Memo
Memo is generally a short sentence written down to help your memory or to leave a message to a person in same office/organization.
In Steem platform, it means a short message which can be attacched to transferring Steem tokens. Payees are easily know the reason for payment by seeing attached memo. It was inherited from BitShares and is a great feature not implemented in major cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Litecoin and Ethereum.
Contents
Direct message
Steemit currently does not have a direct messaging function like that in other social networking service such as Twitter and Facebook. Instead, we can use memo as direct message. In current version, transferring with 0 STEEM/SBD is not permitted, so at least 0.001 STEEM/SBD is required to send memo. It is about 0.1 cent. If there is a reply by the memo, the expenses will be get back to your account.
Spam
Memo is often used for spam and fraud. Even if there is temptation like "send 1 SBD to me, and you'll get $2 worth upvote", you should never send it. There is also a case to request the SBD as fee for resteem your posts. Sometimes you may be guided to a phishing site.[1]
Steemian @netuoso has announced daily top 25 users who have large amount of bytes of memo they sent. [2] Many of users in the lists are not abuser, but almost memo spammers will be included in them.
Typical use cases
- Description of payment reason.
- Deposit to the exchange account.
- Direct message.
- Request to upvote bots.
- Spam
Encrypted memo
Memo can be encrypted by the memo private key. The encrypted memo can be read by only receiver, so it serves as private message.
To encrypt memo, login with memo key (or owner key/master password), and include # as a first character of your memo.[3] To read encrypted memo, memo private key (or owner key/master password) is required. When you logged in with posting key or active key, you cannot read encrypted memo. In that case, Steemit displays login to see memo in your wallet. Also steemd.com displays random phrase as encrypted memo.
If you change master password, encrypted memos will not be readable. To protect from leaking by cracking, you can delete messages which are include critical information by changing password.
In September 19, 2017, third party wallet Vessel supported to encrypted memo.[4]
When you deposit to Bittrex, you can encrypt memo to hide your Bittrex address.[4]
References
- ↑ SCAM ALERT and WHITE HAT COUNTER-STRIKE Written by @arcange on Steemit, October 10, 2017
- ↑ Top 25 Users That Sent Messages In Transfers Via Memos for 2017-10-11 Written by @netuoso on Steemit, October 11, 2017
- ↑ How to encrypt a memo when transferring Steem Written by @dantheman on Steemit, October 10, 2016
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Vessel 0.0.7 - Account Creation + Encrypted Memos (Bittrex) Written by @jesta on Steemit, September 19, 2017.
Links
- Steemit FAQ : How do I send money to another user? Retrieved in October 13, 2017.
- @good-karma : How to encrypt message or memo on Steem? September 13, 2017
- @arcange : Potential scammer reported October 12, 2017
- @netuoso : Top 25 Users That Sent Messages In Transfers Via Memos for 2018-01-10 January 11, 2018
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