gtg witness log

The vacation is over, it’s time to get back to work.
Yeah, right, as if you could call a two-week trip a vacation.
Do witnesses ever go on vacation?
In a way, they do.

(Thank you, @anomadsoul, for making sure I had Internet access to witness things all the time)

Judging by what has happened in recent weeks, my timing wasn’t exactly fortunate, but there is always a lot going on on Steem, so there’s perhaps never a good time for a bit of rest.

^{Full HD video rendered exclusively for my witness updates}

Witness reshuffling

Losing @freedom / @pumpkin vote just before my vacation trip made me lose the number-one position on the witness list. I believe the reason behind that was support for @emrebeyler, who was approved instead, which by the way seems a good choice (Take a look at his Tower: A REST API implementation on the top of Hivemind).

Blockchain of overreactions

However, some speculated that it might be related to the drama surrounding the (in)famous pull request made by @almost-digital.
That event, although it had no real influence over the network, triggered a crazy blockchain of overreactions.
There was a lot of FUD, drama, and misunderstandings…
but also a lot of valuable discussions and some positive outcomes.

There have been many posts devoted to this issue, so I wouldn’t like to repeat arguments that have already been voiced, but it’s hard not to mention such events at all.

Here are some of many posts worth reading, if there are still people who missed the story:

• Who likes hard forking?
• Urgent Community Petition: Steemit Inc. to Stop 34 Mil SP Powerdown!
• Deescalating and working towards a mutually beneficial solution
• Open Letter to Ned/Steemit
• Open letter about forking out Steemit
• The recent controversy between Steemit Inc and the community - the premine, control, and where it leads this blockchain

While authors of those posts might have different views on certain topics, and I don’t agree with everything they wrote, I believe they have one thing in common: they all care about the Steem ecosystem.

I’m not and I’ve never been a supporter of a hard fork that could disrupt the Steem platform or endanger the funds of its users.
Such a statement is redundant and not needed.
Witnesses are the guardians of the Steem. It's our job to provide the reliability and security of the network.
That being said, please don’t treat hard forks as a taboo.
There were multiple (20) hard forks on this chain, and we already had a few forks that are running different chains.
It’s OK to discuss and implement solutions to the problems that Steem is facing.
It’s OK to think beyond Steem.

^{*crowd murmurs*}

That’s how our civilization develops.
Steem can do a lot. And we can help it do even more.
I prefer improving things by addressing issues and solving problems - making sure that the grass is greener on my side to looking at a neighbor’s chain lawn.

New hope

As mentioned before, all that drama resulted in many valuable discussions about Steem, its governance, development, etc.

• @elipowell as a Managing Director of Steemit Inc, replacing @ned in most of the day-to-day operations of the organization is good news.
  I had the pleasure to meet @elipowell during the SteemFest³ in Kraków, Poland. I believe she will do well in this job.

• Huge powerdown has stopped (which is good for the promised transparency of Steemit Inc)

• The Steem Alliance was born, and a Working Group was elected:
  @ehiboss, @eonwarped, @inertia, @jedigeiss, @lemouth, @llfarms, @neoxian, @reggaemuffin, @shadowspub, @travisung, @twinner
  Please learn more about their efforts.

• Worker Proposal Fund => Steem Proposal System => Steem.DAO is being developed by @blocktrades.
  That’s a huge step towards speeding up and to decentralizing the development of the Steem blockchain and its ecosystem!

Boring stuff

On the technical side:

At the beginning of February, @therealwolf produced block 30'000'000 - Congratulations!

More Steem Pressure on the blockchain

I’m (finally!) gathering data for the next episode of Steem Pressure series.

Steem Chat

It’s not that easy to make Steem.Chat great again when you need to compete with Slack and Discord, while the chat’s upstream team is not exactly communicative ;-)
Slack is expensive and Discord simply sucks^(TM).
Steem.Chat, though not perfect, has several advantages that we’ll try to use.
These include over 84500 users, and it would be awesome to make them active again.

For some time, there have been tests of a bridge between the Discord server and a Steem.Chat.
If you want to check how it works, take a look at #MspWaves-Audience channel on a Steem.Chat or its corresponding channel on the Discord server (I can’t provide a link, because, you know what Discord does) ;-)

If you want run a Slack or Discord and want a bridge with Steem.Chat, feel free to contact me to set it up.

API node

I’m further restructuring my Steem API infrastructure, which includes getting rid of the tags/follows specialized node (which was running along with the hivemind node), moving the hivemind node to a faster machine, and improving routes to upstream servers.

Blockchain data

My always-up-to-date blockchain data is now available on both sides of the Atlantic, which makes downloading up to 25x faster in some cases.

State of Steem

Produced blocks	30,492,337
Accounts	1,223,220
Blockchain size	177 GB
Consensus state size	48 GB
Full node state size	it's complicated ;-)

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^{If you believe I can be of value to Steem, please vote for me (gtg) as a witness on Steemit's Witnesses List or set (gtg) as a proxy that will vote for witnesses for you.
Your vote does matter!
You can contact me directly on steem.chat, as Gandalf}

Steem On