Witness update

I didn't do witness updates so far, because I like to keep my blog tidy. With the upcoming hard fork there's been some changes that I would like to report on. Don't expect this to become something regular though ;-)

Let's talk about the witness parameters first. My price feed is, and has been most of the time, reporting the "correct" price of STEEM without discount. Instead, I chose to use the bias to account for the SBD price. It's set to 1/SBD_price, so right now with a price of >1$/SBD it's <1. I won't change the APR for now, I believe that should be the last parameter to be touched for influencing the SBD price. As long as other witnesses still discount and/or have a bias >1 it's just natural that the price is >1$ imo.

Second, the hard fork. I liked the 2 years lock in and everything around it, but I agree with the point that perception matters and the new scheme seems a lot more attractive at first sight. So I decided to support v0.16.0. Got a new server with SSDs and more neat features for the witness, the old one is used as backup now. For seed/public pevo node we got another one with lots of RAM running two steem instances behind a load balancer. This makes a total of 4 machines running for Steem/PEvO so far. The server park keeps growing :)

With the upcoming hard fork, there's also the change to the witness pay, which leads to...

Third, PEvO funding. While we're still safe for the current team's expenses for a while, all the big plans with paying a board of scientists and registering a foundation are on hold for now. We'll have to look into other means like donations and sponsorships. Post rewards certainly can't cover a lot.

Finally, I'm still on my way to Málaga. Traveling with a big dog in Spain is a lot more difficult than expected, as they have a weight limit of 10kg on trains and buses. I got to Valencia on a commuter train, but they nearly kicked me out in the middle of nowhere. And there's no such trains from Valencia on to the south apparently anyway. So I decided to hitchhike, which isn't easy either as you might have guessed. It took us 5 days to get to Salobreña (90km from Málaga), where I decided to rest for the weekend in a beautiful hotel. I hope to arrive at our destination tomorrow (like every day last week). I broke the lens of my phone's camera and it looks like I'll have to get a new phone to show you some of the awesome landscapes around here. Can't mutilate my blog with blurry photos, and although I replaced the lens I think the focus is damaged. It changes when I shake the phone :D

Here's a view of my current location from http://www.turgranada.es:

So much for now, there'll be another dedicated PEvO update soon. Steem on!