Witness Survey v1 - Response by Petertag

Here is my response to @witnesssurvey's first survey of Steem's witnesses. I didn't receive a memo about it (since I don't appear as an active witness due to me not getting a block yet), but that isn't an issue, it's why I follow other witnesses to keep track of these things. I'll add my own question to the end for anyone who sees this and wants to answer.

What is your stance on bid-bots?

I don't have an issue with them in theory, although I've decided to stop using promotion bots after seeing posts that don't belong on the front page way up there, with massive promotion votes and nothing else. I think there should be more quality control on them, but that's on the owners to ban/block spammy users. I'd assume that doing so would be in their best interest, less up-front money but better reputation, but very few people actually act in their own best interest. I'm okay with upvote bots, as they tend to have stricter management, and I obviously use them as well since I've built one for Lion's Den and am part of MSP.

What do I want to do to make the blockchain more user-friendly and help to on-board new users. What do I personally want to see done, and what will I do to get it there?

For one thing, I was definitely confused when I first started using steemit, and I've been involved in different blockchains for a while. I think that there needs to be a more up-to-date wiki for first-time users, and I'd be willing to help edit it to keep it up-to-date. I also think that there should be a more involved discord (or some chat service, not necessarily discord), not a community discord like PAL, Lion's Den, etc., that's meant for new users to ask questions of knowledgeable users. Not sure if I belong in there as a knowledgeable user (yet), but I can think of a few who could. Reward them with delegations or upvotes somehow. As an aside, I really dislike steem.chat due to the lack of mobile-friendliness, and would love if it all migrated to a Discord server.

Do I think witness votes should last indefinitely, or timeout/decay, so that periodically voters will need to re-evaluate and affirm their positions by re-casting their witness votes?

I'm in favor of a decay/time-out, however implementation is the main issue I've seen in witness chats discussing this. How long to time-out? What rate of decay? Should people who are inactive for x amount of time have all their witness votes dropped? Could do a witness survey just on this. I'd suggest a decay of 10% per month after 2 months, meaning that you have to re-cast votes yearly, but to stop decay you have to check them every 2 months.

Do I think 30 witness votes is the correct number, especially considering there are only 20 top witnesses?

I do. I can't really explain why, but it's something along the lines of vote for your top 20 who are near there, then throw votes to people/projects you support lower down to get them more blocks.

What is a concern or two I have about the Steem blockchain?

Well, at the moment, concerned about the Steemit inc fiasco, mostly due to the fact that so many people think that Steemit Inc. is Steem, it's not, it's a front-end, and there are many others to choose from. I think we should move away from Steemit as witnesses to push others to do so, as this will help the blockchain long-term, and possibly help out Steemit Inc. with lower infrastructure costs if there's a lower load (not sure about this second part).

What are you hopeful about for the Steem blockchain?

I'm hopeful in general due to the amount of people during this bear market staying involved and telling others not to worry. It's a great sign that people have such faith in Steem that they aren't unloading their positions right now (although maybe I'm only seeing the people who do have faith in my feed).

What is the monthly cost of equipment?

$101 and some change, plus the time I put in checking status and everything to see if I'll finally get a block sometime soon.

Where do your earnings go?

What earnings? (See above and beginning of post)

What are some of my current projects?

I've been working on, but haven't updated, Pywit- A witness tool-kit built in Python on top of Holger80's Beempy, that I'm thinking of turning into Pywallet, a general tool for all Steemians. I'm also involved in the Lion's Den, and have built an upvote bot for community members.

Will you provide a list of alt accounts?

I have none, not for lack of trying, but I can't afford to claim due to RC and I'm not trying to burn my Steem right now. Alt accounts come after I get my buddy an account as well. First will be for bot testing basically.

What are the benefits associated with being a witness?

Interestingly, everyone seems to listen to you more, which is surprising when you see people who have been here for 2 years avidly listening to me just because I'm a witness (maybe just surprising to me though). There are, apparently, earnings you can get too, although I'm not a high enough rank to have gotten a block yet.

How do I become a witness?

Assuming this is a technical question, I'll self-plug and link my witness server tutorial. If not, just get involved in the community, cause you need votes, and make sure you're ready to burn some cash on servers until you start getting blocks.

What do I think the SBD [STEEM] price for a new account should be?

I don't think there should be an SBD price for new accounts, since it's basically a debt instrument and just gets printed, and represents a volatile amount of STEEM in essence. I think the STEEM price should be pegged to a dollar amount, maybe just $1.00, rather than pegged to an amount of STEEM, due to similar volatility reasons of 3 STEEM being worth around $1 right now but up to $24 at some points. I think there should be a cost associated with new accounts, whether it be RC or STEEM burnt.

What is a witness and how do I become a good worker?

Witnesses are the backbone of STEEM. While dApps and front-ends are important, witnesses sign and verify every block, insuring there aren't double-spends, fraudulent transactions, or worse. Without witnesses, STEEM wouldn't exist or would be burning coal like the Bitcoin network does (or did, idk how Lightning has affected it). To become a good worker, show up everyday, be accountable, do your best.

Have I implemented any new procedures for evaluating potential hardforks?

I personally have not, although I know @bobinson has set up a CI/CD pipeline for it that I've been planning to get involved in. I've been working on toolkits right now basically, as I'm not far enough into the Steemd codebase to feel comfortable doing more than small bug-fixes, etc. I should be soon though, done with school and ramping up my blockchain efforts at my job, which involves steemd so I'll be much more well-versed shortly.

How does a new user make the availability of his vote known to the cabal of witness wannabes trying to overthrow the current witness regime?

Since there are so many users on Steem, I don't know if this would be possible if everyone were trying to do it. However, easy ways are to check #witness, #witness-category, #witness-update, and other tags to find witnesses, and comment on their posts if you like their ideas. Or you could just vote for them if you like their posts, I know I would notice since I track all (10) of my witness votes closely.

Should we have interest for SBD?

As I said above, SBD is basically a printed debt-instrument (thanks for explaining to me @socky) and therefore I believe no.

What takeaways do I have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred?

More testing before hard forks, one big change per hard fork, and a testnet with more activity in general is needed, mirroring the previous week of activity perhaps for testing, with the full blockchain loaded for completeness.

Do I think 20/21 top witnesses is a good number, or should it be different?

I think it would be nice to have more rotating witnesses, although that might just be to make it more likely to get a block. I don't have an issue with it either way, but it could be interesting to have it be a proportion of the active witnesses. Not sure if that's possible or a good idea though.

My question, for anyone who sees this, is as follows:

Do you think that there should be a more powerful form of stopping bad content (for lack of a better phrase), then downvoting/reporting? I was thinking something like a post-blocker (e.g. they can't post) for someone with a low-enough rep, but that could fall prey to downvote brigades blocking legitimate users. Any ideas you have, throw em at me.

Thanks for reading, I enjoyed answering this survey, made me think a bit about some of the questions I hadn't considered before. Looking forward to the next one!

Vote For Me as Your Witness

Cheers, thanks for reading! If you like my tools and content and would like to see more, Vote for me as witness or proxy your votes and I'll pick the best witnesses for you!

My Projects

Pywit- A witness tool-kit built in Python on top of Holger80's Beempy.