Hi Luke
Thank you for giving a detailed reply to this post. I guess what @donkeypong has laid out has been on the mind of a number of witnesses, including myself, over the past few months and so I'm glad to see it being discussed openly and respectfully.
I chose to support you as a witness prior to SteemFest 2, but on talking to you there and listening to your input at the event I felt I'd made a good choice, and that remains the case. I am though in agreement with @donkeypong that the continued 'promotion' of 'rival' blockchains/projects is not desirable to see here. A cheap example would be @dtube supporting a YouTube promo video - not that there are many of those these days.
Your actions on the blockchain, particularly when compared to other witnesses, tell me you are still heavily involved here. And I trust if that any point this were to change, you will let the community know of your status.
Cheers.
Thanks for your input and support. I really respect that you'll make decisions about me and hopefully all the witnesses based on what value we're actually bringing, not based on fears or concerns that haven't materialized and (from my perspective) may not be that plausible when it comes to what a DPOS block producer actually does.
My hope is both you and @donkeypong won't view this ecosystem as full of "rival" blockchains. My job as an educator and advocate for decentralized non-violent consensus systems will be to show a future where everyone competes on merit alone, not based on geographic regions, imaginary borders, or tribalistic partnerships. We have some serious challenges ahead of us with nation-state governments and central bank cartels. Together, we are unstoppable. If instead we fight over how much of the new pie we get to carve off as "ours" we may miss the point entirely.
When I talk about these things, I'm speaking from personal experience about what I think works in the marketplace. I ran FoxyCart for over ten years with my business partner before selling my business this year to focus full-time on cryptocurrency projects. During much of that time, if a user came to sign up for FoxyCart and during the signup process we determined they weren't a good fit for us, we'd actually send them along to Shopify (a "competitor"). This mentality always served us and our customers well. This experience informs my perspective on how we can all work together to get the best outcome for humanity looking for better solutions.