State of the Witness #5 - STEEM Issues, New RPC Node, Bitcoin Fork, Future Outlook
STEEM Issues
This week, STEEM experienced a pretty major issue when several of the RPC nodes services rely on went down. There are several theories as to why the nodes crashed in the first place, but few have much evidence backing them. Whatever the cause, the network experienced a small taste of what it is like to be overly reliant on a single company to provide infrastructure for the blockchain.
New RPC Node (https://rpc.steemliberator.com)
Because of the STEEM issues and the failure of the main RPC node, I decided it would be prudent to launch a new full RPC node that is available to the public. The node is ran and managed by me with support from @reggaemuffin and @buildteam. I would like to extend a huge shoutout to all of @buildteam for making amazing projects for the community. ( @minnowbooster, @steemsports, @steemvoter ... and more to come ) Be on the lookout for continuous development from the team, and be sure to get you some BUILDTEAM tokens while the price is affordable. it wont be for too long ;)
As of right now there is no cost or registration required to access the node at https://rpc.steemliberator.com. If the node gets abused with outrageous network demand, I will likely have to implement an authorization front-end to the node and manually assign people access once their account has been verified. Let's hope it doesn't come to this and I can leave the node fully public and unrestricted.
(The RPC node server costs $150-300/month depending on market prices and network usage. Please help support the server costs by giving this post a 100% upvote, a resteem, and voting for @netuoso as Witness. You may choose to donate STEEM. If you choose, please include a note in the memo field that you are donating for the server costs; you will be rewarded and your support returned ten-fold.)
Bitcoin Fork
Good news... the Bitcoin fork of 2017 went off without a problem (so far). Holders of Bitcoin on August 1st, 2017 were awarded with an equal amount of Bitcoin Cash after the fork. If you were one of the lucky ones that benefitted from the fork and dumped your Bitcoin Cash as soon as possible, you earned around 13-15% instantly... FO' FREE! Free money is alllllways agreeable with me.
Future Outlook (to the moon)
STEEM has a bright future. However, it also has some glaring issues. The scalability of the network seems to be unsure as of now. There is a lot of development still being done to improve the network for everyone, so if you have any great ideas come join us in https://steemit.chat in the #dev channel and start talking! Also, visit https://github.com/steemit/steem and file issues or pull requests to help the dev team and community.
Vote for @netuoso as Witness
- Go to the witness voting page on SteemIt.com
- Scroll to the bottom of the page and locate the vote box
- Input my name (netuoso) and hit vote.
- Give yourself a high-five for making such an awesome decision
I am currently Witness #51 and need a lot of support to breach into the top #50. Come on, Steemians. I need YOUR help!
This post has been resteemed by @minnowsupport courtesy of @netuoso from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ). Join us in Discord.
Upvoting this comment will help support @minnowsupport.
i like your post
Nice post. From me upvote.
Nice post. From me upvote.
I just voted on you:)
Thanks :)
Great stuff. You got my vote.
Thanks. Always nice getting support from decent sized investors.
The Bitcoin fork went smooth as silk. Bitcoin cash skyrocketed up to the moon, then came crashing down after a few days. BTC grew stronger than before,reaching the $3.2k mark.
Everything is exciting, especially for Steem. :)
Thanks for the information😉😉
The top witnesses should be funding this stuff not regular users - isn't that what they're getting paid for with block rewards?
It is my full intention to be a top 20 witness. Just because they got in that position doesn't mean they all have the knowledge or experience to run larger, more demanding servers.
Help me out with those witness votes and you will see me continue to give back. Btw, @gandalf is a top witness and he runs servers for the network too. Not all the witnesses are silent players.
If you want my vote, tell me what you plan on doing to reverse the domination of this site by a handful of users. I recently removed all my witness votes and only witnesses that are working towards this goal will be getting my vote in the future.
Well not sure if you are aware but I made a website that lets users get info in witnesses they vote for. This helps clean up the wasted votes.
I also run a full RPC node. This helps decentralize Steem and keep it running.
I've moved into position 51 and need some support to get to the top 50 so I can continue moving up while contributing open source code to the community.
On top of that I work with build team and minnowsupport to help minnows feel welcome in this community. How am I going to change the top witnesses? Not entirely sure I have that kind of influence but perhaps j will if people like you keep supporting me.
I commend you for the work you've done on creating external sites and running nodes to help keep steem running but you ignored what I asked for.
This site is currently dominated by a tiny minority of users with vast amounts of steem power. That steem power ensures that they get the lions share of rewards, increasing their SP faster than everybody else's. It's even more rigged than our traditional economic systems.
Do you agree that this is bad for the site? If so, what would you do to try and make the site fairer (let's assume you have the power to implement your plans)?
I don't believe in over taxing the wealthy simply because they are wealthy.
If smaller users want to earn more they have to put in the time and energy building a following. Some people join this site and get $15k on their first post (dollarvigilante). Is he supposed to be treated differently because he joined with a pre-established following?
A lot of the people you are talking about have been involved with Steem since the beginning. Isn't it a little unfair to show up to their party and demand you receive presents?
I think economic distribution is a problem in every single financial model in existence. If there was an easy way to solve the issue it would surely have been done already.
I didn't ignore anything. Maybe I didn't answer it to your expectations, but I did answer it. I have no ability to take away money from the rich to ensure the poor eat. People shouldn't have to be forced to do the right thing, however they should have the option to make the choice and decision theirselves.
I can only speak for myself here. If that isn't sufficient then I apologise but I won't speak for other people. I will work to help the distribution of funds just like I have been doing since day one with my support of Minnows.
I hardly ever give a non-100% vote to users. I don't care if you have $1 or $100k... I vote for quality content and promote the same. This is me doing my part to distribute the economic supply. I think you want me to come up with some clever idea of taking the power away from those in control right now, but I don't have such a plan. In fact, if those people teamed up they could basically silence me, despite my investment.
Steem is a risk of an investment and I put my money where my mouth is. The $40k in my account came from my profits from crypto. I am blessed to have made so much and realize not everyone will be as successful. However, again, I still don't see a need to take away from others.
There are 7.5% of users voting for witnesses because they want to give quizzes and questionnaires like this before voting. It takes thousands of minnow votes to match a single whale vote. So by abstaining from voting, YOU are ensuring those in power stay in power longer.
Thanks for answering my question and letting me know where you stand. Unfortunately, I'm not going to vote for you.
And that is why you are the reason those in power remain there. Have a good day.
@netuoso If you can tell me what witnesses are and why they are so important, I will happily vote for you. I keep seeing articles about voting for witnesses, but I have never seen anything non-technical that explained witnesses for blockchain dummies. Thanks.
Witnesses are people that spend their own time, effort, and resources to run servers that keep the STEEM network available for everyone.
Without witnesses, there would be no STEEM that shows how important they are.
A witness earns money in the form of STEEM for every block they "witness". They get to witness more blocks by receiving more votes. The higher up the list they go, the more money they make, and the more important it is for their server to be reliable and available.
Think of a witness as being a crossing guard at a school. For a lot of the time they just sit there and wait for kids to show up. During that time, they don't do much. When the kids show up it is imperative that the crossing guard is available to help them. If the crossing guard isn't there two times in a row they get fired and have to reapply for the job. Now... Anyone can be a crossing guard. But only a select few get the majority of the shifts and thus the majority of the money. Without crossing guards kids would die. (STEEM would cease to function)
Not sure how non technical that is. The mechanics of the blockchain are hard to explain.
Thank you. That was an easy to understand, for me, explanation, haha. Thanks for all you do. I figured out how to vote and voted for you.