Steem has been alive for over 2 years and over 20 million blocks!
Happy Birthday!
(Yeah… I know, I am a bit late for the party)
Full HD video rendered exclusively for my witness updates
Steem Pressure Series
As you already know, this year I started writing “Steem Pressure”, which is a series of posts aimed at showing you how steemd works in its natural habitat.
Introducing
This post introduced the series and gave you the "Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything", including Steem, and showed you some statistics on how rapidly Steem is growing.
Toys for boys and girls
This post explained hardware requirements and the amount of data to process, and suggested a simple benchmark on how to distinguish between the “so-so”, “uh-oh,” and “no-no” types of storage backend.
Steem Node 101
In this post, I explained what you need to do to set up your first node from scratch.
In the next episode, I will show you the performance differences between various setups and how quickly they can replay up to 20M blocks to give you some reference data.
64GB for a basic node? No!
It’s not true that a consensus node needs 64GB of RAM.
Of course, putting both the shared memory file and the block_log in RAM would significantly speed up the resync/replay process, but in most cases you don’t need that, and it’s fine to run on smaller boxes for daily usage. Will your node benefit from more RAM? Yes. Do you really need that much? No.
More on that in the next episodes of Steem Pressure.
Sandboxes and playgrounds
I have recently run a lot of experiments with my nodes, trying to avoid touching the ones that are made for general public use and can’t hold us back forever. All that because of the upcoming great features that need to be tested, and I encourage developers and witnesses to do the same. Some of those are not yet production-ready, so of course you need separate environments.
Some compatibility constraints have been holding me back, so I haven’t implemented any cutting edge solutions in my public nodes. You might have experienced some limits in the number of requests allowed per second on public interfaces.
RPC endpoint
From now on, I will be providing https://api.steem.house as the main public RPC endpoint.
Please consider wss://gtg.steem.house:8090 obsolete.
JSON RPC 2.0 requests coming there will be redirected internally to the main endpoint.
During the testing and transition phase, please expect to be routed to some backup nodes, even ones provided by third parties.
Private/Non-public RPC endpoints
If you need a high-performance Steem infrastructure for your own needs (that empower Steem platform), feel free to contact me.
block_log
Up-to-date blockchain data
available for download at:
https://gtg.steem.house/get/blockchain/
or if you prefer:
Periodically updated, highly compressed blockchain data
available for download at:
https://gtg.steem.house/get/blockchain.xz
(compatible with parallel, indexed xz)
Witnesses are the servants of the platform
Surprise!
No. You shouldn’t be surprised.
Thanks to @berniesanders “DO ANY OF THESE WITNESSES DO ANYTHING?”, some questions were asked about witnesses and what they are expected to do. I strongly disagree with content (I believe that many of the top witnesses criticized there bring a lot of value to the platform), but I upvoted it regardless, because I think that bringing the witness-thing close to the public is always a good idea. And I have to hand it to Bernie that he knows how to grab people’s attention. (Attention-Bernie syndrome)
Some think that the role of a witness also involves bringing you the latest newspaper and making you coffee. Some think that it’s enough to just run some software on your home-grown, potato-grade PC. The role of a witness is not about either of these things.
The Delegated Proof of Stake algorithm clearly defines our role here.
Stakeholders chose witnesses as trusted parties, guardians of the consensus and reliable block producers.
If you are not trustworthy or reliable, you lose your votes.
All witnesses have their own ways to gain trust and prove their dedication to the platform.
It’s up to YOU to decide what is most important.
Just please: vote for witnesses.
I would love to believe that everyone who upvoted this post votes for at least one witness (not necessarily me :-) ).
I’m very curious about how many of the users who upvoted this post and posted comments actually vote for witnesses. After all that’s witness-category. I would love to see 90% (and the remaining 10% being undecided) But I know that my wishes are different from the reality.
If you believe I can be of value to Steem, please vote for me (gtg) as a witness on Steemit's Witnesses List or set (gtg) as a proxy that will vote for witnesses for you.
Your vote does matter!
You can contact me directly on steem.chat, as Gandalf
Steem On
Ok, now I understand why some people progress faster: they somehow discover the right people and sources faster than me ...
I've been 8 months here and only now discovered Gandalf the Grey. Not being myself a wizard, I can say that I'm definitely late !
Added a vote for you as witness
Thank you! :-)
You are one of the most valuable inhabitants of your primitive planet. There will be a place for you in the Empire when we arrive.
Oh Lord, thank you :-)
Have read your post and also Bernie's and you both got a point. Loved your analogy with newspaper and coffee. I think that the most important part is reliability of Steemit Blockchain, this is top priority, because without that nothing else would work. It is great to do cool new features and developments where possible but not at the expense of reliability. This work is most of the time invisible to the public. But most certainly if you have the resources to fund or help the community, do it. The more you help the faster your funds grow as well. This is like helping the community and also helping yourself.
I have one quote that states my position very clearly regarding criticizing others Luke 6:42
I have to agree there with both of you guys. If anyone is concerned with the stability and reliability (does availability fit into there somewhere?) of the network then some of you may be interested in helping me get some witness votes for my project. It's aim is to establish more full rpc/consensus nodes for the steemit network to help reduce some of the strain by providing more resources and simultaneously decentralizing from all those privex nodes. No offense and i'm not saying anything meant to slander or subject myself to libel, but most of the network's hardware is owned and operated by the top 50 witnesses and that's being modest. It's not my aim to compete. It'd honestly be in mine and everyone's best interest to play ball when it comes to things that I'd consider platform essentials (Nodes And Witnesses). It's just simple decentralized load balancing. In my opinion, those things should be separated from the politics involved with high level witnessing even though it is essential that we all participate in some way whether we vote, or simply donate to projects that strengthen the community in this manner. I'm fairly new to steem, but I have set up a few nodes as well as a witness without issue. It seems that the people that should be batting for projects like mine the most either will never hear about them, or try to silence them with a nice conservative downvote. Unfortunately, ignorance will not win out in this case and many have already begun to see the negative effects of a growing blockchain without proper contingency. I established my witness with the sole agenda of using it to finance my project as I cannot maintain nodes on my salary however the necessity is plausible and duty calls. I usually don't do these types of post response (forgive me if I'm longwinded) and writing is not my forte, but I read @yuriks2000 's reply and since @gtg concurred , it felt relevant. I don't use steemit to make money for my family. That is not what this is about for me. . . Yet. . .. Besides, I hate to say it, but It's been easier for me to make a living off of other treacherous, censored social media platforms that bring their own issues, but at the end of the day, they have overcome many of the core fundamentals that we have not from a technological standpoint including high redundancy. Even more importantly, they make it easy to obtain an account for new users making it easy for me to convert my current followers from one platform to another. . That in itself has been my biggest limiting factor here on steemit as it has made it thus far nearly impossible for me to make anything substantial using my current highly supportive (and paying) user base from those other networks. I do see other ways i'd like to help this network grow in the future and in the process perhaps earn the opportunity to become cash flow positive on it. But the technology and accessibility issues need to be addressed first indeed and I'm here to help. In fact, I'd LOVE to help. . I have a background in software engineering, robotics, game development, web design, server admin. . It seems to me that the premise of steemit is to "break-out" from the norm when it comes to social platforms. They did that by making monetization more accessible but it doesn't stop there and this is evidenced by the many third party add-ons and adaptations made in it's favor. Many of them modifying it beyond just blogging (i.e. blocktrades, dtube, dsound). I'm already here and i've already started to play my part but as @gtg said "if you have the funds or resources to help the community then do it". . I don't have the funds but i'm doing it anyways. I'm already vested with my time and my money so I'm not going anywhere, and hopefully with community support I can be as successful as you have been on this platform :P Again, it's not my intention to spread any rhetoric or knock anyone about the job they are doing or not doing. You were one of the first witnesses I voted for @gtg. Even though you are a top witness, I definitely have been unable to escape the massive contributions you have made to this network. Hats off to you! But tell me something, @pumpkin ?
Great initiative @justinadams, have just read about your project and it sounds great, hope that you can achieve this in the near future. Will keep an eye on your project. You have my vote for witness, it is not much yet, but it's a start. Every vote counts, right?
You have my vote and follow! Keep up the good work!
Man, use some line breaks.
There was probably a solid message in there somewhere, but on a blogging site made for internet content authors, that's a wall of text most readers will blur right on by.
Use these sometimes...
<-- empty line here-->
Line feeds make your points legible.
You can also use html like <br/>
Thanks from your attempted readers.
That's very true.
I'm voting for witnesses along the way. I've voted for 8 already, just added another one ;)
Thank you :-)
I start a follow you now and added @gtg top list of my witness category.
Thank you :-)
I already added @gtg for my witness category. You given awesome points this time to prepare.
Thank you :-)
Bernie had a good point though, I know you do a lot, but there are so many witnesses that don't do anything, some that haven't even posted/voted in a week.
I think maybe making people review their votes every quarter would be a good idea.
Yes, of course, reviewing witness votes is in each user best interest.
I disagree however that posting/voting is anything that distinguish good witnesses from bad witnesses. Tust me, I'm actually much more useful to the platform when I'm not posting :-)
But on the other hand I get the need of keeping touch with reality, and thus with community as a part of what is expected from witnesses on the social platform.
Main witness role is to produce blocks reliably. They really don't need to do more. The other question is whether those witnesses that don't do more than minimum should be voted higher than those who do.
But that's not the question for the witnesses.
That's the question that each user should ask himself.
@gtg, so glad your always testing... testing responsibly... to see what else is possible! I still have 10 or 11 more witness votes to choose. I think I picked good ones, but am at a loss on who else to choose. If you have time to peek, please let me know if I am missing anyone you know I should be voting for. Btw, thanks for the recent support! 🤗 It made me soooooo happy! 😁
I think I would have few suggestions to add... and to remove :-)
Lets gossip on that on a steem.chat ;-)
Yes! I would love your input! I will reach out to you soon.
Hmm yep happy second birthday to Steem.
We are kinda not that old as you but yeah happy to be here.
BTW that video is nicely made :)
Seems like you don't post too much :)
You are already on my witness vote list, happy to have you :)
I am picky and don't want to vote blindly, these are the witnesses I found so far with their work and voted for them.
I can spend time either on doing something or posting about doing something. I usually chose the former.
Thank you for conscious votes. :-)
Haha good one :P
"... home-grown, potato-grade PC." best line ever
Do not be mistaken: having even the best line of potatoes ever doesn't make it a server-farm ;-)
Why you hate potatoes so much. We were using them for linux servers when most of you guys were still in primary school ;)
http://www.bbspot.com/news/2008/12/linux-on-a-potato.html
I was using Potato myself. Steem is hungrier.
I almost included the debian reference too! But I wanted to go further back to the linux potato, which WAS a true story, in fact it was trendy for bit, and I am pretty sure several were made. I remember when that was NEWS lol.
But then again, I remember building slackware at DefCons and 2600 hacker conventions off build servers with 20 laptops snaked off them on hubs. Just so we could play hacker wars and try to smoke each other's HDDs.
Oh yes, those were the days...
Wow! Great and amazing post.
Valuable information sir.
You given useful tips and points for the preparation.
It is really very interesting.
Everyone has to support witness voting.
Thanks @gtg for sharing this post.
Upvoted + resteemed your post.
I'm glad to hear that...
but are you aware that you are actually not voting for any of the witnesses?
Votes for witnesses is something entirely different than votes for their posts. Please refer to Frequently Asked Questions to get some better idea about Witnesses and voting for witnesses.
What do you all plan to do about your @haejin problem? What happens if someone else decides to do the same?
Should a whale really be able to downvote everysingle post from a minnow within minutes?
Steem looks like tech people trying to do social networks. Do you have any actual economist to model this ecosystem to see if it would avoid over concentration of power in a few hands? Doesn't look like it.
I've said this many times now. Steem is a great idea, but the execution is poor. It's left itself open to abuse and it means it will struggle to get the critical mass a real global social media platform needs.
That's not really something witness related.
Witnesses are not in any special position to address such issues.
If highly staked users are hurting the platform by their actions they are hurting themselves the most.
The problem is that they might not realize that. What if they think they are doing the right thing? You can do harm to yourself all the while being convinced that you are doing the right thing, simply for lack of knowledge.
Highly staked users here have not necessarily been selected for their ability to make decisions at this juncture in the development of steem - the decisions required now are different from those that were required when the network was only getting started and bugs needed to be ironed out in the software.
Now we are mostly into an area where decisions should be informed by economics, game theory and sociology rather than knowledge about programming languages and blockchain software design. Yet the high staked users are mostly knowledgeable about the latter, not about the former.
And relying on the fact that they are going to notice their decisions are not good, well, good luck with that ! We humans have a propensity toward avoiding the link between our decisions and negative outcomes. It's always someone else's fault.
Thanks for replying.
And apologies if I haven't understood all the finer details of how the steem ecosystem works. My understanding was that witnesses decide if they will upgrade to a new update or not? So in a way they can veto updates?
My concern is that people like @haejin don't care about the platform, they are short term money makers. If they leave dust and ruin in their wake. They will not care.
I would love to see STEEM have the same market value as Facebook, but if the whole reward pool can be so easily manipulated by 3 people, it leaves it open to abuse.
Hopefully you can understand my point of view not as a witness, but also as a fellow user of the platform.
@kabir88
Yes... but here's the catch: stakeholders can chose to vote in a different set of witnesses that are for the changes that they are supporting. Crucial for the platform is to have stakeholders and witnesses that aim for a common goal: well-being of the platform.
That's why I said that most important role of a witness is to be a trusted party, guardian of the consensus and a reliable block producer.
I'm focused on my witness role so there's no much time left even for a basic curation efforts not to mention engaging in upvote/downvote politics, especially as it is always subjective evaluation. Legitimate use of SP for ones can be abuse for the others. In the end - it's community who decide.
As a fellow user I would love to have much more time for curation efforts, unfortunately that would significantly affect my witness duties.
Thank you - I appreciate you taking the effort to reply and engage with me.
I only came on here to as I am lookng at the use case of every coin/token in the top 50 on coinmarket cap. I thought steem sounded awesome as I use twitter a lot and the idea of getting rewarded and no censorship sounded great.
But I have less censorship on twitter than here at the moment. I've been flagged to the point where I can't even upload images. That has never happened to me on twitter or facebook. Either I have changed and become some sort of nutter that needs flagging or this platform is too concentrated in the hands of a few.
It will be interesting to see how this develops as I know it's very early days yet.
As for uploading, it's not part of Steem, it's part of steemit.com site, there's for example also busy.org (I'm not sure how does it look like out there, i.e. if reputation is a limiter for uploading). Regardless, you can always use 3rd party site to upload your photos to and link to them from your post.
Busy is what I use most of the time and it has the same limitation when your "reputation" drops.
I am not a techie, so finding other avenues to upload onto the blockchain is a hurdle too far right now.
I am inviting others to join and it's important I understand the pros and cons of the platform
Nice update and yes the witnesses are servants of Steemit, but the Top 20 also earn a nice amount of money every day ;-)
Yes, of course, they are rewarded for the block production.
Please note that Steem =/= Steemit. That's important especially in this context. :-)
Please note that Steem =/= Steemit. That's important especially in this context. :-)
This is especially important in EVERY context, and it's one of my hugest pet peeves about people who come here and have no idea what is going on. Man, who does that? Goes to some piece of the internet that involves tons of money and just starts doing shit with no clue? Pretty much everybody, I guess, except about 100 of us out of 60K a day who login. Ugh.
Have witnessed you....you are the man who needs to be witnessed .....
Keep making steem work good....
gtg witness is detailed awesome..video log is looking great.
What do you mean by "witnessed you"? :-)
If you mean by that: voting for me as a witness, then no, you didn't.
Terimakasih
you deserve to be my witness ..@gtg
success always greetings from aceh, indonesia
it's really amazing and really amazing, hope you are healthy and successful always my resteem yes
I am a new user in steem, you and your friends are a steam promoter. I feel bad when new users like me are introduced to the platform, I give up because they are not recognized and no detail explained. Your team and you do a good job with recognize the user completely and I will be happy to be part of your team
Im vote you @gtg Witnes
Steem is not an easy platform for newcomers, that's for sure. We, as a community, are making our efforts to improve on-boarding process but there's still a lot things to do.
You need to learn a lot before you will be able to use the platform and it's full potential but I think it's worth it.
As for voting for witnesses. No, you are not voting for me as a witness yet. You can do that by going to: https://steemit.com/~witnesses page.
Currently you are voting for @good-karma.
You can chose up to 30 witnesses if you like, but first I would encourage you to learn more about the platform and about witnesses to make a conscious votes.
Good luck.
Better late than never. Thank you for good content.
i have upvote you for Witness, what is reciprocal to me?
Reciprocal?
Security and reliability of the platform you are using.
But no, you haven't voted for me as a witness.
sorry something went wrong, but I still do it.
a very great post .. thank you
You have my vote, since you defend with confidence your hypothesis, we are more than pure matter, a mere chance or an experiment and in this experiment that is life I give you my vote, greetings I hope your support too
What do you mean exactly by "You have my vote"?
upvote trail
My post was about voting for the witnesses, that's a totally different story.
Really You Are Good. Im Follow you
Not really true, at least the latter ;-)
Hi there!
I was thinking of starting my own seed / witness nodes but don't know the best way to go about it. I thought about getting a used Dell PowerEdge server and run it from home, but some people use Privex as a third party hosting solution. Do you have any thoughts on this?
I have a decent home connection at 100mb, download speed and 30mb up. The server has DUAL E5450 3.0Ghz XEON 64GB RAM 4x 146GB 10K RPM RAID.
I don't think that running a witness server from home is a viable solution, but still better than hosting it within infrastructure of another active witness (for security and decentralization reasons).
Btw, machine itself seems to be OK, but using SSD instead of such RAID will be cheaper with lower latency as a bonus.
Thanks. Some people seem to think it'll work, but with some latency problems. I've upgraded my home speed to 400mbs down and 20 up. I'm trying to find a cost effective way of contributing and not at least lose money. :)
please vote me
Why? Up or down?
One of the reason could be original, high quality content you posted.
For sure commenting on unrelated posts asking for upvotes wouldn't bring you them.
Copied content from another places in the Internet is also not the best idea to get attention.
saludos estoy votando por ti, muchas gracias, necesito que verifiques
You got a 12.00% upvote from @getup
Want to promote your posts too? Send at least 0.005 STEEM DOLLAR or STEEM to @getup with the post link as the memo and receive a upvote! More profits? 100% Payout! Delegate some SteemPower to @getup
1 SP, 5 SP, 10 SP, custom amount
► ► For Restream send 0.026 SBD
to @getup with the post link as the memo.
Thank you :-)