A few days ago, PeerPlays launched. I was sitting in the Telegram chat, prepared for launch, porting over my software such as Steem-in-a-box, and writing guides such as How to become a PeerPlays Witness.
What is PeerPlays?
PeerPlays is a decentralized platform for gambling, based on BitShares (the precursor to Steemit). It could have a variety of uses including sports betting, lotteries, dice games, etc.
What is a witness?
A witness on PeerPlays has similar jobs to that of a STEEM witness. We're required to process transactions into blocks, potentially publish price feeds so that the network can determine pricing, and operate seed nodes.
Without witnesses, we wouldn't be able to have our high-speed 3 second block times that Graphene (the tech behind STEEM and PeerPlays) gives us.
Can anyone be a witness?
On STEEM yes, on PeerPlays you need to pay an 8 PPY FEE (plus 5 PPY for "lifetime membership") to become a witness. You also require a server, check out my guide How to become a PeerPlays Witness if you're interested in that.
Who are you and why should I care?
I am a developer and popular Steemian, I've built services such as AnonSteem responsible for many accounts created on the network. I've written various tools to help out witnesses such as Steem-in-a-box, Peerplays-in-a-box and SteemFeed-JS.
I have a long history in the Litecoin community as well, responsible for the development/operation of sites such as LiteVault, Litecoinlocal and many others.
I've been on Steemit since the boom in August 2016, creating services just a few weeks after signing up, to show my dedication to the platform. I wanted to learn to develop for the STEEM platform, as the technology is amazing, with features such as easy onboarding through post payouts, zero-fee transactions, and a websocket API for real-time services.
Just a few weeks ago, I launched a crypto-focused hosting company called @privex, and was a huge success in the community. To help bootstrap the PeerPlays network, we launched a seed on our high-speed 1gbit/s network.
I was in the PeerPlays telegram, and was a witness during the testnet, and now I'm also a witness on the newly launched mainnet. I have very few missed blocks, and have provided support to many people in the PeerPlays community.
By voting, you help to shape the PeerPlays witness list to contain people who are actively contributing, and have reliable witness servers. I would greatly appreciate anyone who votes for me :)
Hardware
I operate many servers across Europe and the US, my current witness node operates on @privex's Germany region, on physical hardware (not a VPS). I upgrade the hardware as is necessary, and I've found that the servers I use have always been flawless on STEEM and GOLOS, and so far no issues with PeerPlays either.
I have backup servers ready to go in a moments notice in France, the Netherlands, and the US.
| RAM | 32GB DDR3 ECC |
|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Xeon E3 4c/85 |
| Network | 1gbit/s unmetered |
| Disk | 2x3TB HDD* |
- No, you don't need an SSD even in the top witnesses, and I'm living proof of this :)
How do I vote?
First you'll need an account. If you were involved with the ICO, or the BitShares sharedrop, you can follow these instructions: http://www.peerplays.com/news/how-to-claim-your-ppy-tokens/
Most people will want to download the GUI wallet from the PeerPlays Github: https://github.com/PBSA/peerplays/releases
Once you have the GUI wallet, you'll be able to vote for witnesses simply by going to the VOTE tab.
Alternatively, use cli_wallet:
vote_for_witness "YOURNAME" "someguy123" true true
What are your plans for PeerPlays?
For now, my plans are to run a reliable witness, a reliable seed, and to help others do the same. This helps to grow the network, and gain diversity in the witness list.
I plan to experiment with the technology, and possibly build a few games on the platform. I hope to see PeerPlays disrupt the gambling scene, and hope that Graphene proves to be capable for such a high frequency use case.