TimCliff Witness Update 2017-03-05

Hello Everyone!

Here is what I've been up to since my last witness post:

• I have been spending a lot of time working on updates to the official Steemit FAQ page. Once I am done, I will be submitting a pull request to the condenser GitHub repository with all the updates. This is a major project, and will probably be taking up most of my 'Steemit time' for the next several weeks.
• I continue to be involved in many of the conversations regarding HF 17, and other potential changes to the platform.
• I posted an update on HF 17 regarding the change to add curation rewards back to the comment reward pool, and update the reward and curation curves for both posts and comments (post here).
• I created the latest edition of the Reports from the Witnesses series. This report provides the community with an aggregated report of all the witness reports from the past week.
• I created a new guide: Everything you need to know about potential payouts and flagging (for new users), which was very well received. I plan to add this to the Welcome Page in the next round of updates.
• I created a "GitHub Report" on a new issue that the Steemit dev team opened to change the flag icon back to a downvote. Along with this, they indicated plans to have separate "flag" and "downvote" functions after communities are implemented.
• I was a guest on the "Beyond Bitcoin" show, speaking about the Steem/Steemit platform, and my experience as a backup witness (link to the show here).

Forward Looking Plans:

• Continue my involvement with existing projects.
• My main focus over the next few weeks continues to be working on updates to the Steemit FAQ page with @pfunk.

Views on HF 17:

• My detailed views on the upcoming HF were expressed in my previous witness post.
• The TLDR version is that while I have some minor issues / disagreements with a few of the changes, there is nothing that I consider a show-stopper - so I do plan to vote in favor of adopting the HF.

Use of Witness Funds:

• I have decided that since the witness pay was significantly reduced in HF 16, witnesses should not feel obligated to report what they are doing with their witness funds anymore. (Even a top 19 witness position only pays out about $10,000 USD worth of SP per year at the current market price, and the backup witnesses make even less than that.) Based on this, I will no longer be reporting weekly on the use of my funds unless there is something specific that I feel deserves mentioning.
• I did decide to start powering down. My current plans are to take out enough to cover the next 6 months of witness server expenses, as well as have some liquid funds available to increase my position (by buying back more SP at a lower price) in case the price of STEEM continues to fall.

Summary of current witness parameters:

• Price Discount: My discount remains unchanged, at 2%. The SBD peg has held close to $1.00, sometimes slightly above, sometimes slightly below. The debt level is getting close to dangerously high though, at 4.77%. Because the debt level is 'high', the price discount is intended to encourage more people to convert SBD->STEEM (to help reduce the debt).
• SBD Interest Rate: My SBD interest rate remains unchanged at 2.5%. Given the current level of debt, a higher price discount is the preferred method over a higher SBD interest rate to maintain the SBD peg. My current policy is to only update my SBD interest rate once a month (on the first of the month) as summarized in this post, but that is subject to change.
• Registration Fee: My registration remains unchanged at 20 STEEM. This is approximately $1.94 at the current market price.

I welcome feedback on any of my projects or things that I can be doing better as a witness. If you think I am doing a great job, I would really appreciate your witness vote!

https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Thanks everyone for reading my witness report!