Meet Our Steem Witnesses - A weekly show For All Steemians #31 With @quochuy

dhavey (62)in #witness-update • 6 years ago

It's my pleasure to welcome you to another Meet Our Steem Witnesses - A weekly show For All Steemians.

It's a new week and I hope you all are enjoying the week already? Last week I posted my interview with @fbslo one of the steem witnesses and it not a new thing to us that we all have 30 votes to cast for any steemit witness of our choice and I will say this is the most important 30 votes you will ever cast on this platform.

Looking at things here, the on going dip as affected the atmosphere here on Steem platform but I hope that the RockDB and SMTs would bring good impact to the Steem project. To those that might have never heard of Meet Our Steem Witnesses before, here is a recap here

For some months now, I have been interviewing some witnesses and it has been an amazing and remarkable experience presenting my their chat here for steemians to read and see what they have been up to.

Here are the links to my previous interview

You can check and read my previous interview with
reggaemuffin • exyle• adsactly-witness • felixxx • lukestokes • neoxian • abh12345 • good-karma
•liondani
• aggroed • yuriks2000 • jatinhota themarkymark • enginewitty •b0y2k • arcange •timcliff •roelandp •someguy123 •pfunk
•justyy
•yabapmatt •jackmiller •pjau •helpie •guiltyparties •krnel •
@prc •fbslo
make sure you follow along with the next episode.

HOW FAR SO FAR, like I said that I will focus on my old interview and now that I'm done with that, it time to update you with my new interview. As from now on any interview here on my blog are fresh and new.

So today, I will be posting my interview with @quochuy

So stay tuned, follow up and learn from our witnesses.

When and How did you discover Steemit?

@quochuy I’m a website developer but I do various things on the side such as fishing, gardening, worm farming and black soldier fly larvae (BSFL) farming. In February 2018, a friend of mine, who is also doing worm farming and BSFL told me about Steemit and this is how I came on board. It was mainly to blog about compost worms and BSFL but I had to adapt to the audience and started blogging on various topics.

In s simple term, what is it that witnesses do?

@quochuy There are many blog posts that covers the topic already, including mines. But in a nutshell, here are few things Steem Witnesses do:
@quochuy
Witnessing and signing transactions that happens on the blockchain.
making sure that the Steem network is up and operational.
keeping a copy of the blockchain, which is basically a database of all the transactions.
reviewing and approving changes to the blockchain logics that are beneficial to the community and rejecting those that can put the community at risk.

What is your purpose and aim of joining the Steem Witnesses?

@quochuy I’m still consider myself as a young Witness. I initially decided to become a Witness as way to learn more about the system but also to contribute into keeping the network up and running.

How do witnesses get voted?

@quochuy You just go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and choose the witnesses you want to vote for. Not all active witnesses are listed there, only the top 100. To vote for witnesses outside of the top 100 (like myself) you need to scroll down and enter their username in the text field and click on the “Vote” button.
Of course, you should learn more about the witnesses you have voted for and regularly review your votes because votes can be removed and re-assigned.

Why are witnesses dropping out when STEEM prices are low?

@quochuy Because to be a Steem Witness you need to run a server (computer) that runs 24/7/365. This costs money. If STEEM prices are low, that means you might end up running the operation at loss. For some people, this is not possible due to personal/professional priorities.

What are your thoughts on the price of Steem and SBD over the last one month?

@quochuy Obviously, the price of STEEM has dropped low but it has somehow stabilised around $0.25 - $0.30 which I think shows that we still have a number of core users that believe in the system and will fight to keep it up.

What’s your opinion on the recent Steemit, Inc.’s Managing Director in person of @elipowell?

@quochuy I think it’s a shame that a Head of Communications & Advocacy had only 2 posts on her blog for about 8 months and only two new posts since her new role someone(edited) days ago. But the past is the past and her new role is not an easy one so let’s give the lady a chance and see what she can bring on board. I just hope that she is a visionary and have good knowledge of the industry and that she will have some creative ideas on how to improve the platform.

What changes would you like to see more on Steemit?

@quochuy Even though Steemit Inc. wants to focus more on the backend, I would like to see the frontend steemit.com to be updated and more functional because this is the major dapp most users are on everyday.

We also need better algorithms for the hot and trending sections, basing these on payout value does not make sense.

Will SMTs support the building of real life enterprises and business on the blockchain?

@quochuy To be honest, I don’t know much about SMT and I’m not excited about it until we get a strong base. Maybe it will bring more adopters but they might also jump out soon after.

Looking at the atmosphere here on steemit, a lot has changed. Can you tell us what you have been doing to tell non-steemians out there about steemit?

@quochuy I have stopped telling non-steemians about Steemit because of the on boarding process. Every time I managed to get someone excited, their excitement has been shutdown by the long waiting time for the account creation. We need a smoother registration process.

There is no gain saying that the drop in the price of Steem and SBD has affected a lot of steemians and some are not active like people. What do you think should be done to boom the price of steem and even SBD?

@quochuy Well there is no secret, we need more investors but to attract them we need more users and a better user interface. All existing Dapps need to invest in some marketing to get the name out there. But then, we need to be able to keep the users too.

Currently, most Dapps are very technical or lack of features and hence it’s difficult to go mainstream.

Why aren’t more Youtubers moving to DTube?
Remembering one password is already difficult for some people let alone remembering a Owner Key, Active Key, Posting Key, MEMO Key. Some users don’t even know they can use a password management app or they don’t know how to use one.
But then it’s not only Steem and SBD prices that are falling, it’s the whole crypto world and still a lot of people don’t trust crypto at all.

What do you think the steem community should do to restore people’s confidence in this project because looking at this project from my own view a lot have already losing hope in this project?

@quochuy Maybe we should do things to increase trust into Crypto itself not just the Steem platform. If someone does not believe in cryptocurrency, there is no point trying to convince them about Steem/Steemit.

Do you think if businesses is attach to steemit, like allowing ads to be displayed. Will that bring more value to steem. Because presently we only have content creator and the curators. What do you think?

@quochuy I joined Steem not only because my content can be monetised but also because the platform is ad-free. So is allowing ads to be displayed a good idea? That’s a hard one. Displaying ads will definitely help Steemit Inc. finance their business and continue the development of the blockchain but will it bring value to the blockchain and the STEEM currency? Depends on how the income from the ads will be used I guess.

One idea could be to bring businesses in as investors and content creators and their content could be part of some ads as well. For example, business ABCD could invest some money by powering up their own Steem account. An internal ad management system could then create banners, videos etc… that link to the business’ posts that advertise their products in the form of quality content such as tutorials, guides etc…

What are the things you would love to see on steemit and what are those things you would like to remove if you have the power to do so?

@quochuy Remove the “beta” from the logo of Steemit.com
Add all the missing features available on the blockchain but missing from Steemit.com (things like delegation, encrypting a MEMO etc…)
more social features such as a friend list that is different to just following list, a messaging system…

Do you think Steem(it) has the chance to overcome its growing pains and become the next big social media site?

@quochuy Yes it has the chance to do so but it’s still far away from becoming it. There are still a lot of work to do in order for more people, especially non-technical persons, to come on board.

Maybe we need some visionary leader to come up with a new company that have a strong backbone to be able to invest several years of development to build a totally new Dapp that uses the full power of the Steem blockchain and add some more unique features that don’t have to be stored on the blockchain itself.

Why is there fluctuation in the post-payout system?

@quochuy This could be due to the new system where upvotes before 15 minutes are partially paid to the curators but what used to be paid to the author is now returned to the reward pool. So the estimated payout minus the returned value is the actual payout.

How do you keep balance between being a witness and other commitments?

@quochuy Recently, this has been a major issue for me. I have a day job and side activity in addition to contributing to Steem. The bare minimum I can still do is keeping my Witness server running at almost no profit and also writing content on the blog although I recently had to reduce this dramatically due to the need for re-prioritising my professional and family life.

What should steemians expect from you in the future?

@quochuy Still being outside of the top 100 Witnesses, I will keep my Witness server up and running for as long as my expenses are not too high. The blockchain is growing fast and in few months I will have to upgrade my server for more disk space and memory, this will probably double or triple what I’m paying at the moment and I might or not be able to afford it.

Content wise, I’m still regularly writing blog post and making few DTube videos and I’m still working on @steemtelly, my DTube/DSound app for Apple TV.

Your advice to Steemians in general?

@quochuy Focus on content and engagement, the payout should be considered as a bonus at the moment. Try to build a quality blog with interesting content that will attract more readers both from inside and outside of the Steem ecosystem. For the long run, we need to show to external users that Steem is worth it.

Maybe that’s the perfect time to slow down and write less content but of higher quality (longer, more and better photos, better formatting etc…). It might take a while before Steem bounce back up but when it happens, you will have a great blog and people will want to come back and read from you.

If you could only vote for one witness (not yourself) who would it be and why?

@quochuy If I could only vote for one witness, I wouldn’t vote and wouldn’t use Steem because that does not make sense. Firstly for obvious technical/security reasons and secondly because each Witness bring their own and unique value and it’s all Witnesses together that bring strength to the platform. For a list of who I recommend, check who I vote for http://steemd.com/@quochuy

What would you like to do if you had no responsibilities/societal expectations to fulfill?

@quochuy If I could dedicate full time to Steem I would:

start planning better subject to write about and have a content release schedule.
start thinking of new development projects to try to add value to the platform and attract new users.
start a campaign to let more users know and understand what Steem has to give.
invest and setup a team to build a new Dapp.
learn C/C++ and how to develop for the blockchain

Thank you all for reading. Like I said before, I feel so amazing to be back again and I promise you all more and interesting episode of this interview. So today i call it the end of this week episode of meet our steem witnesses. Until next time, I love you all.

PS Possibly you have any show, event or project you want me to feature on Meet our Steem Witnesses feel free to drop it in the comment section below. Thank you

PROMOTING AND INTERVIEWING STEEM WITNESS IS ALL I DO

As steemit users we need to do everything in our power to choose witnesses that will represent the community well. Before voting make sure you do some research on the people you are voting for and be informed. Head over to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click on some of the witnesses names, get to know them a bit better and do your part to make sure this community thrives.