Greetings and salutations!
today, we bring you all another chapter of the witnesswatch report program.
Notice and apology
Thanks to everyone who has supported the project thus far, thanks to everyone who has been on so far, @adamm and @aggroed, thanks for coming on board, thanks for showing us what being a witness means to you!
Due to situations beyond my control, I was not able to bring the witnesswatch report yesterday Wednesday, my laptop has a little fault and I would like to apologise for the delay.
Notice! As from next week Wednesday, major changes are coming to the program, changes I feel are necessary to bring this program to full steemit attention. Hopefully the way we arrange our interviews will be addressed, as well as getting the desired feel we want. To really showcase the witnesses.
We are working on a podcast channel as well as a youtube channel, but those are still a way off.
What is WitnessWatch Report?
Witnesswatch report can also be seen in the following light;
- First of, this project hopes to give everyday users and average steemians a look into what drives and motivates the witnesses which run our transactions, which witness is worthy of our votes and the plans these witnesses have for the steemit community both now and the future.
The second reason I can say for the creation of this report is to keep witnesses on their toes at all times, to create healthy competition between witnesses.
so before we start, lets clear the formalities, and bring about an introduction.
Introducing @followbtcnews and @mckenziegary!
Both of these guys are free jovial individuals who lowkey help out on the steemit platform. They are quite prominent in the minnow support base, helping out.@followbtcnews recently won a medal for being part of the creation of the minnow support website.
@ mckenziegary is the mind behind the @ftgu (from the ground up) movement!
The interview: @mckenziegary shows us what a witness is and isnt!
Letting @mckenziregary introduce himself and asking about a fun fact from him, he said;
- Some of the things I enjoy are food, learning, technology, nature and spending time with my family. A fun fact about me is that I used to run track & field. Currently, I am campaigning to raise enough to get to Steemfest2 so that I can film a D.A.C Vlog there and bring @ftgu to Lisbon Portugal!
@davidthelad: Thanks for the intro, looking at your blog https://steemit.com/@mckenziegary, some answers can already be gotten as to who you are as a witness, but what drove/inspired you to becoming a witness?
- I was driven to setting up my witness because of my passion to learn more about Steemit and the Steem blockchain. When I first found Steemit I aspired to know how everything worked and after posting for a little while I wanted to support the community and set up a witness. I was inspired to run a witness by reading articles about past witnesses and miners. Setting up a witness felt like a necessary and natural step to delve deeper. I still don't know how everything works but by setting up a witness I feel a step closer. I intend to learn more, have a greater impact and continuously improve on myself, my content and the Steemit community.
@davidthelad: When did you start your witness campaign and how long have you been a witness?
- I started my witness campaign 06/14/2017, so I've been a witness for a little over a month and it has been a great experience so far.
@davidthelad: nice, relatively new, what are your challanges right now about being a witness, and is there a way to solve these challanges?
- One of the challanges that I face is that I am self taught and in no way an expert coder or anything like that. When I wanted to learn how to set up a witness, I had to take the time to learn some CLI commands, talk to other steemians like @theprophet0 and @someguy123 and make it happen through trial and error. Currently a problem that I face is learning the steps I need to take in order to take my witness to the next level. I've read about seed nodes, backup witnesses, dedicated servers, and I'd love to learn more in order to continue improving and developing.
@davidthelad: Youve worked long and hard to get to where you are now, respect is all I can give. What are the projects you're running on steemit if i may ask, how have you impacted on the steemit community?
- One project that I am running on Steemit is From The Ground Up (@ftgu). Currently, @ftgu is a way to help Steemians learn about communities and initiatives around Steemit in order to help them grow. On top of that, FTGU looks to offer Steemians ways to earn STEEM for themselves and communities across Steemit. @ftgu has held one contest so far, where people spoke about their favorite communities and the winner of the contest won 10 STEEM for themselves and 15 STEEM for their favorite community. @ftgu is always looking to improve and is currently looking for a team to help drive development!
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@davidthelad:I feel this @ftgu movement is going to take off rather well, and im definitely going to be looking at more in the future. what sort of machine are you running for the witness nodes, specifications if possible,
16gb RAM
4 cores
200GB HDD
located in GermanyI run a Cloud VPS from @privex that has the follow Specifications:
@davidthelad: I would like to know what is your end game, what do you want to achieve, or rather put, when can you say to yourself ''I have achieved my purpose'' as a witness?
- I'm not sure there is an end game, at least not one in sight right now. I look to keep improving, learning from my peers and learning from those around me.
@davidthelad: really?, learning is great and believe me,im learning a lot from the interactions I have with all the witnesses so far!. That aside though, is there any myths or half-truths surrounding being a witness that you would like to debunk?
- I think that one of the biggest hurdles in front of people who are interested in becoming a witness is that they have to be an expert coder, and that idea alone can be very daunting for people just beginning their journey. My advice is if anyone reading this is interested in setting up a witness, there are dozens of guides you can find on Steemit. If those guides are difficult to understand or use language that you are not familiar with, you could also try reaching out to other witnesses. You might come to find that there are current witnesses who will take the time to help you set up your first witness.
After an interactive session with @mckenziegary, I got talking with @followbtcnews, I felt since both added their nodes recently, I could get a kind of ''newcomer'' perspective of what a witness is all about.
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@followbtcnews was very vocal about how he feels as a witness, and he shared his thoughts rather well!
The interview with @followbtcnews
@davidthelad: Now looking at your blog https://steemit.com/@followbtcnews obviously has some answers already, but what drove/inspired you to becoming a witness?
- I have been in the crypto niche since around 2011. I absolutely love the freedom that crypto gives us. My Finace'e @nataliejohnson and I are both avid crypto followers and participate in lots of projects. We own a crypto news site, and my fiance'e is a great writer who has written for some of the largest online crypto news sites.
So a few months back I had heard some interesting stuff about Steem, I decided to start my research. And man did I get excited. I came to steemit and created an account immediately. And I just studied and learned as much as I could about Steemit,Steem, and DPOS because thats the type of blockchain that Steem runs on. And I was not too familiar with DPOS yet. Mainly just POW and POS.
I own a couple mastrnodes in other coins. When I get interested in something, I like to dive straight in and put 110% effort into it.
So I saw a new group forming,The Minnow Support Project, and joined there and seen how much they were trying to help minnows here on Steemit. I started trying to think of ways I could help Steem,Steemit, and the users here on Steemit. My desicion was to build apps that users could find useful.
But if I was going to build apps for Steemit users, then I also thought I need to help support the blockchain. So I decided at that point the first step to take was to put up a witness and also a seed node. Then start on some projects.
@davidthelad: When did you start your witness campaign and how long have you been a witness?
- Our witness was setup and running on 2017-06-27 at exactly 20:17:54. Then we posted our Witness introduction about a week later on 2017-7-3.
@davidthelad: nice, relatively new, what are your challanges right now about being a witness, and is there a way to solve these challanges?
- I would say the first challenge is getting votes on a witness. We have to make users aware how important it is for them to vote on witness's and also to make sure that their votes are up to date. Sometimes a witness drops out and quits. But people still have a vote used on that witness, we call this "Dead Vote". One great solution to that problem is what you are doing.By interviewing witness's you are bringing awareness to the importance of voting on Witness's.
The next challenge for me is, to me it's not enough to just run a witness and a seed node. I think its very important for witness's to also help implement tools for steemians to use. And my solution to that was hiring a couple blockhcian devs to begin development on a couple projects we thought of that will help users here on steemit. I dont want to say any more about that right now, until its actually ready to use. But it won't be long :)
@davidthelad: What are the projects you're running on steemit if any, how have you impacted on the steemit community?
- Well, as I as was talking about earlier, I have 2 projects are being built right now that will help users here. But I really don't want to say what they are until they are ready. But I can say I am very confident that users here will find it very useful,and I am hoping it will help users make the most of their experince here on Steemit.
One way I feel I have impacted the community is by getting deeply involved with The Minnow Support Project ran by @aggroed It's a great mission he set out to do, and I feel privilaged to be a part of that community. @crimsonclad and I just got finished building a website for MSP at www.minnowsupportproject.org and I am very pleased with how it came out, although I have to admit that @crimsonclad did 95% of the legwork and did a wonderful job on the design of the website. My main job there was the funding for website and server, and some backend technical stuff.But it was minor compared to what others put in such as @netuoso who integrated his wonderful app he built into the website to make it very easy for people to delegate steem power.
@davidthelad: Many people support steemit in difeerent ways, and Im glad to see more people jump on board the minnow support train. So what sort of machine are you running for the witness nodes, specifications if possible, I hear you run some beefy hardware!
- Haha , well not beefy per say, but good enough if thats what you mean.
So the server I am running the Witness on is:
16GB DDR3 RAM
4 cores of a Xeon E3
200GB HDD
1gbit/s network
Running Steem-in-a-box by @someguy123, hosted at @privex in Germany
And the server for the seed node is:
16GB RAM
4 cores of a Xeon
200GB HDD
1gbit/s network
based in North Carolina/USA
@someguy really has a lot on his plate, I should get to him soon.
@davidthelad: Beefy non the less there friend. I would like to know what is your end game, what do you want to achieve, or rather put, when can you say to yourself ''I have achieved my purpose'' as a witness?
- Man, that's hard question. I gotta say, I don't really have an end game in mind. I don't see one. I love crypto and I love steem. It's something I just don't see an end to honestly. I want to acheive helping Steemit grow to be the best it can be, and beat other mainstream social media sites. So all I can really think of right now is just to keep pushing and pushing.I just don't see and endgame right now. One person I look up to tremendously here is @timcliff . He has done so much for this community and he really sets the bar high for being a witness.
@davidthelad: Before we round up, is there any myths or half-truths surrounding being a witness that you would like to debunk?
- Hmm, Good question. well the only one that kind of sticks out in my mind is, some people think that you can start a witness and make tons of money. Well it's quite the opposite. Starting a witness and running one takes money and time. And I am actually at a loss running one.Which is fine with me. I am not doing it for profit anyways. On my witness, 50% of proceed's get delegated to the minnow support project,and the other 50% goes to Steemit related projects. When you begin being a witness You don't start hitting a lot of blocks until you are close to being in TOP 50. Right now my witness gets on average of 4 blocks per day, which is just about break even on costs. I am trying hard to get it in top 50 so there is more money to help with the projects I am working on for Steemit, and more to delegate to MSP to help minnows here. We are doing ok though, I am very very Thankful to all our voters. Everytime someone places a vote on our witness, I am just so happy, it really means alot.
@followbtcnews was quite supporting throughout this interview and we digressed a few times!
Being a witness is hard, only those willing to go the extra mile and serve can and will be able to make it to the top 20.
The decision to vote for a particular witness rests in your hands as steemians and the community, your vote proves that you trust the individual to perform the tasks at hand and make the steemit community a better place.
the list for the current top 100 witnesses can be found here HERE
To cast your vote for a witness go HERE if you don't see them listed in the top 50, just type the witnesses user name in the box below and hit the vote button.
To vote for followbtcnews and mckenziegary, just click on the upvote sign near his name
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just in case followbtcnews and mckenziegary are below top 50, you can use the box provided, just type ''followbtcnews'' on the box provided, and hit vote, do same for @mckenziegary name too!.
If you need resources to learning about steemit witnesses, you can check this post by @pfunk https://steemit.com/steemit-guides/@pfunk/a-full-steemit-user-s-guide-to-steem-witnesses.
here@timcliff has a report he does weekly which also shows the activities that witnesses are up to for the week. You can check out the latest one
If you need a guide to becoming a steemit witness, I see no better beginning than; https://steemit.com/steemhelp/@steemed/become-a-steem-witness-essentials
Another resource pertaining to steem witnesses is by @asksteem https://steemit.com/steem/@asksteem/asksteem-what-is-a-steemit-witness.
Thanks!
Next week Wednesday, 11:30pm (23:30) (WAT) we will be talking to @reggaemuffin!
Hopefully soon we will have @thecryptodrive and @someguy123 here as well!