Firepower Witness Update—April, 2018

It has been just over a month since I've announced my Steem witness campaign and proposal. I'm happy to announce that my witness node has been running for 2 months without a hiccup.

As the data shows on https://steemian.info/witnesses - there were no missed blocks and it seems to be signing about 10-12 blocks a day. This is sufficient to cover my costs of running three servers but insufficient for funding my projects regularly which I have been doing at my own expense from the very beginning. But I hope this will change. I'm in the 64th spot on the witness list currently.

In the past few months I've travelled far and wide, onboarded several new users, and marketed Steem blockchain and this platform as best possible. I've also conducted a few meetups, presentations and produced videos from it. The video from Malaysia will be out in the next few days.

My team and I have also spoken to a few investors keen on getting into cryptocurrencies and have gotten some of them interested in hodling Steem. In the process we also reached out to a notable Indian exchange in order to get Steem listed on their platform.

After a round of discussions the conclusion was that there's not enough demand for that just yet, unlike some of the crypto currencies from the top 20 and hence Indians will have to wait longer to buy and sell Steem directly for INR. But suffice to say, discussions are underway and I hope something interesting will happen in the months to come.

Another major change I've noticed is that in the recent months is that most large voters have moved away from curating themselves to delegating to bid bots. This has put some of my projects on the back foot due to lack of support and sponsors.

Few mid-size voters are powering down as a direct result of their reducing influence on the reward pool thanks to large SP accounts handing out massive delegations to the tune of millions of SP. These delegated accounts are also exerting their right on the reward pool ergo directly reducing influence of minnows and mid-size accounts on the reward pool. The question I've been asked is what is the point of powering up if whales continue to dominate the market?

Some witnesses are delegating their stake earned from witnessing to bid bots for easy returns or running bid bots of their own. I've decided to not get involved in aiding bid bots or using them for the time being. Instead I continue to raise funds for future India specific activities on my own through the content I produce here.

Frankly with the way things are currently, there aren't many options left now for fund raising towards community initiatives and also make it sustainable. The whole community seems to be favouring using of bid bots but I can't help but agree with these two posts: 1 and 2

Reality check: Unless the prices go up anytime soon, it will be difficult conduct some of the activities planned in the short term. Frankly, last couple of meetups and the travel for the same has put us in a big loss as far as our budgets go. The market correction hasn't helped either. We're recuperating and planning the next few set of events but execution will take awhile. Overall I've got a positive outlook on the days ahead and we'll have to be patient.

As a community we're growing steadily. Steemit itself is growing quite well and India remains in the 5th spot as a top traffic source to our platform. We've managed to generate a buzz in the past year in few online communities and I hope to see this continue.

Current Witness Node Details

Primary Witness Node
Ram64 GB DDR4
CPUIntel® Core™ i7-6700 Quad-Core CPU
Disks2x500 GB SSD
Internet Connection1 Gigabit
Backup Witness Node
Ram32 GB DDR4
CPUIntel® Core™ i7-6700 Quad-Core CPU
Disks2x500 GB SSD
Internet Connection1 Gigabit
Seed Node
URLseed.firepower.ltd:2001
Ram32 GB DDR3
CPUIntel Xeon E3-1230 v3 - 3.3 Ghz - 4 cores
Disks2x120 GB SSD
Internet Connection1 Gigabit

I'm running excellent hardware for my nodes as you can tell. They can be scaled up if needed. You can read about my past activities in my witness proposal here and follow my blog for further updates. You can vote for my witness here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Thank you for your time and support towards my witness and initiatives.


If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:

  1. Building A List Of Users From India—Please Fill This Form ASAP!
  2. Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
  3. Steem.Chat Contest #20

Follow Me: @firepower

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You have been continuously doing great work since the beginning! Always enthusiastic, kind, and helpful.

Thank you so much! :) I'm glad to have been able to help however possible.

Before you vote him as witness, please make sure you know who he is. He does not need to use bid bots. He only need to use his alt accounts to rape the reward pool. One example is @mnaik. He posts 7-8 photos each day and rewards himself $10 per photo! This is only one of his accounts.

If you want to vote a liar, a spammer, a terrorist as a witness, please vote for @firepower. For details, please read:

Dear @nationalpark I welcome your donations and support towards community building activities but since you are unable to do so keep your unsolicited advice and slander to yourself. Else we're back to square one, and frankly I have no time for engaging in some keyboard warrior BS with you. My content pays for all my community activities undertaken so far since day 1. None of the witnesses are on Steemit for charitable causes. They are not doing it without their expenses taken care of. Why should I do anything at a loss which I am as it is? I can't be bothered with addressing you over and over again. Please mind your own business and leave me to mine.

You ruined my account and trying to be off the hook now? You are dreaming.
You flagged me hundreds times and ask me to mind my own business? Are you stupid?
If you want to negotiate, remove all the flags first. Otherwise, go to the HELL

I stopped flagging you recently because you were minding your own business for a while. However you seem to want to continue to make it personal just to antagonize me. I know you don't care but then we'll just keep fighting. Is that really necessary? Do you think it will change anything for you or me? Nope! So please be reasonable instead of being naive and making demands when you have nothing real to offer to me. My flags can't be removed just like your slanderous posts and comments can't be deleted. But how about a fresh start instead? Think over it for sometime with a cool mind instead of getting pissed off again. Cheers. :)

You are stupid enough and cannot get my point: You are a shameless liar who is not qualified as a witness.
You do not have the ability to piss me off. You are stupid and never realized that.
I am here to test the freedom of speech at Steem and let your voters know who you are.

You can just keep raping the reward pool with all the accounts you can control and let's see how far you can go.

Alright. Keep vomiting nonsense conspiracy theories. I'll go back to flagging. Thank you.

Already gave my witness vote to you.
Thanks for supporting indian community.

Voted for you as a witness, my vote doesn't count much for you, but I know if a lot of low sp accounts vote for you, it can make a difference in your ranking.

You have been promoting steemit throughout India from the beginning, and because of that, a lot of good content creating people came overboard on steemit, like @shenoy

I hope you get the support you deserve, so that you can invite more investors and creative people from India, as you have been doing from the last year.

All the best.

Thanks @firepower for the detailed update. I think that the Indian community is growing in terms of number but not in terms of quality. Quality attracts more Steem Power. This is what I have learnt since the day one which is why it took me sufficient amount of time to learn everything. Now when I write a post, it gets noticed by the people and I do not have to worry much about spending SBDs on the bid-bots.

I have also learned that the more I reward people, the more followers I get and hence the more upvotes on my posts and comments. Also, investing time in networking has helped me a lot on Discord and Steem.chat Help others to help yourself!

I feel that instead of continuously taking out SBDs, you should first give in to the platform. Gather as much Steem Power you can, reward people for their Quality posts. Help them grow and you will grow yourself. This one thing I have learned from you as well. :) Thank you so much for that.

I believe in your vision and support you in creating a better Steem Culture in our country and around the world. Cheers!

"I've decided to not get involved in aiding bid bots or using them for the time being. "

I like this and it is the reason I just upvoted you as a witness.

You are right bro Brother,

Most of the big Steempower holders now moving from manual curation to Delegating their steempower to bid bots and many small users are also doing the same and because of this i see a great decline in the number of upvotes that we received on Steemit these day.

You just said it all. The big shots dont care about minnow. Unfortunately our witness vote dont count, so they care even less. Bid bot is the new thing now, good luck to them.

Wow that's a good setup with killer RAM and a nice backup. Well done and thanks for the report! Keep going!

You are my no. 1 witness. Carry on the good works.

your steem witness catagory really very best dear.you always giving alots of good idea of steemit platform..i have got alots of experience on your blog..thanks to sharing for your witness catagory...very well done dear..friend..@firepower

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