The Witness Files: Issue 1 with @complexring

Welcome to the inaugural issue of the Witness Files with @complexring.

If like me, you are from a non-crypto and non-tech background, the concept of a ‘witness’ is very foreign to you. It took me a long time to understand what witnesses do, but I can assure you, they are critical to the effective functioning of our community.

So in this series, I hope to interview some of our witnesses, to get an insight into who they are and what they do.

So welcome to the first issue with @complexring, a top witness and all around nice guy. And read to the end for a preview of some exciting projects he is working on.

(Image from: http://www.matthewniemerg.com/)

---

Thank you for taking the time to chat with me

Tell me a bit about yourself. Who is @complexring? And when you’re not on Steemit, what do you enjoy doing?

Well. My name’s Matt. You can look me up on my original witness announcement post or just go here.

By trade (or choice?), I am a mathematician, earning a Ph.D. in Mathematics at Colorado State University in Fort Collins in 2014.

When I am not on Steemit (which is rare, as I spend much time curating / reading posts, although I’ve taken a small step back lately) and not at my day job, I spend time with my (new!) wife @edgeland. I also trade cryptotokens, brew beer, have a worm farm, enjoy sustainability, and like to hike and camp.

My day job is providing consultation services (expertise in algorithms, optimizing code, etc.) to computational scientists involved in High Performance Computing at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

But, in general, I see lots of business opportunities with distributed ledger technologies and spend most (if not all) of my free time reading about new projects, interacting with the developers on their slacks and asking lots of questions (or trying to).

Now how did you first find out about Steemit, and when did you first get involved?

I had some friends who were early adopters and told me to mine. In fact, I would get a message every 3 or 4 days for about a month asking if I was mining yet. Since I had just started my job at IBM, I didn’t have the time to quite figure it out. Eventually, I started mining about 1 week before Delegated Proof of Stake started.

How did you first become a witness?

I put my name out there offering my expertise in Mathematics.

I also detailed a few projects (which are still in the works) as to what to do with the witness block signing rewards.

For non-tech-savvy people like myself, can you explain in layman’s terms what is your role as a witness, and what does a typical day look like?

Day-to-day operations remain pretty much the same. I make sure that my server is running smoothly and signing blocks and try to find quality content to curate. I now have my re-steem and then voting bot finalized which allows others to vote before me and gain curation rewards. Also, I am working on at least one project (announcement to come soon, I know I say that a lot, but it’s true!) that I am devoting much of my time to. In addition, I try to make it to steemit.chat when I can and interact with everyone else, especially if they have questions. @riverhead has been kind enough to add me as an admin to help with moderation.

Beyond the day-to-day operations, I make decisions on whether or not to update for a hard fork, participate in some general witness conversations (although, this is nearly daily). Much of what we discuss isn’t terribly exciting: how to attract more users, how to make powering up more attractive, discussing game theory and potential attack vectors on new features, etc.

I also submit bug reports to github if I ever run across them.

In your mind, what do you think makes a top witness?

Support from the community! Being active and supporting new users. Also having a plan for how to grow the STEEM economy and actionable plans for witness rewards beyond paying for high-end servers.

I can see that you are very active in the Steemit community. You are involved in initiatives such as; Steemsports and Project positivity. What drew you to be involved in these initiatives in particular?

I like the concept of @steemsports (and even @steembets) because if done properly, rewards for the game can be distributed based on total voting shares contributed to a post and to a particular bet. In this way, you now have another way to incentivize users to POWER UP! How cool is that?

@lifeisawesome and @honeyscribe approached me and asked if I would support them and I happen to like their posts and think that they are attempting to create a mutual aid society that helps to empower people.

What other projects/initiatives are you currently involved in?

#descriptionsonthespot via @steemwriters – essentially a free word association community to encourage writers to … well, write. (sorry everyone whose been there, I need to figure out how posting authorities work … I know I’ve said this for awhile …)

@steemgrants – Grants for businesses that want to build on top of the Steem ecosystem. I’ve been also meaning to expand this to say that I will be willing to fund scientific research. Or, I may switch this to only funding scientific research with the implicit intent that publications would be made on the Steem blockchain (or potentially pevo).

steemscholarships – Similar to @steemgrants, but for people who want to learn in any form and require some help for books or continuing education classes.

Other projects, not started by me, that I support :

@curie and @robinhoodwhale – I will be votes following them more than I have been – I vote when I see them make posts and such, but I need to finish the last of the voting bot to auto-follow these accounts.

And, finally, the project that I have been talking about for awhile, @steemstays, an Airbnb-like listing place that connects users with other users and to be able to make payments in SBD. The idea is to have some type of interconnection with the Steem blockchain (user name, review system, and some other info) and have other more sensitive information (physical address location, for instance) stored off-chain on the steemstays.com’s sites non-blockchain database. Look for our announcement that will be posted soon. Either with the announcement, or shortly after,we will to have an open beta for you all to try!

How do you see the Steem ecosystem evolving over the next year or two? And what new features and projects would you like to see implemented.

I think we’ll see more market-based platforms for buying and selling goods or services with SBD. However, I wouldn’t put it past the ingenuity of all the users out there to come up with some amazing new ideas!

As for anything in particular that I would like to see … perhaps a blockchain based loaning system for SBD where Steem Power is used as a means of collateral for the loan. I’m not sure if or how this could be done precisely, although I think it could be possible if properly designed.

Thank you for your time!

No problemo, mi amigo.

---

Hope you enjoyed this interview with @complexring.

For more interviews with our witnesses, please follow me @nextgen622.

And to vote for a witness, you can go here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Jimmy