Long exposure shot of a lit-up drone flying around at night! Photo by me.
This was a very exciting (and busy!) week for me. The first thing I have to say, as a witness canditate for many months now, I am proud to say that I have made it into the running as a top19 witness! If you're curious to know more about what this means, @pfunk wrote a great guide here. I wasn't planning on doing a witness update for a while, but there's a lot of stuff happening quite fast, so I figured I'd make a post.
1. Accomplished the past week:
- Did nothing to my price feed in regards to @dan's post about backing the steem dollar.
- Okay, this is a bit of cynicism/sarcasm. :) Some witnesses have made an entire post to announce that they have done this; I have actually already been doing this, and trying to garner attention about his, for two months. See this post here.
- In regards to the %apr, I have adjusted mine back down to 10 because @smooth suggested that the interest rate need to be more well known, not higher, and I agree. With the rate now shown in the wallet, it's clear they are taking steps to improve this!
- I have been laying out an idea to bring back liquidity rewards in a form that will hopefully help the SBD peg. I chatted with @arhag about it, and we discussed some very promising ideas. However I need to think about it a LOT more, as issues like self trading and market manipulation are not the only things we want to solve, but also relative fairness.
- I really doubt you missed this post, as it was a massively trending one!Us at @steemcleaners announced our stance on Anonymity and Identity.
- I talked with @roelandp and @firepower about @steemfest. Stay tuned for this!
- I combined a lot of my bot work, and restructured it to improve failure scenarios. There should be much less @cheetah / @seraph downtime, and better responsiveness in failure scenarios (e.g. making too many comments/votes too quick.)
- Unrelated to steemit, but I completed a large grant application for my PhD. Wish me luck!
- Improved my vote follow bot. I also decided to send about half my vote power to project @curie.
- Upgraded my witness structure to include a fail-over backup, which is important if I stay a top19.
- @cheetah made 224 comments this past week, or about 32 a day. One again, this is down from last month. Are we seeing an improvement in content quality on steemit? Also, community members have started calling spam accounts "cheetah snacks", which I find hilarious.
- As always, I continue to work hard as both a @steemcleaners member and the project leader.
2. Upcoming projects/goals:
- I hope to flesh out the liquidity reward concept I have in mind. Since this is not high up on the list of things for the devs to be concerned about (lots of more important stuff to do!), I hope to work out something nice before it gets higher on their to-do list.
- There is some testing I want to do with @cheetah to improve content detection. I also really want to do photo detection for the photography tag, and I might work on getting that integrated this week.
- I am trying to figure out the cause of unlinkable blocks from my witness node. Both @jesta and I have this problem (we're both new to the witness list, so we haven't had time to figure all these little things out!). Fortunately, the problem is quite rare, out of thousands of blocks its only caused a handful of misses.
- And of course, continued work within @steemcleaners.
3. Thoughts from this past week:
Wow, are we ever moving fast. Resteeming was announced, and I have to say I am already seeing a drastic change in the way I see and curate content. Although I want to see the ability to turn off resteems from certain people but keep their blog posts on my feed, I am certain these changes will all be fleshed out in time.
There was some discussion on, I guess, "rigging" of the witness list by Steemit employees.Due to this, I firmly believe that the community votes do matter.sure, he got moved in quickly. But that doesn't mean he doesn't have community support, it just means we were forwarding the inevitable The data was interesting (it also highlited to me that at the time, I was one of the few without an employee vote), but the post was inherently flawed in my perspective. They somehow implied that users needed employee support to gain a spot on the witness list, but this was inherently contradicted by @steemed having no employee votes and being a top19 at the time. Although he is no longer in the top19, it was because he was voted out by a community member, not an employee. Although yes, the big vote that put me in the top19 was an employee vote (thank you @ned!), it would have been entirely achievable with only community votes -- if @blocktrades voted for me as a witness, for example, I would have also have gotten in. On this topic, I also chatted about @charlieshrem in steemit.chat, where I basically said ''. I also firmly believe @charlieshrem has the ability to do great things for steemit, and I am glad he got placed on the list as well. I am also happy to see @steve-walschot and @gtg have a shot now -- it's nice to see some change every once in a while, to support different people and projects!
4. Plans/usage of witness funding:
All rewards, including my witness funding, are distributed back to the community. Read about how @steemcleaners does this, here. As I promise, 100% of my powered down witness funding will be sent to @steemcleaners, to increase the reward pool (starting this week!). This is of course assuming I stay a top19 witness. Don't forget, you can also support the members and non-members helping, by upvoting the posts that the @steemcleaners account makes.
Special thanks to @smooth and @nextgencrypto who have been funding @steemcleaners weekly -- hopefully, if I stay as a full time witness representing @steemcleaners, they will be able to have more funding to bootstrap other awesome community projects.
I hope to be 100% transparent with my status as a witness, so that includes my funding. I'll be sure to listen to the community if there's another place to put some of the funding. Of course, the power down is not high until I have been a witness for a while, so I am just thinking out loud. Who knows if I will be in the top19 tomorrow.
5. Questions for you, the community:
I have one question this week, that I hope to recieve feedback from people about. In @steemcleaners we have been debating our reward system to community members. Currently, we give out rewards in the form of SBD. However, an alternative is to reward users in Steem, Powered directly to their account (Same dollar value, just in the form of Power). This could be advantageous for two reasons:
- It reduces the immediately liquid reward from people who may be "witch hunting", in a way which may not be in the best interest of steemit.
- It increases the potential that members helping @steemcleaners are doing it with long term support of steemit in mind.
What do you think, should @steemcleaners make this change?
Hey @anyx, for number 5 I do think giving rewards in Steem Power is a good idea.
I concur
I have to admit that I am still mystified by the witnesses, but I made a decision last night to learn more and your links are going to be very helpful to me. Kind of like following bread crumbs of knowledge.
I don't know how much my vote for witnesses count, but I've actually been going through the list, visiting their blog pages and their stated agendas. I've also been researching who they vote for. I must admit I've been leaning toward the witnesses that I see actively participating with posts and comments because I feel like they have a better pulse on the community heartbeat. It's the only way I know how to properly vet a witness. I know I've got a lot to learn so any direction on reference material would be very much appreciated.
As for your question. If you are referring to distribution in SP, as opposed to SBD and STEEM (I got a little confused on that part), then I'm all for it! Any opportunity to increase vote strength and keep a civil head is a good thing.
BTW - GOOD LUCK on your grant application! Pursuing your PhD and doing all of this...WOW! When do you sleep?
..Sleep?
HAHAH! How did I know that would be the response? :)
I wrote a general overview guide for a Steemit user to understand. https://steemit.com/steemit-guides/@pfunk/a-full-steemit-user-s-guide-to-steem-witnesses
Let me know if there's anything confusing as I think I'll be making an updated version.
I feel pretty confident with my activity on Steemit so I wanted to take my personal learning to the next level to get a deeper understanding of how big this network of people is. I have been taking some of your suggestions and reading through the witnesses' curriculum vitae, if you will.I've got it on bookmarks @pfunk. Thanks!
I think it's very important as a community member to be well-informed about what witnesses do and really vet them before making a selection. I kind of consider it my Steemit civic duty.
I would push for the change in the @steemcleaners reward system (Steem or SP instead of SBD).
Congratulations on Top 19 and managing to juggle advanced studies and all you're doing on Steemit. I want to say clearly that I think you are contributing a great deal to Steemit, with @seraph being the latest tool that solves problems and reduces conflicts. It worked beautifully with the serial flagger who flagged me last week. Keep up the great work.
"Unrelated to steemit, but I completed a large grant application for my PhD. Wish me luck!"
Best of Luck. how can we help? ^^
and
we all know you are open and dedicted and have been for ever, that's why we follow you.
thanks man. ^^
Wow, it looks like being a Steemit witness is your full time job! (Though I understand that it's not, especially looking at your point about the PhD application:) good luck with that!
I am sending you my vote for witness.
And regarding the rewards for @steemcleaners, I support the idea of powering up the users instead of sending SBD. Might not be so popular as an idea for those who are looking for more liquidity and faster cash out, but users who are actively engaged in building the community and helping Steemit grow should be fine with the long-term rewards.
Regarding (5), give the option to either take SBD or SP. Just use a discount on the first, or a premium on the second (in other words, invalidate the "Same dollar value" part, through incentives to do the second).
Psychologically speaking, a premium on SP sounds better.
Hm, interesting thought! However, it's a bit hard to contact 50-100 people each week to ask them how they want to be rewarded! :(
There may be some workarounds
Send a message to everyone who has participated (or is pretty active) with the two options
Default to SBD but reduce payout by a %. If you have a price list for services offered, update it to reflect this change. If asked, say you can offer an SP payout with a % boost. You can also put it on the price list (if there is one).
Automate the process of asking through some kind of webform that cleaners have to fill (bullet option on what they want to be paid). Then issue the payments depending what they've filled in the form.
If there are obstacles to any of the above, adjust accordingly to circumvent :P
Hm, yeah a web from with a default action could be a way to do this. I'll put it in internally as an option, thanks! :)
Congrats on making it to the top 19!
Awesome @anyx, I have been a supporter of you and @cheetah from the beginning :-).
One thing I would ask, re the liquidity rewards, is can you speak with @hisnameisolllie, as he has some great ideas for those and I think you two should get together.
You can check out his interview in the Orconomist, which also links to his original liquidity rewards post.
Thanks and keep up the good work!
https://steemit.com/orconomist/@cryptogee/the-orconomist-first-edition-making-waves-in-a-sea-of-steem
Cg
Lots and lots and lots of luck!!!! :-)
I am not a steemcleaner. But i agree that if steemians are in the long run, steem power is better ;-)
Congrats on getting into top 19!!!
Hey, I noticed you on the witness list today and I wanted to say congratulations! I thought you should have been on there long ago!
Thank you Stella! :)
Congratulations for moving into the top 19 @anyx!
I think for number 5 - SBD is the most attractive choice for the Steemcleaners support. I think they are doing a good job for a great cause and deserve to have the flexibility to Steem up or to satisfy own current demands.
Best Regards,
puffin
Keep up the great work.
Good luck with your PhD grant application. I know they can be a pain to get.
Also well done for getting into the top 19. It is well deserved.
As for the Steemcleaners issue I think that paying in SP makes sense for the reasons you mention and also to encourage long term investment in the platform by taking the SBD out of the equation.
People can still power down if they really want to remove their rewards and sell.
!cheetah ban