Introducing steemmonstersdb.com - Featuring the unopened pack explorer and starting pack giveaways!!

The Excitement is Building!

Earlier this week I launched the @steemmonsters block explorer that allows us to view all the cards in any account, not just your own. Then, I quickly rolled out an update to add filters since my initial release was pretty rudimentary. Or, still is really.

It hasn't even been two full weeks and the success of the @steemmonsters project continues compounding with the excitement growing along with the size of the community getting involved. Steem is a utility coin and this project more than reaffirms that, even though we can't even play yet! And markets are already up and ready to buy/sell/trade @steemmonsters cards. When we all later recall this story it'll be titled, "A Case Study in Adding Value to the Blockchain."

And have you been to Discord yet? If you thought you saw activity on the blockchain around @steemmonsters jump in here and you won't be able to even keep up!

That's almost 1,000 people with over 200 active right now! If you wanna talk and learn more about @steemmonsters this is the place to go.

I've been watching the blockchain and I stumbled upon this.

I blurred the account name for privacy, but this seems to be a pretty clear case of someone pushing a bunch of fiat to Steem just to buy @steemmonsters cards. Now that's some excitement!

Introducing steemmonstersdb.com!

I initially launched using a domain for another project but started thinking about a new domain and since I was already working on getting this data into a MySQL database this domain seemed perfectly apropos.

tl;dr click: The steemmonstersdb.com link

The original block explorer is up and running at this new domain as well.

This is obviously a bare bones shell of a site today but I'm going to build this out, add a little color, and try to make this into a collection of useful tools around @steemmonsters and specifically the data in it.

To be clear, this is more of proof of concept and you're certain to run into bugs, find gaps in the data, or watch the whole thing break! I'll continue firming things up to make this more reliable but just be aware that bugs are likely today.

And my focus here is on the data. I've already begun writing transactions from @steemmonsters to a MySQL database but have a long way to go still. The idea is to pull the data off the blockchain into a database so it's easier to build apps and tools around @steemmonsters and get even more people involved!

My initial thought is to make the database available directly or possibly throw up a few endpoints so others can build apps on top of this data. Would anybody be interested in a service like this?

Once game play begins I'm sure this data set will explode and so I'm carefully architecting everything today with a focus on scalability and building a stable and reliable infrastructure.

Recent Updates

I've pushed a lot of updates since my initial release this week.

Those commit messages are intentionally truncated because I'm known to push things like, "Un-haxor the bork" and while there's not much of that here, I didn't wanna risk too much embarrassment. Needless to say, there's a lot of new stuff in here.

Here's a quick rundown of the actual changes I've implemented this week.

Filters

This is the exact same interface as the live website, so you can easily take a look at your monsters by type, rarity, and color. And any combinations between them.

As you update your filters, the total cards updates at the bottom.

XP

At first I was just showing each card with all of the UIDs for duplicates, but then realized these can be combined with each card having different XP so I got this added in.

In doing so, I now list each card individually so there are some duplicates, but this is the best way to also show the XP.

Unopened Pack Explorer!!

As I was walking the blockchain and grabbing this data I started to realize the cards in a pack are recorded on the blockchain, even before you've actually opened it. Since I have this data I thought it would be a lot of fun to put together a pack explorer.

@steemmonsters Pack Explorer

To get started, just look to your wallet to see the memo added to your transfer to @steemmonsters for the booster pack purchase.

And I'm saying unopened packs to build excitement, but this will view any booster pack. And that is only booster packs, starter packs have a slightly different data format and I haven't gotten that implemented yet. Pack explorer is a bit of a misnomer, really this is a purchase explorer as it shows all the packs in that purchase. I thought about making it pack specific, but that ID is harder for the average user to find so I wanted to keep this simple.

I've also added a rarity summary to quickly let you know how many cards of each rarity you pulled.

This part is pretty exciting, I'm definitely going to look at the drop rates before and after the recent change and post about that soon.

And then I note the rarity next to each card.

You may have noticed this isn't visible in the other block explorer when you look at an account's collection. That explorer is an entirely different architecture so I'll need to implement this separately and hope to have that ready soon.

Really, this is only the beginning, I can't wait to see what's next.

Giveaways!

I was fortunate enough to get 250 booster packs from @berniesanders for putting the block explorer together and then yesterday I noticed they were offering 10 bonus packs if you bought 100 and I'm more than all in at this point.

And I have not opened a single pack yet. Pfffttt...and you think you have restraint!?

This because I plan to giveaway a bunch of packs to get more people involved and this starts now!!

The First steemmonstersdb.com Giveaway!

Listen carefully, it's important to follow the instructions here.

I'm going to give away 5 separate booster packs 24 hours after this post. You can enter in the drawing as follows:

• Resteem this post! - This is one entry

• Follow me - This is a second entry

• Go buy one or more new booster packs after this post was created

  • Look to your wallet for the purchase ID (like above under pack explorer) for that transaction

  • Comment here with only that purchase ID - This is a third entry, but counts as 3 entries for the drawing!

Please create a second comment if you actually want to say something, just keep the ID in a separate comment because I'm going to look at this in code.

This brings up a great point. Would anyone else use a script like this?

I'm basically going to lookup the purchase ID to see the timestamp to make sure it was after this post and look for resteems and follows. And then pick 5 at random from the qualifying accounts. Honestly, I'd prefer to encourage gifting but I've got more work to do with that data so it's not ready for production yet but that will likely come later.

I think I could bang this out in javascript and completely open source it if this seems like something the community would use. Please comment to let me know if you'd use a script like this to run your own @steemmonsters contests.

Compounding Growth

I'm not kidding, I truly believe the @steemmonsters project directly drives value in the STEEM token more than anything else I have seen recently, no offense to any other projects. The outpouring of support and excitement from the community is truly unmatched and I'd like to see that growth not only continue but compound.

I want to see as many people on board as possible and I plan to do my part to help drive that growth and hope you will as well.

A few easy ways you can help.

• Encourage friends to buy a starter pack, or give them a few SBD/STEEM so they can! (I've asked about gifting starter decks so hopefully we may see that!)
• Follow @steemmonsters
• Follow me
• Resteem this post
• Write your own @steemmonsters posts!

I want to spread the word far and wide so please help me think of even more ways to get everyone involved. What I really want to hear about are new users showing up to Steem specifically to begin playing @steemmonsters.

Now that I think about it, I'll plan to write a post about creating new accounts for anyone who has friends too excited to wait for the normal Steemit faucet to slowly trickly out new accounts. Some users may not realize that they can create accounts for friends for as little as 0.1 STEEM and so we can directly onboard new accounts with a little guidance.

What's Next?

You tell me!

Basically, I'm going to continue building out my infrastructure to write every transaction from the blockchain to a local database and index it so we can analyze the data and build awesome tools. I actually started saying, "I don't write code" nearly 3 years ago at this point because I am far better at managing servers and building out scalable infrastructure so I'd like to focus on making the data more easily available to other developers.

I can see no easy way to just call any RPC endpoints and build applications around @steemmonsters since everything is inside a custom_json operation. I don't see any easy way to use the data directly from the blockchain so I'm trying to get this all into MySQL so it's way more accessible.

Let me know if there are any devs interested in something like this.

And beyond all that, whether you're a developer or just another @steemmonsters fan let me know of any and all ideas you have!

I'm eventually going to start opening these packs and I'll definitely steam that on DLive. I'm going to continue talking about @steemmonsters a lot so definitely consider giving me a follow to keep up with the updates. And I have quite a pile of packs here so I'm going to continue with the giveways for awhile!

If you've followed any of my other projects you know I absolutely love feedback from the community so please share your thoughts and let me know what other awesome things we can build together!