Witnesses, the blockchain Ninjas, ancient wizards, & purveyors of steem tools!

Bloggers are the bread and butter of Steemit.com, but Witnesses are the flour and yeast that make the bread even possible. Many witnesses have full time jobs in addition to running their servers, making their contributions very generous indeed. I have had the opportunity to interview multiple witnesses with various ninja skills and high-level wizardry to see what makes them tick, and why they are so passionate about steemit. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read more about witnesses HERE

My mission to spread witness awareness burns bright as I continue to pursue interviews with some of the best and brightest in our community.

Today, @dragosroua, a Romanian programmer who has actually created his own cryptocurrency (RUNCOIN) for Runners, and is the creator of http://steem.supply/, has taken some very precious time out of his day to answer a few questions.

How long have you been on steemit.com and how long have you been a witness?

I’ve been on Steemit since October 2016 and I’m a witness since November, this is my initial post in the witness campaign: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@dragosroua/dragosroua-witness-thread

As the creator of http://steem.supply/, which projects upcoming rewards (quite accurately), do you have to run your own seed node in addition to your Witness node?

Not at the moment, but I’m plan to doing so as the traffic increases. I’m relying on public seed nodes and, obviously, they may be overloaded at times. The good thing is that I’m learning a lot and I’m “forced” to find ways to increase uptime. For instance, I’m thinking of a way to rotate the public seed nodes based on their overall “health”

Server maintenance is very costly and time consuming. How much time do you spend maintaining your nodes and engaging the community to help steemit grow?

That’s a very good question. Server maintenance is indeed costly but I have more than 20 years experience fiddling with Linux (that’s right, I got my first Slackware CD around January 1997 and that’s when I obviously compiled my first kernel too). So, from this point of view, you can say the server cost has been priced in. As for engaging in community I spend at least one hour a day. Still have a day job so time is a bit scarce.

What are your thoughts on the recent changes that have been implemented with HardFork 19, and how did they effect your Witness node?

These changes have been waited for a while, I’m talking about linear rewards. It’s very good and the results are encouraging. It narrows the gap between whales, minnows and dolphins. The first week was filled with adrenaline as people saw their rewards skyrocketing but as the rewards pool balanced (and even went into a dive recently) rewards got to a more balanced curve. My witness node wasn’t specifically affected about it.

You have mentioned that you have opened a GitHub issue with the devs to create a variable power down. Why do you feel that this is important for steemit users?

I think you should be able to control how much you power down, because that’s an important metric in the overall price of Steem. Analysts will take into account this metric across the entire ecosystem as a way to predict the available supply. Right now, the Steemi UI allows only equal installments, even if, let’s say, you are a whale and you want to power down only 10% of your 1/13 allowed installment. Since I made that proposal I learned that this feature already exists in the blockchain (i.e. you can already do this with the cli_wallet, or by using a JS, Python or PHP library) and that the Steemit dev team is actively working to incorporate the feature into the public UI of Steemit.com

The Steemit community is experiencing unprecedented growth, what steps have you taken as a Witness to ensure that the increased transactions run smoothly?

I increased my block size (actually doubled it) and I monitor my witness daily

(At time of interview SBD was over $1) SBD is trading over $1, how have you adjusted your price feed to compensate, and why have you done this?

I adjusted my price feed bias in such a way that the peg should stay. It’s difficult (if not impossible) to maintain the peg outside the Steemit ecosystem but at least I tried.

You have been in the top 50 Witnesses before, how important is it for Witnesses to maintain their status in the top 50?

Every witness counts, not only the top 50. The top 50 witnesses just play a more consistent role in maintaining the network health. You can contribute more to the network if you’re there

How important is it to vote for Witnesses, and why do you think steemians should vote for you?

It’s fundamental. All Steemians should learn what a witness i before even posting, because their first post will have to be validated by a witness. Steem is run by a decentralized “committee” of witnesses, voted by other members. It’s not a company that takes care of everything, but a decentralized community. That’s a huge paradigm shift. As for why they should vote for me, well, I will just repost my first witness post link again: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@dragosroua/dragosroua-witness-thread. Add to this steem.supply and the upcoming steem.city.

OK, so now that you know what these wonderful witnesses do for our community, the least you can do it vote for them. Dead witnesses verify no blocks, so cast your votes and make sure our blocks get verified and not dropped.

First, point your browser to https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Vote away, using your best judgement. If you want to know more about a Witness, be sure to visit their Witness feed. You can always add in a witness who is not in the top 50, or you can choose your favorite witness (or other steemian) as a proxy and delegate your votes too!

@dragosroua witness thread

Previous Interview threads

@ausbitbank
@aggroed
@theprophet0
@neoxian
@someguy123
@timcliff

Upcoming Interview threads

@followbtcnews
@reggaemuffin
@good-karma

You can verify how well these witnesses are doing their job of verifying blocks a couple of different ways and this may also factor into voting choices.
Stats on Witness activity are available at
Steemd & Steemdb

Thanks to the PALNet and MinnowSupport project

The PALnet and MinnowSupport project is one of the fastest growing Steemit social groups supported by @aggroed @ausbitbank @theprophet0 @neoxian @someguy123 @thecryptodrive @teamsteem, @acidyo, & @followbtcnews. We have almost 4000 members dedicated to helping each other grow into dolphins and eventually whales, and are fueled by member delegations.

Grand total of more than 100,000 SP to help upvote minnows!

Please join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw

Minnow Support Project: Problem Statement, Vision Statement, Mission Statement, and Plan to help you grom from Minnow to Whale with friends in record time

Image courtesy of @zeartul

thanks to @kristyglas for the line breaks, find more here

If you are a witness and would like to be interviewed, you can find me in the PALnet discord chat or hit me up at [email protected]

Check out some of my previous posts if you like what you've read

Witness Awareness Series: Interviews with various witnesses
Interview with @timcliff
Interview with @someguy123
Interview with @neoxian
Interviews with @aggroed, @theprophet0, and @ausbitbank

How to stop robots from killing us. Musings of the sentient rapture