@ura-soul Witness Update #6 - Socially Active For Steem & Creatively Solving Issues Across The Steem Spectrum.

My sixth witness update - Informing you of my recent activities and why to consider voting for me as one of your list of thirty supported witnesses on the Steem blockchain.

You can view my original witness application thread (from 22nd Oct. 2017) here for more details about me and more about what witnesses do for Steem and Steemit.com. I also now have a French language translation of that application too (great thanks for @roxane for the excellent translation job). More translations to come soon!

It's been a busy time for me here, as always - I had a great time meeting up with some Steemians in 'real life' at the London Crypto Currency Show and have been active in a variety of ways on the blockchain too. I've also been busy with clients so I haven't had as much time as I'd like to put into Steem, but that is coming to an end now - so I'm looking again at getting more involved.

My Recent Witness Related Activity

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I last posted an update two months ago, so I'll give a brief recap of relevant things as far as me being a witness goes. I see witnesses as more than just technical people running servers and thinking about numbers - I understand that witnesses have a role to play in shaping the blockchain environment beyond just policies, so I like to get involved with the more social and psychological aspects of the system - which is what I have mostly been doing.

First of all, I am gradually expanding Steem Ocean, which is my space on the web for providing insights, statistics and features that I would like to see integrated into Steemit.com, but which aren't here (and aren't likely to be here any time soon). I have added a variety of minor updates and improvements in the last couple of months which add up to make the service more simple to navigate and provide additional insights that we will all find useful when examining users of the blockchain.

I also ran a contest to celebrate 3000 followers and to promote Steem Ocean which was a success and I delegated 500 Steem to the winner for a month and the winner was...!

Somewhere along the way I found I was being heavily censored on Facebook, Youtube and G+, even recording a video of my comments disappearing in realtime (not being marked as spam, but instead actually being completely removed) - these were ironically, typically comments related to Facebook's censorship and also steemit posts. So I went on a minor crusade to raise awareness of this and even made some T-shirts to that end!

Next up, I found I was even being soft censored on Steemit, by the tech manager of Steemit himself. So that then took up a bunch of my time, investigating the issues related to that and deciding how to respond. That issue is on hold, pending further developments. I later found a post where he admitted to being anti-democratic and pro shadowy manipulation!.

I took part in the 'Vegans of Steemit' Discord channel, along with other vegan witnesses @teamsteem and @kernl - which was great - I suggest voting for them as witnesses if you don't already.

I explored the legality of copyright infringements as they might apply to witnesses, which is something I have not seen addressed before but which is absolutely fundamental to the continuation of the platform. I then also looked at this from the perspective of child pornography being found in the bitcoin blockchain and how that relates to Steem witnesses.

I highlighted that two witness accounts are dead - with one account being actually openly sold... So if you are voting for 'Steempty' or 'Imacryptorick', then I suggest redirecting your votes as they are wasted.

I suggested a scheme for bonus curation rewards for onboarding new users to Steem - although this is of little use as long as the signup process is broken!

Next up, I went on a bit of a campaign to try to make the witness voting process fairer. I first exposed this here and then made some initial suggestions in a more detailed post here. This post shows that the top 50 witnesses receive a boosted amount of votes compared to the others, most likely because they are more visible on the main witness voting page in Steemit.com. I provided a design for an improved witness voting page too, though I don't see any movement to implement it.

I took part in @pennsif's alternative lifestyles show on MSP waves several times - in this episode I put some time into explaining the problem with the current witness voting process. In this episode we focused on veganism - I'm last in the show - so skip to the end if you want to listen to me.

I most recently attended the London Crypto Currency show with @promo-steem and many other well known steemians. It was a lot of fun and I recorded a promotional video for Steem Ocean at the Steem stand (which I put a bit of help into building before the event started). That video should appear on here soon.

I had a nice success with Steem Ocean recently. Adam Kokesh responded to the data from Steem Ocean that showed he was #2 for self upvoting on the network. He set a public policy determining he would change his voting habits when using his half a million delegated steem power.. He will now dedicate a significant amount of it to upvoting other posts and posters - which is great news for the blockchain and also for people who he supports.

My most recent action of interest has been to suggest a scheme for combining tax relief for Steemians with giving to charity! A win, win, win if ever I saw one. This is still just at the conceptual stage, let me know if you have any thoughts or relevant expertise that can be used to further the idea.

Reasons to vote for me as a witness from my supporters

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Kind people on the blockchain sometimes write posts about why they think you should vote for me as a witness.. I promise I haven't paid them or given them a backrub :)

Here's one from @empato365:

https://steemit.com/witness-category/@empato365/reasons-why-we-should-vote-for-ura-soul-as-witness

My Vision for the Future

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I intend to continue evolving Steem Ocean to make it ever more useful, I am planning to start developing the features for monitoring downvoting soon.

My witness server is still going strong and is more stable following the integration of the price feed script from @yabapmatt, so thanks for that. I have no plans to upgrade it yet.

I need to focus on getting more votes for my witness in order to get more funds in to pay for increased hardware and also to fund projects and ideas as they arise. So some of my time will be focused into 'campaigning' a bit more over the next few weeks.

We will soon start to see the initial shape of things to come from the EOS project and also maybe Steem's SMTs - so there will be a lot of shifts and changes to the blockchain in the near future. I am making sure I leave space open in my schedule to respond appropriately in ways that are most supportive of the future of Steem!

My Current Witness Server Settings

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Specs:
8 Core (16 Thread) Intel CPU
96GB RAM
110GB SSD Storage
Unlimited Bandwidth
Ubuntu 16.04

APR: 0%
Account Creation Fee: 0.1
Block Processing Daily Average: 3
Blocks Missed: 3
Price Feed: Updated Hourly
Current witness rank: 70 of 122 (an increase of 19 places since my last witness update)

Wishing you well,

Ura Soul

Vote @ura-soul for Steem Witness!

View My Witness Application Here

_{(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!
Don't forget, there are more than the 50 witnesses you see on the witness voting page in steemit.com)}

Find out your voter rank position at steemocean.com!

I run a social network too!