Interesting things are happening in Steemosphere these days. After a long break, price of Steem is hovering around 4 USD now. Thanks to its listing on Huobi Pro, yesterday, the world’s 4th largest crypto exchange by trade volume!

Steemians have also been extended a promotional offer of 50% discount of trading fee on Huobi Pro Exchange, if they sign up between 27th April 12:00pm & 26th May 12:00pm (GMT+8) using this link.

With this, Huobi has also become the first Exchange to list the Steem/USDT pair.

There are many more interesting developments going on here. One that caught my attention and which can be a game changer in spreading Steem everywhere is a small tipping app launched yesterday.

Witness team @crimsonclad & @followbtcnews have introduced an exciting tipping app called SteemTipper.

Using SteemTipper app, you can send small tips in Steem for free to any social account holders.

How Is SteemTipper different than other tipping apps on Steem blockchain?

• SteemTipper allows to send tips in Steem to any social media user.
• The tipped user need not have any Steem account to receive the tip.
• The tipper need not exchange Steem in any other currency to be able to give a tip to a non-Steem user.
• You can give out tip by just tweeting or commenting.
  

  Which Social Media users can currently receive tips?

  
  Currently this service is launched just on Twitter to start with. But development work to launch it soon on other platforms like Steem.chat, Reddit, Telegram and Discord is going on. Launching it on Twitter is no small step on its own. With 328 million monthly active users, Twitter is the world’s 9th biggest social media network.

How does the service works?

SteemTipper uses Twitter API to connect your account. Then you can fund your account with Steem from your Steem wallet. SteemTipper uses SteemConnect to make this transfer, so it can be said to be safe and secure. It doesn’t ask you for any of your Posting, Active or Owner keys. Once the funds appear in your account, you can tip any amount higher than or equal to 0.1 Steem by tweeting the following:

@steemtipper tip + the user you want to tip + the amount of STEEM you want to send

e.g. @steemtipper tip @exampleuser 0.5

This tweet can also be followed by any message you want to write.
Receiver need to login within 7 days to claim her tip. If the tip remains unclaimed for 7 days, it’s automatically returned to the tipper. Receiver of the tip can also use the received tip to tip any other user and is not mandated to open a Steem account. In case the user decides to withdraw funds, she needs to get a Steem account and provide her username to withdraw Steem in her Steem wallet.

There is no fee for deposit, transfer or withdrawal. All the services are free to use. Of course there is a minimum limit of 1 Steem for withdrawal and withdrawal takes about 24 hours to process.

There is also a maximum limit for a transfer as this app is meant to be used only for tipping and not for paying any bills or money laundering activities. However the website doesn’t specify the maximum limit. Checking the global stats, the maximum amount transferred so far is 3 Steem (but these transfers were to Self). However there are several transactions of 1 Steem denomination.

To test the service, I too sent a Steem to fund my account a couple of hours back. But I still don’t see it anywhere in my account. According to @followbtcnews, typically it should take only 1 minute for funds to appear in your account. But looks like there are some initial snags which should be addressed soon.

Personally, I think it’s a great way to introduce Steem to other crypto enthusiasts. Also, there are several people who invest and trade in Steem through their exchange wallets but never create a wallet on Steem blockchain. The beauty of this app is that it doesn’t allow you to withdraw Steem to any exchange wallet.

Once a user decides to withdraw all her received tips, she will have to open an account on Steem blockchain. Hopefully, when they get enough tips accumulated, they won’t mind paying account creation fee to open an instant account and avail all the benefits this blockchain has to offer.

Something I'd prefer to be changed in this app

I’d have preferred to give SBD as tip instead of Steem. SBD is the coin pegged to USD and is designed for such purposes. I won’t like the value of my tip to fall down from $4 (at the time of giving) to say, $3 at the time of withdrawal. Dunno, why the creators of this app decided to go with Steem instead of SBD.

Secondly, I didn’t like the word tip or tipper in the App’s name. Sometimes, the word “tip” is understood to be a bit disparaging by the receiver. Words like “gift” or “present” would have been more inviting for users like me.

The team behind this app is also giving a high priority to launch this app on Steem.chat next. I believe, most of the users on steem.chat are already on Steem. If they ever feel to make a tip, they can make a transfer as well. So what’s the use of introducing this service on steem.chat. Medium would have been a better platform where tips can be offered instead of mere claps. Instead of Facebook or Twitter, I’d like users from Medium, Wordpress, Blogger, Quora etc. to join this platform on priority. This will help in maintaining the quality of the content, IMHO. So integrating those platforms with this app would be more beneficial than steem.chat.

Anyway, it’s a great feeling that this service is already live on Twitter. Let’s use it there and see what response we get. I’m very optimistic of it as this is an effortless way to introduce Steem blockchain to any non-user. Thank you @crimsonclad & @followbtcnews for creating it!