucet. Another change is that rather than pay out once per a day instead now every hour the faucet will pay out to valid Fauceteer subscription holders.
The STEEM.GLOBAL Fauceteer supscription will be affordable for everyone wishing to get hourly STEEM paid to them without even logging in but should deter people from making large numbers of multiple accounts. Current price is 1 STEEM for 30 days of STEEM at 0.005 STEEM earned per an hour. In the future this amount may change but as this service is intended as a faucet it will always be profitable to Fauceteer subscription holders, as per the original vision of the project. I apologize for any inconveniences caused by this.
VOTE @KLYE FOR WITNESS
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
A Proud STEEMbassador of Canada
Thank you for your votes, the opportunity and support!
( STEEM.GLOBAL is Evolving! New Hourly Payouts Coming Soon! )
That is actually pretty neat.
It is like months ago, when I ran that test for a couple days, to see if there was a way to exploit the faucet on the site, and grab more than one daily dose of Steem so I tried it and then when found out you could, I msgd you to let you know right away.
I appreciate your work @klye
Yeah, much appreciated Barry! You and a few others had let me know this was possible but I'd not had the time to code up anything to smash multi-accounters.. After thinking about it scaning IP's wouldn't work anyways with tools such as VPN and TOR out there so I had to get creative in my protection.
Thanks again Barry! Good to have more than just my eyes on the look out.
Check out my post up just now LOL
You're just taking his side because he's from moose land too, I'm on to you @barrydutton
Actual town WAY north of me, in my Province: They call it the Gateway to the Arctic -
lol nice
I wonder if people would be willing to pay for steemit ads on your site... To help bankroll the faucet. Or I should say would you be willing to link to certain steemit projects to help bankroll the faucet? I know I'd be willing to give up some steem for the faucet to see a link for the Prize Portal up there...
I hadn't really given it much consideration but if there is a demand perhaps its something that could be loked into and implemented.. Good idea sir!
I'd removed the a-ads I had on the site but perhaps letting our community promote their stuff on site for a small weekly or monthly fee would be sufficient to nullify the costs or atleast help the faucet break even? :D
Oh I think it may even be able to offset the hosting costs if the numbers are balanced and a few others wanted in.
Normal ads suck, but I bet people would support ads by the steemit community, for the steemit community.
rofl lol whut
Just some random Doakes surprise meme tailored to this very special occasion.
I had a giggle but hadn't seen the meme before.. I try to avoid meme's on the internet for the most part as I'm like 98% sure meme culture is slowly making our societies full of lazy, mentally handicapped cattle with 3 seconds attention spans and 0 work ethic.
HEY! I resemble that remark!
I suggest @klye, for you to accept the natural state of things: If your system has weakness, someone will use it. Don't be angry, @writeratheart helped you to find the weakness and to improve your code. That's what Andreas Antonopoulos explained speaking of system security. You cannot make anything under presumption that it will never be misused. On the contrary.
You can make a good job even better when you start treating those hackers as a group of hard testing “coworkers” who take a reward for their efforts ;)
Oh, and keep up the good work!
This is how I view it now.. I was entirely aware it was possible to create multiple accounts and get more than the alloted share but hoped no one would actually take the time to do so.
I've got far larger more complicated STEEM projects on the go and was hoping to just let STEEM.GLOBAL run on auto pilot with next to no input from myself, Sadly I've got tons of work to do on it now to get it to where it needs to be.. Oh well, Live and learn!
I agree with you. Humans are smart and will find ways to exploit things. I'm not angry at all with @writeratheart after they apologized. That takes balls.
@kebin
I talked to @kebin already. Him and I are good now.
Yaaay we also a good friend now ...
More power on your website ..
You love steemit community and we love you as you always share rich and creative work in unique contents.
Thanks Shaheer!
Welcome dear Klye!
I only use one of my accounts. :)
seems like there is a slight problem with the SSL cert, chrome is rejecting it and not allowing me to access steem.global
Yeahhh.. I may have buggered up the SSL by letting it expire once.
You should be able to still access the site. Looks for a "proceed anyways" link bottom left when the warning thing pops up. Sorry about that wil try and get it fixed in the next few days.
Hey man, you do a lot of good things for Steemit... sucks that people exploited that. But as others have said, if there's something offered, there will always be a few who'll go apechit in pursuit of ways to get something for nothing. I kinda like the new gig, though... because it actually is something for something. People out to scam systems are rarely willing put out to get something...
You are completely right dude. The old system was far to easy to just show up and drain.. ALthough that is exactly how I designed it unfortunately in this day and age people will gladly take their fill and more if given a chance.
Thank you for the kind words
For every one who try finding a loophole, there are at least 10 who appreciate what you are doing. Don't let them get to you ;) Also, I wouldn't be surprised that people think STEEM appears from thin air! Crypto is like a game to a lot of people.