Witness Update; Block Size, Monitoring Scripts, Node Updates and Future Ideas
Witness Updates @ July 2017
It's been a turbulent month, to say the least. The STEEM and SBD price has dropped rapidly, together with many other cryptocurrencies. I belive this is due to the fact that the Bitcoin community isn't sure on where they will head in the near future. We're talking SegWit here folks, but the market isn't sure what to belive.
The Gridcoin Community has been even more turbulent, a community that I hold dear to me, with a very busy development team rectifying with some issues that suddenly arose, keeping them working well in to the nights the past week, resulting in several updates. I must admire them for their efforts and dedication to this very great coin. Great times are ahead of us!
But lets jump on to the updates of mine and what I've been doing
SBD Price Peg Issue
I will be addressing the issue with the SBD price not keeping on the peg of the USD by changing my price feeds to support bias to hold the 1 SBD == 1 USD, by using conductor this will be updated variably when price drifts. I will also support the increase of APR, setting mine to 1.5%.
Block Size Issue
I've supported the increased block size since the start of my witnesses, trying to force the main witnesses to follow. As described from @someguy123 in his post "Dear Witnesses - Please increase your block size!", there are still some to convince to go this way.
I support an increase of creation fees, setting my default to 0.5 STEEM for them at the moment. With the price falling this should be increased.
As with price and APR, we as backup witnesses doesn't make the consensus; that's something the top 20 witnesses do and why it's important to support active witnesses as well as looking on where they stand in various questions.
Join Bitshares; Now running a Full Node + 2 Witnesses
I have joined Bitshares as a witness. With my big interest in Graphene, the system that Steemit is built upon, I can't go without supporting Bitshares as well. The cost to become a witness on Bitshares is quite high, compared to Steem that has no prices, but I will still do my very best for the Bitshares community as well.
First out was starting a Main witness node, as well as a Backup witness node. Some users reached out to me on the forum telling me that there was a need for more Full Nodes to connect to, so I decided that this was a first task to make.
Full Node Specs:
- 10-core Intel® Xeon® E5-2620v3 or E5-2630v4 processor
- 52GB RAM
- 1Gigabit unmetered traffic
You can connect to this node trough wss://bitshares.crypto.fans/ws
To start using the Bitshares DEX you need to create an account.
Monitor Scripting
With running more nodes on multiple networks it's important to make sure they all run smooth. Reporting to me in case of something unexpected happening is vital, even as a backup witness. Due to this I have forked a version of @roelandp's work on a Python Monitoring script. I have already added a few more functions and will push some updates to it as it's been tested and verified. This will be one of my first contributions of application support for the Graphene communities; Bitshares, Steem and PeerPlays.
Knowing little Python from start I've quickly gained some very good skills in this very new language for me coming from the PHP coding field, but it's been a blast to learn.
Gridcoin Block Explorer; Going Team Less - More stats for the Masses
My main website project, Gridcoinstats.eu, have been running well for months. With an increasing traffic demand we recently moved to bigger servers, and they seem to be holding the load much better ;)
The Gridcoin Project has decided to investigate on dropping the requirements for having to be part of the Gridcoin Boinc Team to be rewarded, heavily increasing the possible users to reward from around 12,000 to over 4 million!!
Due to this I've been working with making the page work without the team requirements, making the page work with keeping stats for ALL Boinc users worldwide instead. This is making the page a direct competitor to Boincstats, which is pretty sweet :)
The work is progressing well, but still needs testing and an update to both to the backend as well as the frontend to the page. Expecting an update of the main webpage in a few weeks.
Future Ideas
For the future I plan to perfect the monitoring script as I mentioned before, supporting the community. I will continue to read and follow updates from the communities and their users, being a conduit between them and the Delegated POS system as a witness.
I wish to continue to support and contribute to those projects that I hold dear. With your continued support I can do this for each and everyone of you.
Thank you for all for your support
Support me as witness on Steemit.com and BitSharesSteemit: sc-steemit 
BitShares: sc-ol 
Proud Supporter of the Cryptocurrency Gridcoin
BitShares: sc-ol
Proud Supporter of the Cryptocurrency Gridcoin
Great update - thanks! Happy to see the new proposed Gridcoin logo has crept in here as well :). If you'd like any further images, icons or versions of the logo for the site / your posts do let me know - I'd be happy to supply you with whatever you need.
They're awesome 😍
Would love a Gridcoinstats related logo some time.
I'm sure I can work something out ;) give me a shout on Slack (you're on there, right?) and we'll chat about it!
Absolutely, we'll talk some day about it, cool 😎
Actually I think it's the opposite. When I joined last month the fee was 0.5 STEEM when all the cryptos were high in value. Now that prices have sunk drastically, it makes sense to lower the fee to 0.2 or 0.1 STEEM, otherwise it would cost the system too much to register new users. For example, to add a new user without delegation, you multiply the fee by 30, so that's 0.5 STEEM x 30 = 15 STEEM. It wouldn't make sense to still charge that amount when STEEM's price is lower. So 0.2 STEEM x 30 = 6 STEEM sounds more reasonable and proportionate.
Hmm, I may have missed some of the notes on this. Thanks for pointing this out 👍
Prior to the hardfork where they added delegation, witnesses were for the most part keeping their account creation fees in the range of $3-5 USD worth of STEEM. After the HF where delegation was added, there have been some differing views on what is 'right'..
Personally, I want to keep them in the $3-5 USD range as much as possible (for users who pay with non-delegated SP, which would make delegated accounts around $15-25).
There is another factor though, which is bandwidth. If the account creation fee is set too low, then users do not have enough SP in their account when they start to properly interact with the blockchain. With the current prices, we found we could not go down to $3-5 USD, because it was not enough SP for new accounts to interact with the blockchain..
There has been some consensus that it should not go below 0.2 STEEM (which means accounts cost 6 STEEM), although we are finding now that even 6 STEEM is not always enough for 'regular use'.
If you set your price to 0.5, that is around $15 USD to create a new account. IMO, that is high on the price side (again, I prefer the $3-5 USD range), but that doesn't make it 'wrong'. Each witness gets to chose their own policy based on what they think is best.
@timcliff's helpful input as usual 👍
At least that's how I understand it. Currently most of the fees are set at 0.2 STEEM by the witnesses.
https://steemd.com/witnesses
Great work across the board @sc-steemit, you've got my witness votes! :)
I don't think steemit it should do anything to help peg the SDB to the dollar. The market and for those who understand what an SBD is will do this themselves! The community an the market forces will keep the SBD where it needs to be and it falls its an indication we need to do more to support the steemit platform because as steemit it succeeds so will the SBD and steem in general.
The SBD (Steem Backed Dollar) should be as close to the US Dollar as possible, that's the whole idea behind the asset. As a witness I can make it more or less worth holding this asset. An increase in APR will make user more reluctant in selling of their asset as they know it will earn them interest. Thus making the market price go up again. When the market price is high enough, people will sell anyway.
Adjusting the price bias does the same thing, but in regards to posts payout and conversion of SBD <-> Steem. Making people less reluctant to
convertsell, rather making them keep SBD or Power Up.Of course will the market always dictate, but we can make it more economically to keep the asset making it more stable.
Awesome thanks for this detailed response!
Witness vote submitted!