If you're gonna make an announcement, may as well knock it out of the park. For today's witness update, we're here to let you know that we've upgraded all the things.

Hey all, Jeff here! Hopefully I've grabbed your attention and gotten the important points of this post across for those of you who are already thinking, "TL;DR." If you're wanting some more information, keep reading to find out more about the upgrades @crimsonclad and I have applied to the full public RPC node, Steemit.chat, and witness servers that have gone live this week. Full STEEM ahead!

We're huge believers in STEEM. We want to provide resources that will best support growth and stability for all users, and that has meant making sure to stay ahead of the curve on hardware costs and community initiatives. We've always done our best to upgrade early and minimize downtime. We're hoping to see more and more of these resources provided by those who are able to, to help share the load and strengthen performance for all. Right now, there really could be a lot more RPC nodes especially to help speed up all of the services running on this blockchain.

STEEMD.MINNOWSUPPORTPROJECT.ORG Full Public RPC Node is Now Upgraded to 512GB

 

About five months ago, we announced that we were pairing with the Minnow Support Project to provide a new full public RPC node for everyone to use. Since then, this is our second major upgrade, and we've been busting our butts to make sure we can afford any charges that come up. We take care of all management and pay for half of all costs personally, while the awesome team at MSP works hard to kick in the other half. (If you get a chance, pop in there to thank the witnesses and moderation team — they are tireless!) This is a great setup, as costs are climbing along with the requirements, and we're able to do a lot more together to provide a fast, reliable node that will keep up with what the blockchain requires. Minnowsupport uses this node, along with our personal witness projects, and you are welcome to as well!

RPC Server Details

https://steemd.minnowsupportproject.org

wss://steemd.minnowsupportproject.org

• 24-core 48-thread AMD Ryzen

• (DEDI-DE) 512GB DDR4 RAM

• 50TB BW @ 1gbps network

• All plugins enabled

Steemit.Chat Servers are Now Upgraded for Better Speed and Reliability, Plus Email Fixes

 

One of the whirlwind projects that has kept us beyond on our toes has been taking over the day to day maintenance and all costs associated with running Steemit.Chat. Going from users to admins has been quite the journey... we've been working for just about three weeks now, getting to know what chat needs to be better and working with the awesome moderation team there to learn the ropes. As of right now, you'll see:

• Faster speeds across the entire chat

• Majorly decreased downtimes

• Thanks to the always amazing @GTG, we've gotten the long standing problem with registration emails not sending out all fixed up

@FollowBTCNews Witness Server Upgrades to 64GB

 
RPC nodes aren't the only resources that need to keep up with the blockchain. We're in the process of upgrading all witness servers to 64GB to make sure there's no chance we have any outages. The above two sets of upgrades were our priority as we saw decreased performance in the RPC and chat due the explosive growth in those services. Now that the dust has settled, we're getting a leg up on making sure we're ready to keep producing blocks without missing a beat.

Upcoming Witness Server Details

• (DEDI-DE) 64GB DDR3 RAM

• 20TB BW @ 1gbps network

We work full time on Steem and Steemit related projects, leadership, and witness functions.

When I say we, I mean myself and my witness partner @crimsonclad. We're two buds who met through a shared interest in crypto and blockchain technologies, with two diverse and complimentary skillsets, who haven't even tried to kill each other yet! We hope we've been twice as effective at fulfilling our witness duties. You'll also notice we're both working on posting more, personally. We're not just leaders and supporters... we're also regular users and content creators. To all of you who have already voted for our witness, we're always available to make sure you continue to feel confident in your vote. If you haven't decided, take a look at our work, let us know what you'd like to see, and allow us to earn it.

If you'd like, please consider helping our witness FollowBTCNews keep these resources running and maintained.

We have been prepared from day one to take on the costs of being contributing witnesses, and are committed to making the Steem blockchain better and more reliable. With our own earnings going into more servers, more tools, and a top-tier RPC node with support from the leadership team at the Minnow Support Project, we have been able to do an awesome job so far! If you want to get involved, please consider voting for our witness FollowBTCNews, to help us offset the costs that will grow as the usage of these resources increase.

I'm Jeff, and I'm @followbtcnews.
I run a top 30 Steemit witness, along with my project partner @crimsonclad. Feel free to reach out to us on STEEM Chat or Discord any time! If we haven't earned your vote, please consider our tools, our work on Discord, and STEEM.Chat — place a vote for followbtcnews if you feel we're doing a good job.