Witnesses Need To Think BIG!
Is your Witness doing the bare minimum?
I just watched a video and something has gotten under my skin and is bothering me. It seems that witnesses have a belief that they are only responsible for running witness nodes and just enough to make themselves popular to get them to the top 20 position. They constantly bicker about not getting paid enough to do any more than that.
We don't need these types of witnesses. We need leaders!
What I expect out of witnesses:
Witnesses need to be leaders and a conduit
between users and Steemit Inc.
between users and Steemit Inc.
It is understandable that the top 20 witness pay would leave a little more to ONLY perform a little extra over and beyond what is expected. Witnesses often take the position that this is all that they should actually be doing.
What witnesses should really be doing is everything possible to make this place amazing. It very well should be in excess of what they are paid, but if they are successful, then their stake in STEEM would be more valuable! Imagine if STEEM were $10 or $20. What would witnesses be making then? They really should be thinking about their future stake and what they will make when they propel STEEM to the top of social medial dominance.
Steemit Inc does not want to be a leader. It is clear they don't want that responsibility. It is up to Witnesses to be leaders not just coders and node owners. It is up to witnesses to push STEEM to a entirely different level.
If witnesses take on a leadership role, they will have my vote.
If you are voting for witness, Great! That is a start.
I want you to question that witness or witnesses and find out what they are doing that will be effective in getting STEEM apps to be as common as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram.
We need witnesses to think
@gtg
@timcliff
@jesta
@good-karma
@roelandp
@someguy123
@aggroed
@ausbitbank
@blocktrades
@smooth.witness
@lukestokes.mhth
@curie
@followbtcnews
@anyx
@clayop
@cervantes
@xeldal
@thecryptodrive
@utopian-io
@pfunk
@drakos
@riverhead
@abit
@yabapmatt
@bhuz
@pharesim
@liondani
@busy.witness
@furion
@netuoso
@teamsteem
@therealwolf
@themarkymark
@reggaemuffin
@blockbrothers
@ihashfury
@patrice
@aizensou
@arcange
There are some very serious issues happening right now
- There is hard fork code that wasn't tested by Steemit Inc and by witnesses
- Exchanges are not accepting STEEM and withdrawals are frozen.
- User retention is plummeting
When addressing the witnesses on these issues, they point the fingers elsewhere.
Does your witness state that it is not witness
responsibility or witnesses have no control over this?
How does your witness respond?
responsibility or witnesses have no control over this?
How does your witness respond?
Let me know if your witness actually has a plan to do something or point the finger to somewhere else.
Please Upvote and Resteem
Was tested. Wasn't tested enough to reveal certain specific problems. Other behavior wasn't really possible to be extensively tested in artificial environment, or rather it was possible but the results was heavily biased by a nature of testing environment specifics. Lessons learned.
Exchanges are expected to come back to life soon(-ish).
Currently at least blocktrades works. At least partially. Sending Steem/SBD to them works, receiving might still fail (in such case be delayed until Monday - according to info on their site.)
I don't have any data on that. Transactions that we are processing currently are lower than usual, but slowly recovering.
There's no doubt that we've failed to transition from bandwidth to RC smoothly. But the bigger failure will be if we won't learn from the past events.
Thanks @gtg. Your response clearly shows you are very concerned.
I worked for a very successful company. Even at a major company, mistakes are inevitable. When major ones occur, mechanisms are put in place that prevent it from ever happening again. That is how companies become successful, by guaranteeing that they don't repeat those mistakes. There are a bunch of ideas floating around, but I don't see what Steemit Inc is doing to prevent this from happening again. There is a difference between great ideas and actual processes.
I will gauge success of this hard fork not by how badly it was implemented, but how Steemit Inc handles the corrective actions to prevent it from happening again. Claiming that a lesson was learned means nothing.
As far as the exchange situation. It was ongoing for a full week before the hard fork. It is the worst that I have ever seen. The exchange nodes recovering should be getting better and not worse. So be it that Steemit Inc has to be super secretive about exchanges. The results speak loud and clear that it is not working.
Since you tagged me, I will just leave this here:
https://steempeak.com/witness-update/@reggaemuffin/witness-statement-for-reggaemuffin-proposing-hardfork-adoption-requirements
Voted.
How do you plan to have witnesses run a testnet node all while they are running a real node?
What leverage do you plan to use over Steemit Inc to get them to accomplish real goals?
Witnesses already run multiple nodes like backup nodes or seed nodes, running a testnet node just means one more server of many. I don't see that as a big issue :)
Unless I am in the top20 of witnesses there is literally no leverage I have. But I can make my voice heard and express my concern, which can affect the decision of other witnesses. And if in top20 myself I plan to reject hard forks that I disagree with.
Is there a reason why you're not running a seed node?
I run a seed node, but the tool still thinks it is offline. I wanted to check on that in the next days.
Upvoted and resteemed.
We know you care. Yay!!
Joy
Bless you
Bless you. I just said a prayer for you...that you are comforted in times of need and rewarded for your hard work. Take it easy my friend. You are a gift to the world. (Takes courage lol)
Joy
Better yet, I promise to take up the task of witness and as Masa said “Life’s too short to think small”.
Come January we will make sure the witnesses don’t forget the lesson they now claim to have learned and that SMTs will not be weaponized against us.
Weaponized SMT's... Hmm....
Good luck and think BIG!
Utopian-io is doing amazing work. On top of rewarding open source work and bringing new projects here, they getting ready to host a public full node now that they are a top 20 witness.
They plan to do even more as well: https://busy.org/@utopian-io/utopian-update-as-top-20-witness
They just got top 20 right after HF 20 happened.
Can Utopian-io create an exchange specific STEEM node? This way exchanges don't need to run a standard node of the entire blockchain and is extremely easy and efficient to sync. So far, it takes about 1 month for exchanges to get their node back on line. That is downright shameful.
Reach out to Utopian-io and ask the question. If they create and implement it, then they have my vote.
Exchanges will want to run their own node so that no one else feeds them bad data. How long a replay of a node takes depends a lot on the server used. An exchange node should be up and running in under 6 hours with a 64GB RAM server, just that exchanges not always use such servers, which makes replays more painful.
I also think since exchanges leave their STEEM nodes down so incredibly long, witnesses should be questioning if Steemit Inc is actually in communication with the exchanges. @ned for example via @brixtongg account was depositing very large sums of STEEM onto Binance even after Binance's node went down for a month. That STEEM got stuck in limbo until Binance got their node up and operational. It appears that @ned waited for a long period of time and then finally gave up and started transferring STEEM to Huobi instead. That doesn't give me any confidence that they are any communications between Steemit Inc and exchanges or that Steemit Inc is providing any support whatsoever.
Steemit Inc should definitely take the responsibility to have a liaison manager who works with the exchanges.
Witnesses should be publicly voicing the issue to drive Steemit Inc action.
Seems Bittrex is back online :)
There is such a person. You underestimate the work of being listed at exchanges ;) and from what I hear many exchanges try to run steem on really wonky nodes
Who is that?
I don't know who but I know they have one. I'm not from Steemit Inc. so I don't have inside knowledge of it.
Also regarding things: https://steempeak.com/busy/@taskmaster4450/steemit-is-not-the-golden-goose-steem-is
Sorry, I didn't write that correctly. What I meant was the software that the node uses. It was on the to-do list for Steemit Inc, but i guess they forgot that were going to do it.
There is already an exchange specific configuration. It exists :)
Better yet “I promise to proxy witness vote whomever shows the intention and capability of putting the Steem platform first! Including asking the hard questions no one wishes to answer.”
Upvoted followed and resteemed
Posted using Partiko iOS
I think I am doing that. But that is for you to evaluate :)
It definitely does seem that way yes! First read your post while I was stuck in limbo, definitely have my vote!
Posted using Partiko iOS
Awesome!
@socky I read this with interest. Let me declare from the get-go that I really do not understand some of the technicalities that you talk about in the blockchain, and I'm not sure I want to. That said, I do want a platform, system and community that works. That includes, as you suggest, leadership. I do like the notion that leadership is elected and this is why the witness system appeals to me. However, like any democratic process, it's open to abuse. And I guess we all know about that ( look at my country recovering from the post Zuma era, and another...that I won't mention...). That means that it's up to folk like you - and thank you - to be advocating the way you are, for a system that not just works but is ethical.
I really am just a minnow and one of my beefs is the tat that is on the platform and that I have to wade through and that posts that are thought-through and carefully constructed get very little traction. I am happy sharing my Instagram posts and if they get no votes, so be it. They could be considered spam...but once there was the possiblity of sharing from that platform, it was an if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them moment. However, when I've spent hours on something, then I do wonder what it's all for, other than self-gratification. I do know that one man's meat is another's poison, and to use another cliche, there's no accounting for taste, but if the powers that be, really do want quality, what are they doing to support the like of folk like me, who can't do multiple posts a day, and for whom it takes time to build a reputation?
I admit that I'm not good at self-promotion, but there must be some way that the likes of me could be "noticed" or identified.
Anyhow, keep up the good work and do know that I've upvoted and resteemed. Look forward to your other posts on this and related issues.
Fiona
It definitely seems like the last update was a huge mistake. This site is a ghost town now and that is really sad.
The only difference I have seen from going through the hardfork was a massive drop in revenue and comments.
Not sure what to tell investors except people like me are not going to be writing quality informative posts for 30 cents worth of SBD and so be ready for lots of gifs and memes I would say.
The hardest pill to swallow is that STEEM doesn't even function as a currency anymore in the sense that wallets are frozen on all major exchanges. The saving grace would be that STEEM still functions as a currency, but we can't even claim that.
It may be that I'm jumping the mark on this. I think within a week we should all know how things will turn out. I'll keep grinding at it and hope things get better.