holy crap! I was thinking in something more modest setup, I have laying around a core i5 2nd gen with 8GB of RAM and 512GB HDD (mechanical) ... I don't think it would work... or at least give it a try to see how it goes.
I already vote for your witness.
I think you will need is a heavy campaign promoting the vote and with some benefits or since you are a Developer, some tools to make Hiving easier. That's my 2 cents.
Thank you for the reply, some users didn't even bother to reply the messages they receive in their posts.