Witness Update 11th of September 2017

I have updated my witness node to 0.19.2.

https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/v0.19.2

I'm still signaling the same parameters;

• Account creation fee: 0.2 STEEM
• Blocksize: 65,536
• APR: 4%
• Bias: 0%

I was a bit late to update, but since everything was running stable for me and I didn't see any issues with the previous release, I took my time.

The new version appears to run smoothly as well.

On a sidenote:

@timcliff recently made a post about 'being a good witness'.

That struck a chord with me.
I set up my witness, because I felt there wasn't enough competition.
At the time, there were a bunch of deactivated witnesses ranking 50 or higher.

Today, I see a lot of new witnesses and much more competition than a few months ago.
Partially, that's due to @jerrybanfield, who made (and sold (?)) a guide on how to set up a witness. Since then, I see a bunch of new, upcoming witnesses competing for votes.

Generally, that's a good thing.

I can see a lot more discussions now and I think it put some more pressure on the top witnesses.

A year ago, I met @pharesim at the Hamburg Meetup.
Back then, the witness income was much higher.

My main concern then was, that the witnesses would grow their share immensely and over time own a big chunk of all the voting rights. That would have led to a huge imbalance and would have ultimately devalued the whole STEEM economy.

@pharesim then said something along the lines of:
'Yes - that's why witnesses are 'expected' to use their income to finance projects on the side.'

That answer was satisfying enough for me.

A year later, I could still see little to nothing of those projects.
In fact, I didn't even see the top witnesses putting any effort into redistributing STEEM - And I think, that's the least you can do to bring value to this blockchain.

I've also seen little to no discussion about the hardforks.

It still appears as if not doing or writing anything and just complying with everything Steemit Inc. does, is the safest way to secure your witness votes.

Seeing all that, I decided to campaign for my own witness node.

I'm not skilled enough to review the code in depth.
I'm not skilled enough to code a helpful tool from scratch.

But at the very least, I'm engaged enough to actually read and review new content and distribute STEEM to a variety of users instead of trying to maximize my own share by voting for the already over-rewarded same few users.

I believe, for this ecosystem to grow, the best thing we can do is to get as many real people involved as possible.

Even the top earners should be able to see how their share won't be worth anything, if we can't manage to get STEEM adopted more widely.

At this point, I'm making ~8 STEEM Power / day.
I honestly didn't expect that much, when I first started this enterprise.
This income covers the costs easily.

If I deserve that, is up to the shareholders.

I don't have huge 'projects' on the side.

I'm trying to stay in touch with the community and not cater to the demands of the users, who are already well off.
With that effort, I don't feel like I deserve a top spot; I'm happy with my rank.

As a low rank backup witness, the parameters I signal have pretty much no effect.
I don't have a big responsibility - and I'm glad about that.

Of course, I wouldn't mind getting more votes and would increase my efforts accordingly.

For a mass adoption, we still have a long way to go and it's in every shareholders interest, to grow this network.

I'm not sure how to conclude this rant ...

Please choose your witnesses wisely and please consider leaving me a vote.
I'll try to stay active and support the 'little guys'.

If you have any questions or suggestions, feel free to contact me:

https://steemit.chat/direct/felixxx

You can leave me a vote here:

https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Thank you for reading and have a nice day !

@felixxx