Hello Steemians, I’m Steve and I’m a blockchain engineer at Steemit, Inc. In the following video I chat with @andrarchy (Head of Communications at Steemit) about how I came to Steemit, what I’ve been doing since I joined the team about a year ago, and where I see Steem going in the future. I also talk about the work I’ve been doing more recently on SMTs, and what work remains to be done.
To learn more about who else is on the Steemit Team and what they do, you can visit the “About” page on steem.com.
My Backstory
I started getting into computers and programming at about the age of 12 and I was hooked, fascinated instantly. I started fooling around with Linux and bash scripting. It was a hobby of mine for a few years, but I didn’t yet consider it my profession. I went to college for business, general stuff, and I got a business-like job when I got out of college.
But I was never quite happy with my career. I really enjoyed creating things and the beauty of software is that with no materials, except for your brain, you can create beautiful things. That’s why I decided to turn my hobby into my profession and went back to college for computer science.
After working on Content Management Systems, followed by a giant program for commodity trading for 5 years, I wanted to move into something innovative. I started to get into cryptocurrencies and saw the opportunity to work in Steemit, and work on the Steem blockchain, so I jumped all over that opportunity. I studied hard for my interview, got the fundamentals down, and was eventually hired. Then I jumped in on the chain.
At Steemit
I started with little things like bugs, and some little tiny SMT features to get my feet wet. Then I worked on MIRA after what I call “The Reckoning.” Cost cutting measures needed to be taken, so we revamped the backend database with RocksDB, which was a big project. Now I’m back, laser-focused, trying to get SMTs out.
Completed Work on SMTs
When I first got hired I did work around “NAIs” which is Numeric Asset Identifiers. It’s a unique ID for an SMT. SMT names will not be on the chain, they will be identified by a number that represents the SMT. They come from a pool of available numbers so that you can’t claim vanity numbers like “0000000000” or “123456.” So I implemented that pool and I fixed some issues in the NAI code.
After that I moved to MIRA, which dramatically reduced the cost of running Steem nodes by moving the blockchain from RAM to commodity hardware. You know that trick where you pull the tablecloth and all the plates stay on the table? Implementing MIRA was like pulling the tablecloth off … and then putting it back on with everything staying the same.
Ongoing SMT Work
After finishing up the work on MIRA a month or two ago, I moved back to working on SMTs. My goal, at the time of filming this interview, was to finish work on the ICO process (launching an Initial Coin Offering) and I’m happy to announce that work is now complete. All the code needed to create an SMT, set up the parameters, launch the ICO, allow contributions, evaluate whether the ICO was a “success” (sufficient contributions were made in the specified window of time) or failure, and launch the token, is now complete!
I don’t foresee major hurdles to us shipping SMTs. The remaining work is now mostly around Proof-of-Brain, token emissions, and how RCs are handled within the SMT ecosystem. There may be some opportunities to simplify this code, but I don’t see any hurdles that will stop us from a release relatively soon. At that point focus will shift to coordinating a hardfork with the Witnesses and the rest of the community.
Delays?
The main thing that has been standing in the way of releasing SMTs isn’t some impossible-to-solve technical problem. All we needed was a block of time where we could be focused on SMTs and not be pulled in a million directions. Many things happened in the past few months which required we divert our attention away from SMTs like HF20, MIRA, the EIP (Economic Improvement Proposal), the SPS/Steem.DAO (Steem Proposal System), and Testnet. The real problem is that is context-swapping is expensive. Moving from one project to another makes it difficult to stay on track.
Finishing SMTs
All we need to finish SMTs is the time to focus, and then it will get done. Aside from some minimal Testnet support, that’s largely where we are at right now. Thanks to the work being done on Tesnet, numerous bugs have been found and patched. That means that we can be reasonably certain that the roll out of HF21 will be very smooth, and after that, it’s going to be clear sailing for SMTs.
My Vision for Steem
I think there’s a lot of “alt” coins that provide little to no value, and some of them have market caps greater than Steem. I think that will change when there is a shake up and a lot of these alt coins die off. Steem is one of the few coins that actually provides a service, performs a function, and has real world possibilities right now. I think it’s not yet understood by the masses, but marketing and getting listed on Coinbase can help with that.
I want to see a mobile presence for Steem. I’m a big fan of censorship-resistance so I want mobile clients that interact directly with the chain, that way nothing can be censored. That’s what I want to see … tomorrow. But things take time. We’ll get there Steemians. In the meantime...
Steem On!
You are a true force! Thankful every day for you and your brain. Great post.
This was mentioned in the post:
Is there a reason why we are not on coinbase yet?
I had Bit coin connect wallet last year.how do I transfer my funds to a different coin?. I'm a sports card collector / blogger I like talking about sports cards
Not sure what you are asking here? You want to convert bitcoin to a different coin, like steem?
Great work! I am very excited that SMTs are basically ready to go.. I am sure it takes time to implement, but it is definitely worth the wait!!
I had Bit coin connect wallet last year.how do I transfer my funds to a different coin?. I'm a sports card collector / blogger I like talking about sports cards
Second that!
Every time I try and use steemd.com to look up my comments and stuff, they never seem to appear anymore, & I get this message below instead:
And then I always get this message too!
I also always run into this message below!
#Time for me to stop voting for them for witness, I think they are corrupt! Must be the global blacklist or something else going on!
I only vote for 2 witnesses, now this new removal will take me down to one! Un-Voting @steemd in the morning if my stuff is still broken! I will add @parriko for witness to replace @steemd! This is getting ridiculous, there is not going to be any way for me to access my account any more if everybody keeps blocking me like this! #onmyown! Seriously this is all @themarkymark’s fault! He’s the one doing all this to me, slandering me calling me the troll. Truth is he’s way worse than me, and he is the real troll! Just go look at the vote history and see how irresponsible he is flagging all my posts for months. Pretty soon I’m just going to concentrate on downvoting everybody who votes for @themarkymark for witness, no excuses! I’m going to start making my list!
Also anybody I see voting for him will be eligible for my downvote too! I don’t know what else to do but try to get rid of him as a witness! So if anybody out there wants to help, just make sure you don’t vote for @themarkymark for witness! That would help me a lot! Here is an example below from today.
Someone send me a list of everyone voting for markymark! I’m going to have to go after them one by one! Heres another:
Ok I guess I got time for one more, he even downvotes my sunset photography:
In the morning I’m just going to add more and just keep posting this over and over every single day as the list grows until somebody helps me out and listens! Goodnight!
Follow @coininstant for more!
Awesome, thanks for this! Any chance we can get some support for lowering the number of witness votes per account from 30 to say 10, or even 5? The top 20 witnesses are all being selected basically by a few of the largest stake holders which is doing the opposite of decentralizing the chain.
I personally would be in favor of such a change. I think that starting a discussion about making a change like this would be a good next step.
At the same time, we need to stay focused on the release of SMTs and I would not want to see any other changes taking precedence over it at this time.
I agree. I think SMTs and Communities need to be the top priority, over anything and everything else.
By the way, what is the ETA on these things (SMTs)? A month or two? Longer? What is your best guess?
There is no official release date as of yet. We will likely be posting burn up charts that can give more insight into SMT development.
Unofficially, we are making a really strong push to have something to show for STEEMFEST.
Awesome, that is great news! I sincerely hope you have something to show by steemfest then! :D
Very interesting idea.
I think we need to make this change as soon as possible.
I will listen to this interview on my drive home in 2 hours.
We really need a price spike to get investors back in, this downstream in satoshis and dollars is discouraging.
Hopefully SMT’s create the same ICO style explosion in price that Ethereum experienced
Stevie baby! Finally some (much deserved) face time! ;)
Thanks brother, great to hear from you!
What is the main reason for not being listed?
I can't speak from experience, because I spend most of my time coding, but I would assume the competition to get Coinbase's attention is fierce.
I question some of the latest coins that were chosen to be listed on Coinbase. Unfortunately deep pocket money must be the basis for their latest picks.
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Same here. Some have/had lower market caps than steem when they were listed and also the issue of whether or not they are a security is more murky than that of steem. Not sure why we are not on there yet?!
I keep hoping Steem gets listed on Coinbase....
We are a working blockchain, s I’m not sure why we are not a priority??
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There are lots of working blockchains not listed on there. I would think given the other things steem has going for it, IE one of the most used by real people, didn't do an ICO, sets up perfectly for Coinbase Earn etc. would have it near the top of the list.
I agree, we should be at the top of the list, but my gut feeling tells me we are not.
Then with HF21 coming they probably don’t want to touch Steem.
Someone reminded me that after HF’s the exchange wallets need to be updated and are offline.
Last year Binance was offline for almost month, and that will just kill Steem’s price, and we don’t need that happening now!
With all this “talk” about on-boarding and light wallets yesterday, I wonder where we are going.
I made a comment on the on-boarding post yesterday, about my friend that is trying to get her account setup and she is so lost.
I am afraid she has lost her account.
I was trying to help her, texting information...... She hand wrote her master password......it’s so easy to miss one letter 🙄
If we go to light wallets, will exchange’s lower our priority to list Steem?
Posted using Partiko iOS
I had Bit coin connect wallet last year.how do I transfer my funds to a different coin?. I'm a sports card collector / blogger I like talking about sports cards
I had Bit coin connect wallet last year.how do I transfer my funds to a different coin?. I'm a sports card collector / blogger I like talking about sports cards
I’m not sure how your wallet works, but I’m sure there is a withdrawal button.
I
Posted using Partiko iOS
On many exchanges it comes down to greasing palms. Not sure if coinbase has a base listing fee or not.
If Profit >> Price of the grease
DO IT :D
P.S. This is why crypto must be centralized (*oh, nooooooo)
with a single strong figure, with elan, with magic, with vision
and with a lot of coins
Thanks for working on Steem and doing this interview :D Steemit Inc starts to come a live this way ;-) Cheers!
thanks @jackmiller for sharing this post, on #pypt @pypt
Always good to see who works on Steemit and what they are up to!
Also, thanks for joining us at The Witness Chat recently on The Ramble.
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Hi bluefinstudios the SHADE tokens are on the way.
Thanks for sharing SHADE
To view or Trade SHADE visit steem-engine.com
Thanks for all this info. This is great.
@Gerbino could you please answer to me the following questions? I will really appreciate it.
Also, what are the estimations in costs for an ICO performed under SMT's system? So far in Steem-Engine, making a token which can actually get a real use it is around $600 minimum. So it would be nice also to now if all the ICO's in steemit will have a cost in STEEM? Another thing that comes into my mind is to know if the SMT's tokens will be capable of act as an autonomous blockchain. That last question and pardon my ignorance in those matters, is because if the SMT's tokens will be capable of being listed in exchanges as well? Maybe all this development will make STEEM Blockchain as Ethereum where right now we have trading pairs as ETH/USD, ETH/many tokens created under Ethereum. So I imagine something like trading pairs as STEEM/USD(in which case they are being traded as we all know) and also STEEM/any SMT token.
Thanks in advance for your hard work and for your time.
I think that depends on what your intention is. I would wait/use SMTs if I wanted to list my tokens on popular exchanges directly; especially if the exchanges I'm considering already lists STEEM. The reason is that if an exchange lists STEEM already, then all the infrastructure is in place to support an SMT. I don't deal with exchanges directly, but I imagine that one of the major hurdles an exchange must do is setup the infrastructure to support a new blockchain. If your token has volume, and the exchange already has infrastructure setup to support STEEM, it's a no brainer to add an SMT pairing.
ICOs are currently $1 to create but are not finalized and are subject to change.
It is very possible to see STEEM act as a pairing between SMTs, there are talks about a decentralized exchange directly on the chain. But first things first, right?
Really great info here. Thanks for all your work.
Has burning a certain amount of Steem been considered as part of the ICO cost. If not, please suggest it. I personally would like to see more Steem uses/sinks.
What did you see in steemit that made you get into it?
Peoples time and ideas are worth money. Traditional social media sites take your work and profit off it, sharing nothing back to the creator. Steemit shares value back to the users who make it a reality. This is a game changing paradigm shift in my opinion.
Traditional social media has centralized control over censorship. The STEEM chain itself has the ability to mitigate this issue and I think this feature has great potential and should be exercised.
STEEM is at the forefront of the cryptocurrency/blockchain revolution, STEEM is also open source. Both of these things are incredibly attractive to me as someone who loves technology.
Thank you for this response.
Steem and Steemit are the best..... I made $40,000 in 6 months here simply sharing my artwork and photography.
I had Bit coin connect wallet last year.how do I transfer my funds to a different coin?. I'm a sports card collector / blogger I like talking about sports cards
no censorship would be nice.
Image (or post) not shown due to low ratings
I can view anything here simply click reveal comment etc.
who guards the guardians?
I agree. :)
Look away everyone, nothing to see here. This is not censorship. ;)
Just screwing with you @baah, no true hard feelings intended. :)
this post was hidden due to low ratings
this post was hidden due to low ratings (not by me)
which further proves my point that Steemit is NOT resistent to censorship.
In fact I'd suggest that the existence of the Flagging mechanism is evidence that Steemit has built in censorship.
Look away everyone, nothing to see here. This is not censorship. ;)
I'm relatively new on the platform, but this makes it clear to me several aspects of which I had some doubts.
There are a lot of people who are committed to the project and no one can think that this is done to make it worse. On the contrary, all this work is for us to take that leap in quality that we all need.
On the other hand the invasion of new currencies in the market through steem engine what they do is promote disunion. At this time more than ever we must remain calm and make steem the blockchain that we all want.
NO to censorship.
Greetings from Venezuela.
Hurry up~ plz
Let me know how many posts can be posted weekly or daily, about the post on the Steemit.
Well i find the answer to every question from youtube but i got no answer from youtube then i would be very grateful if you help me.
I like your account to answer my question.
Because you've been working on it for quite some time.
@steem.orignal
Good information, build confidence in STEEM.
I think it is the first label that should be used.
I will begin to cure everything that is labeled with steem.
Thank you.
Great reply my good friend here on steemit
Nice work. Keep it up. 👏👏👏
Good post
Nice to meet you here on steemit community am new a member from Uganda africa i need your help and advices about this platform
Thank you for this response.
Ayúdame con un me gusta o un mensajito para poder comenzar a ganar algo de dinero por favor.
Thks for the work you are doing @gerbino for the Steem community. You nail it and I agree 100% that Steem is the only token out there providing a service that people really want. Many altcoin with die. Price and Value are not the same. Steem On!
Thanks for all this info. @gerbino
Post is very lovely and encouraging.
Hope all is well at the end. Waiting for steem SMT. Will see you soon .....
Thank you this great Reply
God bless you
yes
you true.
অনেক ভাল
Thanks for your service man 🙌
Great post and thanks for laying all this information out so clearly. Coinbase...that would be a step forward, for sure! Really looking forward to SMT's
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Thanks for the hard work.
thanks Gerbino.
Thanks for the great post! Steem is not on coinbase, but could i send steem dollar to the wallet? Sorry, im new on steem :-)
Very nice, thanks for the peak into your accomplishments and perspective.
1,2,3, gute Laune
I enjoyed reading this, tho I didn't watch the video but it was nice read. Thanks and best of best in your codings!
Thank you Steve!
@gerbino best of luck with hf21 testnet stuff and then moving onto SMTs. Wonder how they will differ from Steem Engine tokens. Heard this on #pypt
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Hi solominer the SHADE tokens are on the way.
Thanks for sharing SHADE
To view or Trade SHADE visit steem-engine.com
Thank you for all the work your are doing for STEEM. I see that their are a number of folks working furiously (I get e-mails from GitHub showing the work going on). Appreciate your devotion to this blockchain revolution of ours.
Have a great week. This post was shared on #PYPT by @jackmiller [witness] for the STEEM Blockchain.
My pleasure sarge! o7
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Hi sgt-dan the SHADE tokens are on the way.
Thanks for sharing SHADE
To view or Trade SHADE visit steem-engine.com
Great to know about the person behind those commits ... All the very best
These interviews are helping community to start having confidence in steem team. But do do get external resources into the cycle for much more effective and efficient development.
I want to become problem solver like you, and am working toward that vigorously
amazing vision of steemit the future is there :)
rise me up looks like a good service. do you think it's convenient to make to every post?
Thank you so much !
Thank you for the update, and for all your hard work on the blockchain! 🙌 I am very glad that @jackmiller shared this link during the PYPT curation show in TheRamble discord server! 😃
!SHADE 1
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Hi thekittygirl the SHADE tokens are on the way.
Thanks for sharing SHADE
To view or Trade SHADE visit steem-engine.com
I think all Steemians are disappointed with how the coin is ranking. I can remember it being in the top 20 or even higher. It has more utility than most above it.
I am still not sure where SMTs will take us, but that seems to be the main vision. I want to see more people using Steem and the communities feature is what I look forward to.
Have fun
Hi, how can I help?
Great Job!
This is a bit over my head, but I can appreciate your tenacity and applaud you for finding your vision and working in something you are passionate about! I agree with you that the Steem coin will do well as our community provides value. Hoping I can contribute as you have!
always fascinating, when children with 13 years already start a big deal
I couldn't agree with you more, Steem, for me is the only one that is working right now, has a large user base, has a large amount of dApps available (some of which are tremendous) and shows real potential, Steem is miles ahead in terms of blockchain evolution, not only for devs and entrepreneurs but socially too, most of the other ones are on a promise, so yes Steem on indeed!!!