@ned Needs A Tim Cook: Cost Of Nodes Plummets
There were a couple of events that took place in the last few days regarding Steemit that everyone should be aware of.
We are quick to jump on the company when they do wrong, so it is time to offer up some balance. It helps when they actually do produce.
Hivemind
We heard about Hivemind fora couple years now. Like much associated with Steemit Inc, it was just talk. That ended recently. According to a post that @steemitblog put out, Hivemind went live.
This was commonly associated with "Communities" and making Steemit more like Reddit with the capabilities to add moderators and sub groupings. We are not at that point yet although that is still on the table.
What Hivemind also does is creates a more efficient data structure. This is in alignment with Steemit Inc's pursuit of reducing the size of the master nodes. Once again, we can say this was accomplished. The size of the nodes went from 488 GB to 61 GB of RAM. This is a substantial drop which cuts the cost of running one of these nodes a great deal.
Please keep in mind this is separate from the RockDB efforts they were undertaking. Fully completing that should provide a further reduction in node size.
To read full article:
https://busy.org/@steemitblog/hivemind-is-live
Steem Town Hall
There was an interesting guest who showed up at the Steem Town Hall meeting the other night. @ned himself appeared on the show and discussed some of what took place.
To start, I want to thank @aggroed for speaking on behalf of the community. During the conversation, he held Ned's feet to the fire. There were a number of times that Ned wanted to drop a subject and Aggroed would not let him. This is exactly the accountability we need.
@fyrstikken was also on the call and he called Ned a "visionary". Ned did exhibit how he had a lot of great ideas for the future of Steemit Inc and how it could enhance the blockchain. I have to say I do like his ideas. Of course, ideas out of Steemit were never a problem. Execution and communication, those tended to lag behind.
These were the points that Aggroed was driving home. He basically was telling Ned to stop trying to be all to everyone. Frystikken made an interesting observation which actually coincided with what Aggroed was say. By calling Ned a visionary, he stated that being CEO was beneath him. That could be the case.
In short, Ned needs a Tim Cook. Many visionaries fail in the implementation of their ideas. Going through the day-to-day rigors of keeping up on everything tends to be outside of their forte. Perhaps this is your situation Ned. There is no shame in it. Some of the greatest success stories were only such because visionaries were merged with operations people.
Communication with the community was the main point of the call. Companies have issues all the time. This is a part of the business world. However, when a community is relies upon said company, to go silent is not the best course of action. It creates more problems then it solves.
I can only hope that the conversation was not falling on deaf ears. Little was agreed upon although the lines of communication were opened. We will see if it continues.
Whatever the outcome, the bottom line is the Steem blockchain appears to be a lot less costly to operate. With Hivemind in place and RocksDB being worked upon, we will far greater efficiency in this area by the Spring. This will certainly allow for others to run nodes, thus decentralizing that process.
Steem is moving ahead. I am glad I am on board.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and resteem.
Hey, @taskmaster4450.
I only managed about 16 minutes of the time with Ned, so I don't know all that was said, but it was precisely because the discussion wasn't really going anywhere that I stopped.
I have no idea what it's like to have a conversation with Ned on a regular basis, but in this case, and others, it's tough to know if he's even listening or not. What aggroed would say and what Ned would answer back with seemed like he was distracted at least part of the time, and not really ever getting to what aggroed was saying, which is very much what you described. If it didn't get much better past that point, I'm glad I didn't listen longer.
Here's what I gleaned from what I heard:
People from the STEEM community offering to do things is, at least for now, a no-go. I'm not sure if it's because Ned thinks people would want to be paid for what they would do (which is only proper, but in a cost savings, fire 70% of your workforce mode, out of the question), which may be why the offer blocktrades et al made a while back didn't go anywhere.
If the offers to help are to do the work for free, or to do it for free now in exchange for some kind of compensation down the line, especially after the fruits of such labor manifest, well, that's a hard row to hoe, too, since expectations from both sides generally won't align. Also, depending on folks you don't really know, haven't screened, don't know what they can even do, or that really aren't obligated under any kind of employment, time frame or spec, that's also a hard place for a company CEO to go.
When asked what the community could do to help, and then having things like communication and marketing be that possible help, Ned essentially replied that they were looking within Steemit Inc to see how those needs could be addressed.
In other words, just like any other corporate entity, no matter how much the STEEM community might wish it to be otherwise, Ned's not ready, and may never be ready, to collaborate with the community on that level. Even at a time where it might do some good. I guess I can't blame him. There's plenty of people running around thinking they know what he should and what he shouldn't do from the outside looking in. All these people really know is, they don't like what happened. They don't know why it was done, and why other alternatives weren't considered.
I suppose, though, in this age of everyone can do everything (regardless if they actually have the skills to do it), that second guessing is king, until one is actually filling those CEO shoes, and then you become Ned and every other company head. Why? Because it's your company. It means something, and you still want, and rightly so, control over what your company does. And, to my knowledge, most businesses don't function, or prosper, when ran by committee.
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@ned Needs a razor blade too.
I'm sorry but I don't think this is ever okay. I know you are trying to express that you don't like him but it's a brutal and horrible comment to make about anyone.
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I think it's very possible that he meant that he needs to shave.
Haha possible..
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Wow! Do I really need to explain my jokes?
To shave his beard, omg.
That joke was too cutting edge :)
Indeed it is good for the community to be informed of what Steemit Inc want's to accomplish and in some way know what's going on... With that said - from a business perspective true success relies not only on The Visionary but also a good management team and from what I came to learn in recent post's from other Steemians, Ned had to let go of some staff. So maybe this is something that is being addressed anyway? This is also possibly why there has been a lack of communication recently. In short, I do believe Steemit is making good progress and has some good developments already in place.
Still see no green grass in the horizon...
what's a green sleeve?
Green grass . i'm gonna edit right now...
= concern trolling
In the drama great things happens. :)
Thanks for the good summary and explanation about hivemind and its changes. And thanks for your positive vibes as well!
I hope that the whole situation and all the needed changes within the code behind steem will result in a more effective blockchain with much more nodes and a wider decentralization.
Peace!
That's true...we are looking ahead and making our presence on Steem count
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Good stuff, nice to get some sort of idea what's going on.