Decentralization is not just a philosophical approach or a trendy word you can use at a geek party (and get noticed for that), it's also a pattern in writing code. As such, developers of Steem blockchain are trying to implement it by making the Steem blockchain server / nodes as modular as possible.

In other words, they are working on a transition that will make easier for those running a Steem node to choose which components they want to implement. As of now, the options for doing this are relatively limited. This leads to an increased usage resource and it makes it relatively expensive to maintain a full node (not as expensive as running a Bitcoin mining factory, that's true, but still relevantly expensive). Switching to a modular approach will give developers more options as to what to include or not in their Steem instances.

The code name of this new stage of Steem development is AppBase, and its availability was just announced a few hours ago in a Hive account@steemitdev post.

I will skip the technical stuff, as it is not relevant at the moment, but I will urge you to go and test this release. In order to do that, you have to use another site, called steemitstage.com. This site is run by Steemit inc and they implemented the same security measures as in Steemit.com, so it's safe to use.

If you spot something unusual, just leave a comment and I'll do my best to translate this into a bug report.

I just want to remind you that AppBase is one of the first steps Steemit announced it will make this year (together with the very much awaited launch of Smart Media Tokens) and, so far, they are on track.

Congrats, guys!

I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me Hive account@dragosroua.

	I know the feeling. That's why I created steem.supply, an easy to use and accurate tool for calculating your Steemit rewards