Response - Steem Witness Survey : v1

@witnesssurvey, I know this This Survey response is delayed. To be frank, I procrastinated, still wanted to do it and then forgot about it. Mea Culpa.

This Survey response is delayed. To be frank, I procrastinated, still wanted to do it and then forgot about it. Mea Culpa.

What is your position/stance on bid-bots (ownership/delegations/opinion)? @abh12345, @ammonite

Bidbots is indeed a controversial topic. While it is abused many a times, I feel its acts as a means to earn more and also promote content. Long term sustainability as authors may not be effective without the necessary promotion and earlier bid-bots was the main, low hanging fruit to earn from the chain as entrepreneurs. Considering various scams, identity theft and plagiarism on the platform, bid-bots is the better solution.

That being said, bidbots will become irrelevant once proper curation is implemented by dApps.

Also, I don't think Steemit, Inc should be focusing on content curation and it should be done by dApps. This doesn't mean changes required in the Steem code base like downvote pools.

cc: @kevinwong

What does the witness want to do to make the blockchain more user-friendly and help to on-board new users. What do THEY personally want to see done and what will they do to get it there? - @ericwilson

I would reframe this question as I believe the question is about making user on boarding friendly.

Right now one of the biggest hurdle for the new users and content creators is signup. The HF20 has a means to claim accounts and I would like to offer free accounts for the deserving. Unfortunately I can't do much in this aspect as I don't have enough Steem Power to do so.

Do you think votes for witnesses should last indefinitely or should they time out (or perhaps decay over time) so that periodically voters will need to reevaluate and affirm their positions by recasting their votes? - @harvhat

I am aware the community feels decay is needed and some sort of timeout. Unfortunately its never going to happen as there is lot more to the top 17 (not top 21) than it looks like. The "initial token supply" decides who controls the chain. Aspects like which fork to be considered official, who should control the company etc.

In the case of Steem one important and novell aspect that most of the chains don't have is that they didn't do an ICO. Even though there are arguments about making of the token supply in Steemit, Inc's favor, IMHO they have pulled off something unique and created "intrinsic value."

I am not an economist, so I am not knowledgeable about other means of token distribution and self funding / bootstrapping a massive and technically complicated project like Steem blockchain. So while the votes has its demerits, it has some unique features.

Unless someone comes up with a viable alternative to create intrinsic value from a token and do what Steemit, Inc was able to do, I will not support a change to the voting decay. Simply because its an unknown for me.

Do you think the 30 witness votes each steemian gets is the correct number, especially in light of the fact there are only 20 top witnesses to be seated? - @harvhat

I think yes and as it gives room for backups.

The numbers 17, 19 and 21 are the important numbers and not just top 20.

What is a concern or two that you have about the #steem blockchain? - @johnspalding

We need lot more communication outside of Steemit.com - no, I don't mean just the main promoter. The community in steem it.com acts more or less like an exclusive club. I would even suggest borderline cult. Only a few are active on social media platforms that matters like Twitter or Linkedin where every other chain is promoting their projects. We have the single most active and closely connected community among any blockchain project and we need to come out and promote.

Apart from this communication aspect, which is not technical and not really related to Steem blockchain, there is not much of complaints.

What are you hopeful about for the #steem blockchain? - @johnspalding

As someone who is making a living out of Steem code and also developing a product using the ode base, I am of the opinion that the chain is one of the best blockchain / distributed ledger options out there. Choices like RocksDB for long term storage looks really good to me. The eco-system, read tools are mature and stable to support various dApps. Real utilities which can bring value as opposed to few games which are there in most of the other chains. I hope Steem blockchain is able to use its unique technical accomplishments to make a mark among the bigges out there.

What is the monthly cost of equipment? - @abh12345

Right now its quite higher than usual due to my attempts to build a Continuous Delivery system. Apart from that my primary, secondary, Seed node, Command and control server all put together costs me around 350 USD.

Where do your earnings go? - @abh12345

I don't have much of an earnings to support even the server cost of around 350 USD. So its just sitting there for the time being. I am hoping to pay the server costs from the earnings from January 2019.

[What are some of your] Current projects? - @abh12345

• A cross chain project which uses Steem 0.19.2 code base. (C++, Python)
• Published a paper on "A Novel Cross Chain communication method"
• Attempt to setup CI - CD using Gitlab
• daily / regular review of the new commits to the Steem and Tinman repositories.

[Will you provide an] Alt accounts list? - @abh12345

1. @thefreebird
2. I have access to @indiaunited and @indiaunited-bot community accounts which I have created.

What are the benefits associated with being a witness? - @klassic

As mentioned in my witness post, its mostly academic at this point in time. Though I would like to earn enough to meet the server costs and also support few projects. Right now I am supporting @travelfeed, @indiaunited community etc and would like to extend this more. I also want to support young and skilled contributors in the field of arts, programming etc. @petertag is for example a gem I found on the chain.

How do I become a witness? - @steemingmark

My take may be different than most.

Learn CS101, Networking (Tanenbaum), Play around with Data Structures and Algorithms, Get a quickie on Vulnerability Assessment, Security audits, Get some hands on experience with UNIX commands, spend at least 100 nights without sleeping and working on something, get involved in couple of projects that involves end-to-end software development and deployment (involve in any capacity), Spend 1 or 2 Christmas eve or New Year's eve in office working on something, Get kicked in the wrong place by couple of clients, spend 10,000 hours on general server + software type of profile --- now, just Search in internet for the steps to become the witness :-)

Optionally, hire someone to manage the tech stack and go all out on marketing and get votes.

What do you think the SBD [STEEM] price for a new account should be? - @harvhat

3 STEEM

What is a witness and how I become a good worker? - @rubaethsyed

Didn't understand.

Have you implemented any new procedures for evaluating potential hardforks? - @patrickulrich

Yes.

An Appeal to STEEM communities : Publish a report, expectations and suggestions on hardfork

Witness update & Suggestions for the future of STEEM

How does a new user make the availability of his vote known to the cabal of witnesses wannabes trying to overthrow the current witness regime? - @grimgriz

I think, at first the new users must be told / communicated about the need to vote for a witness. Its very difficult for me to reach out to people and request for votes even to existing users. I am sure very bad at marketing and thus, I will leave this question unanswered :-)

Should we have interest for SBD? - @patrickulrich

Good idea, but considering that we are already struggling with the USD peg, it will be too much ask for.

What takeaways do you have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred? - @patrickulrich

Need more community driven testing. Period.

Do you think 20/21 top witnesses a good number or should there be more or less? - @harvhat

As discussed earlier in the post, this is more than mere numbers but these are carefully chosen numbers to keep the chain active. Since the 21 block-forgers are enough to keep the network healthy, I feel for now this number is the best choice we have. To add to it, change in the number may also happen after considering the token distribution among various investors.