Witness and curator update

It's been a pleasure to observe Steem evolving at a rapid pace. The curation community has seen some challenges with a significant portion of the reward pool now being allocated to vote buying, trading, non-curator delegations, etc. Whilst all of this is positive economically, on a personal note, I use Steem as a social publishing platform. I shall continue using Steem as I wish it to be. I'm delighted to see new curation groups such as OCD, while existing ones such as SteemSTEM firing on all cylinders. If a time comes when Steem goes the purely capitalist route, I'll gladly exit the network with no regrets. Fortunately, I believe there's still room for consuming and creating quality content on Steem long term, and I continue operating to that end.

After struggling (as previously documented in my curator updates) and ultimately failing to be as effective with the Hardfork 19 rules as I have been from July 2016 to June 2017, I have scaled down significantly. I have now found a stable equilibrium, and still consume good content on Steem on a daily basis.

As promised when I first fired up a witness node, I shall only post updates when there's something significant to report. This will probably mean a couple of updates every year. As of 5th Nov, I'm no longer involved with the @curie's witness program. Of course, I'll be part of the Curie community, and as other curators participate in discussions regarding @curie's witness decisions. It's been a privilege to collaborate with the new curators and community members of Curie. In mid-2017, I fulfilled all of my personal goals with Curie multiple-fold that I set in Sep 2016, but I'm equally excited to see where the next generation of the Curie community takes the project. [PS: I think I just violated one of my witness policies to never list out my personal achievements, but I'll let this one pass :) ] Anyway, I hope this removes any conflict (though I didn't experience any as I was only in charge of the technical aspects, not the decision making of @curie's witness).

SBD are close to achieving relative stability in my opinion [+/- 5% average over one and a half quarters), so I'll be publishing 1.25% APR in the mid-December. This will be a long term change, which will hold unless over one and a half quarters of instability persists in the SBD market. Over the years, I will of course keep a close eye on central bank interest rates around the world. However, this interest rate is uncompetitive in developing countries, where the average is more in the 6% ballpark. In the scenario that a large amount of investment comes from nations in South Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe, I'll reconsider the APR.

I have nothing else to report on the witness front, though I do wish to start a seed node somewhere in the Far East, as that's an unrepresented region (to the best of my knowledge). Currently, I'm making a profit of $50/mo - if you have any recommendations for a server provider offering services in Japan or South Korea, kindly get in touch with me on Steemit.chat. I'm happy to take a reasonable loss.

Finally, going forward, I'll be voting for witnesses selectively. Mostly for long term community builders, curators, and promising reserve witnesses. If I unvote your witness, please note that you're probably doing a great job, just ignore my unvote. Developer witnesses - they are absolutely crucical - are represented well, so I'll focus my voting on the underrepresented witnesses that make the social platform tick. Most importantly, I'll vote for witnesses that promote and market Steem effectively and measurably outside the crypto world. Particular focus should be onboarding influencers on to Steem.

Looking forward to Communities!