About 2 months ago we created a whole set of tools to help Witnesses (Steem Block Producers)
Right around that time we quietly started a server to help in the block production process.

So we now celebrate 2 months as a Steem Witness! Everything has been very smooth.

• No missed blocks so far
• We successfully updated our witness node to the latest version (0.20.8)

"VOTES" and "WITNESSES"

If you're less familiar with these terms the following list might help you familiarize with them:

• There is a stake weighted voting system (based on how much SP you have) on the Steem blockchain to select the witnesses
• The witnesses do their best to keep Steem running and always work in the best interests of the platform
• If there is a big decision to be made about some new change that would basically "hard-fork" the platform (aka change to different rules) then those witnesses would need to have some sort of consensus. The presumption is they are trusted by the community stakeholders (aka through votes) on these issues and matters
• Also, witnesses define the cost of an account and the steem/usd price. They, of course, are also responsible for adding blocks into the blockchain.

Mainly it's the top 20 witnesses that produce most of the blocks but the 21st slot is left open for a backup witness that is selected between the other witnesses every 21 blocks.

Each day @steempeak produces a few blocks for the blockchain and has done so without any fail for about 2 months. We can thank @asgarth for implementing a great server and system. And of course, he'd likely thank others for helping him to get started.

Minnow Support Project (MSP) QUESTIONNAIRE

MSP asks a few questions to Witnesses and then has a committee vote on potential votes as described in this post.

1. What are you pledging to do to support the Steemit Community?

   • Not much for the "steemit" community (likely a misspoken phrase from a year ago when it was all steemit.com) other than trying to create an alternative way for some of them to enjoy Steem.
   • But for the larger Steem community we pledge to make the most intuitive website on all of Steem. And we pledge to be the one stop shop for all the tools the community wants most.
   • We also pledge to market Steem to potentially a large number of new users.

2. What are you pledging to do to support the Minnow Community?
   Minnows meaning users with low amounts of SP... usually new users.

   • We pledge to create the tools that will help them intuitively understand Steem and this social blogging experience.
     If a user intuitively understands, then there is less need for education projects and less people leaving because of confusion. Intuitive interface and tools helps retention and helps new users feel more empowered to succeed.
   • We also pledge to help educate in terms of expectations of Steem. We pledge to never promote the blockchain as a get rich quick site and will take steps to help users have good expectations economically and help users understand that if they're looking for value from steem that work is required in multiple areas: Content, Connections, Consistency and Capital.

3. What are you pledging to do to support the Minnow Support Project?
   "Minnow Support Project" is an initiative which is found on PAL which in turn is a large group of Steem users primarily found on this discord. They educate and connect users and support and run a few projects that help new users and Steem in general.
   We pledge to make tools that make your job easier and open a dialogue with your users and those that run the Minnow Support Project to figure out which tools and user experience would best help these new users and users that are what we would classify as "minnows". Tag us (@asgarth, @jarvie, @r00sj3) and we'll see if there is some sort of feature that would make life much better for all new users or help the project specifically.

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The SteemPeak Team