Thank you for your willingness to help but since you are not a witness, it would be unfair to make you have expenses instead of those who already get their block producing rewards.
Fortunately situation with nodes improved since the time when I wrote that post (it's quite old).
Of course, you don't need to be a witness to run your own Steem node. It's actually a great idea to get some better knowledge about this platform.
For your own needs you can follow same instructions that are for exchanges (using your account name). It's a consensus node that runs account history plugin for a single account (your own in your case).
I think I will cover such configuration in my next episode of Steem Pressure.
Good luck.
Thank you for your keen and clear answer. Anyway even being an absolute fan of Larimer's general goals for humanity and definitely considering him one if not the major "blockchain thinker", of present times, on the way to provide a blockchain technology able to be the future of the internet itself. My old believes as a bitcoin miner get my into hard times in truly understanding the value of DPOS. It is good that the miners (the witnesses) don't compete between themselves, but to become a witness is the big challenge. I would deem interesting that the voters for the witnesses get a reward for their vote, a little bit like the bitcoin miners who join a pool and get a share of whatever block a miner of the pool has the luck to produce, . i.e. I am trying to figure out the would-be functioning of a Steem mining pool
Oh, you are wrong.
They do and that's great.
There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears on the blockchain.
Everybody wants to be better than others which in this case is serving the platform the best they can.
Otherwise, the minimum that they have to do would be as simple as generating blocks i.e. running single machine with some software on it. Monkeys can do that.
Also, it's not really a mining. Most of STEEM goes to non-witnesses, i.e. authors, curators, shareholders. Smallest piece of cake is shared between the witnesses.
It's not the witnesses who are important on this platform. It's YOU. Those who have Steem Power and vote.
If a witness doesn't do what you expect (within your subjective opinion about being best for the platform) you take away your vote and such witness is fired.
We hare now Jun 2018 and we see that's exactly the inverse happening on EOS. Hopefully. The witness don't compete (no blood, no tears) in this Blockchain. Thank you to the EOS Constitution, Arbitration and ECAF. EOS is the first blockchain with governance with legislation (the voters) and execution (the BPs). Thank you for this 21 BPs + reserve that are smart people and doing all to serving the plaform the best they can.
If - as you say - they don't compete then how can you say, that current top 21 BPs are smart? :-D
That's your point of view.
Because if you follow the EMLG and closely, you will see that is not necessary to compete to be smart :-D The BPs are not compete , they collaborate, that's a big difference !
EOS is really the first blockchain with a heart. EOS can mean also "Everyone's Open Society". EOS.IO software will retain 21 but a BP has interest to be in good contact with another BP for the network sustain, for the community satisfaction. That's that ... also ... DPOS
Of course, what do I know about DPoS, right?
Competition among witnesses is healthy. Lack of competition is not.
Competition doesn't mean lack of cooperation with other witnesses, especially when it comes to such vital things like maintaining network stability.
We are on the same page I agree. Competition is hard but hopefully with a lot of cooperation. I keep a very closer eye on the ECAF and the EOS Constitution. EOS42 BP has launch smart contract for referendum and I'm confiant in the role of the EMLG and EOSGO and all elected BPs and ambassadors and the community to give to the world a well governed blockchain, that's EOS for me "Everyone's Open Society". But as an integrator NovaCrypto wants to link the centralization world with the decentralization world by creating applications and EOS Dapps.