Will you join us in getting to know @klye, @aggroed, @thecryptodrive, @smooth, @cervantes, @lukestokes, @abit, @ihashfury, and @fyrstikken a little better because each has empowered us to be here together today and continues to support the growth of Steem every day as one of the top 30 witnesses? To thank each witness for service, would you please join us in making votes for witnesses at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because witness votes are the most important we make here on Steem?
Thank you to @Lexiconical for doing the research on each witness below in order to make this post possible which I made into a video along with this post! If you missed the earlier posts, meet the top 1 to 10 witnesses and meet the top 11 to 20 witnesses. Enjoy this as a video or a post!
21 (Now #7) - @Klye
Klye may be our resident witness MS-paint expert. A glance over his recent posts will quickly show that he, much like @Lexiconical, prefers the crudest tool available when expressing himself artistically. His thumbnails are all self-created and, if @Lexiconical may say so, “zazzy”.
Kyle is also one of the most active witnesses (and posters) on all of Steemit. At time of writing, he has composed over 9100 posts for over 3300 followers. He is no censor, with off-color humor and language no stranger to his blog or resteems.
Kyle has 4 witness projects: 3 are underway, but the one he considers “finished” is Steem.Global, the “first faucet” for the Steem cryptocurrency blockchain. “Faucets”, for the unaware, are (usually) web-based locations where you can receive a free bit of cryptocurrency to get you started. In the case of Steem, this helps solve new users bandwidth issues and can allow posting without waiting for account approval (delegation from Steemit Inc).
Another project of Klye’s is “Tippy”. Tippy is a tipping bot with a number of other functions including commands for upvoting, flagging, powering-up, and even dice-rolling.
As part of Klye’s original witness proposal, he helped compose documentation for Steemd and cli_wallet.
Klye holds 30,000 SP and is currently powering down. Klye leases out SP via Minnow Booster and has been kind enough to give me a vote for witness!
Klye’s Current Witness Update: @klye/fellow-witnesses-please-deploy-v0-19-2-update
Klye’s Original Witness Thread: @klye/klye-s-witness-campaign
Steem.Global (faucet): https://steem.global/
Steem.Global Update: @klye/upgrading-steem-global-faucet-seed-node-and-main-backup-witness-servers-to-0-19-2-shortly
Tippy thread: @klye/tippy-development-log-694201337
22 (Now 13) - @Aggroed
Aggroed is best known as the primary force behind the creation of the Minnow Support project which @Lexiconical joined on day #1. Aggroed continues to handle many of the high-end decisions at MSP, including the delegation of duties to the many community moderators and the overall direction of the community and its projects.
The Minnow Support Project, initially merely a steemit.chat channel and Discord Chat channel (PAL - Peace, Abundance, Liberty) providing help for new users with things like sign-ups and donation-powered community upvote bots, has blossomed into a nearly 5000 member community with a staggering number of sub-communities. Regardless of your personal interests or geographical location, there is a community somewhere on the MSP network that will cater to your specific interests. There’s also a good chance they are already running their own contests, radio show, private discord channel and Steemit tag!
Aggroed hosts a “Minnow Mayor Town Hall” radio show each week, which offers a live forum for users to communicate with Aggroed, potentially on the air, via the designated MSP Discord Channel (MSP Audience). Aggroed also operates the MSP community bot “msp-LoveBot”, who votes automatically on the post of any user who delegates power to the Minnow Support Project.
Aggroed holds 35,000 SP and is not powering down.
Aggroed’s Current Witness Update: @aggroed/quick-update-on-witness-generated-sp-delegations
Aggroed’s Original Witness Thread: @aggroed/official-witness-launch-growing-this-community-and-supporting-success-of-it-s-members
Minnow Support Project: http://minnowsupportproject.org/
Minnow Support Project Discord: http://minnowsupportproject.org/discord/
MSP Waves Radio: http://mspwaves.com/home/listen/
Minnow Mayor Town Hall: @aggroed/minnow-mayor-town-hall-goes-live-in-20-minutes-with-top-20-witness-kyle
23 (Now #20) - @TheCryptoDrive
TheCryptoDrive, or Ricardo Goncalves, boasts the first and longest-running Steemit Witness from the continent of Africa. Located in South Africa, Ricardo touches a wide number of projects related to the Steem ecosystem.
Ricardo initially created the @steemdrive campaign, a fundraising project to get the Steemit logo on large outdoor media. The initial announcement post garnered an incredible $27,037 in rewards and quickly funded a billboard in Durban, South Africa.
He is also the creator or @Steemsports, an attempt to disrupt the potentially $3 trillion industry of sports betting by using vote power for bets and payouts instead of fiat money. @Steemsports remains one of the most active posters on the Steemit platform, with a reputation of 78!
Further, he is the CEO behind the unified build team for @MinnowBooster, an SP-leasing-for-profit service, and @Steemvoter, a voting bot service that allows you to set rules to auto-vote at the cost of up to 7 of your votes, per week. Premium membership now allows for not using any votes in exchange for 3 SBD per month. I paid for 2 years when I signed up.
TheCryptoDrive holds 80,000 SP, and is NOT powering down. He leases SP via @MinnowBooster and I am grateful he is also voting for me as a witness!
TheCryptoDrive's Current Witness Update: @thecryptodrive/witness-update-two-killer-features-for-steem-comments-wanted
TheCryptoDrive's Original Witness Thread: @thecryptodrive/ricardo-goncalves-thecryptodrive-first-steem-witness-in-africa-a-witness-for-the-people
Steemdrive: @steemdrive
Steemdrive Billboard Thread: @steemdrive/steemdrive-first-proof-of-successful-crowdfunded-billboard-flight-in-durban-south-africa
Steemsports: @steemsports
Steemvoter / Minnow Booster Unification Thread: @steemvoter/steemvoter-and-minnowbooster-are-joining-forces
24 - @Smooth.witness (aka @Smooth)
Smooth has been an active and well-known member of the cryptocurrency community since 2011. A core team member of Monero and lead developer of AEON (a “mobile friendly private digital currency”,) Smooth is an old hand from the BitcoinTalk forums. There he has relentlessly (and rationally) promoted Steem against numerous cynical voices for over a year in the thread entitled: "Steemit how can this thing be workable long-term?"
No stranger to technology, he has years of experience in operating cryptocurrency nodes, mining operations and related services. His hardware is “enterprise-class in a low-latency Tier 2 datacenter...with ample excess CPU, memory, and storage to support rapid network growth.” He has room for more of each and failover hardware running.
Smooth has written in the past on how popularity is more objective than quality, and that Steemit voting is ultimately a popularity contest. He has also engaged in an interesting “random voting project”, which he calls “happy hour voting.”
Smooth holds over 1.1 million SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating substantial faith in Steemit long-term. Smooth leases SP via @MinnowBooster.
Links:
Smooth’s Current Witness Update: @smooth.witness/smooth-witness-update
Smooth’s Original Witness Thread: @smooth.witness/smooth-witness
AEON: http://www.aeon.cash/
BitcoinTalk Thread, Smooth: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1548369.msg15567967#msg15567967
Happy Hour Voting: @smooth/announcing-the-steemit-happy-hour-vote-lottery
25 - @Cervantes
Cervantes is the appropriately named ambassador for the Spanish-speaking Steemit community.
Cervantes runs the “Cervantes project”, a curation guild affiliated with the Steem-Guild project which focuses on encouraging the posting of quality content by Spanish speakers, particularly when posted in the Spanish language. Hisparadio is the magazine for the Spanish community that @Cervantes helps to produce as a result of the curation guild!
Cervantes also runs a series of posts that help encourage Steemit meetups in Venezuela. His post rewards funnel back to meetup organizers to fund food, drinks, venue rentals, transportation, and any other costs associated with meetup organization. In sponsoring a contest with 4000 SBD in prices, @Cervantes and the Spanish community are bringing a Venezuelan winner @oscarcc89 to Steemfest! The@lince project where @Cervantes has a team fighting vs abuse and plagiarism. The meetups are also in many other countries and we have over 1300 people in our discord channel
Cervantes holds 19,000 SP and is kind enough to vote for me with that power!
Cervantes’ Current Witness Update: @cervantes/2skeyr-witness-update-salario-cervantes
Cervantes’ Original Witness Thread: @cervantes/cervantes-witness-supporting-the-spanish-speaking-community
Cervantes’ Curation Series: @cervantes/informe-cervantes-17-09-2017-23-04
Cervantes’ Meetup Posts: @cervantes/cervantes-meetup-venezuela-presentacion-meetup-villa-de-cura-municipio-zamora-del-estado-aragua
26 - @Lukestokes.mhth (aka @LukeStokes)
Lukestokes is a Nashville-based PHP programmer with a degree in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Via his programming work he has handled over half a billion dollars of e-commerce transactions.
Lukestokes is also the owner/operator of FoxyCart, an e-commerce service provider specializing in turn-key solutions for payment-handling. Poking around their website, @Lexiconical was interested to see it supported a wide variety of outside payment processors, including Dwolla, and integrates with numerous other platforms/languages including perhaps Ruby on Rails.
Lukestokes is an old-hand in the cryptosphere, having first purchased Bitcoin at $20 in 2013. He was both an active miner and forum poster at the Bitcointalk.org forums. He continues to blog frequently about cryptocurrencies, trading, and in particular, witness voting engagement.
Lukestokes runs the Witness Voting Engagement Report which tracks the voting engagement of all users with 100,000 VESTS or more. This comes out to all users with 48.5 Steem Power, using a recent ration of 485 Steem per million Vests. This series of posts Luke made showing how low our participation is in witness voting inspired me to launch a wave of witness education including this post which attempts to help raise witness voter participation!
In case you were wondering, the mhth on the witness account “...stands for More Human Than Human with a nod to Blade Runner.” I wish I had noticed this before the video I filmed where I was still clueless as to what .mhth stood for.
Lukestokes holds 75,000 SP and is NOT powering down. Lukestokes leases SP via @MinnowBooster.
Lukestokes.mhth’s Original Witness Thread: @lukestokes/vote-luke-stokes-for-witness-as-lukestokes-mhth
Lukestokes.mhth’s Current Witness Update: @lukestokes/updating-my-witness-votes-to-those-running-0-19-2
Foxy Cart: https://www.foxycart.com/
Most Recent Witness Engagement Report: @lukestokes/the-witness-voting-engagement-report-2017-09-13
27 - @Abit
Abit is an experienced developer and node-operator for the Bitshares network. Based in Asia, the experience shows: Abit’s Bitshares witness node has one of the best long-term records for avoiding dropped blocks of all the active witnesses.
Abit is a diligent software developer with an active github page, holding 212 contributions in the last year. Since most of Abit’s work is on Bitshares and the Graphene Blockchain, Abit is particularly well-suited to operating and troubleshooting a Steem witness node.
The @abit account is managed by a team of “trusted curators”, including: @oflyhigh, @myfirst, @jademont, @rivalhw, and @pfunk, the latter of which is also a member of @steemcleaners. As a result, if you receive a vote (or flag) from @abit, this may not be the witness themselves but one of the curation team members.
Abit is currently the #1 Witness for Bitshares, demonstrating a large amount of faith from users of the “that other” Graphene blockchain-based technology.
Abit holds 1.7 million SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating substantial faith in Steemit long-term.
Abit’s Current Witness Update:@abit/abit-witness-update-2017-04-01
Abit’s Original Witness Thread: @abit/abit-witness-post
Bitshares Witnesses - Missed Blocks: https://cryptofresh.com/witnesses?r=abit
Abit’s Github Page: https://github.com/abitmore
Abit’s Curation Team Post: @abit/abit-curation-team
28 - @Ihashfury
“ihashfury” is one of the more mysterious witnesses I have researched so far with very little data available to share! @ihashfury has not posted since June of last year but is actively voting including for many of @Lexiconical's posts!
ihashfury is a Bitshare witness, at #23. He appears to be very knowledgeable about the Bitshares platform in particular, which you can see @TeamSteem note in the post entitled “Distributed Access to the Bitshares Decentralized Exchange”. He has also written guides on running your own “decentralized” exchange node over the Bitshares protocol.
ihashfury holds 5,000 SP, and is powering down.
ihashfury's Original Witness Thread: @ihashfury/ihashfury-witness-thread
“Distributed Access to BTS” Post: @ihashfury/distributed-access-to-the-bitshares-decentralised-exchange
Run your own “decentralized exchange”: @ihashfury/run-your-own-decentralised-exchange
Early Flagged Posts:
@ihashfury/steeming-load-of-test-spam
@ihashfury/test-witness-post-using-steemit
@ihashfury/test-post00
29 - @JerryBanfield
Thank you very much for voting me into the top 30 witnesses! I am a full time Steem witness as explained in my most recent update and original witness thread. If you would like to get to know me better, I recommend my first post on Steemit introducing myself!
30 - @Fyrst-witness (aka @Fyrstikken)
Fyrstikken is a salesman and public speaker based out of Lima, Peru. @Fyrstikken is an active poster with nearly 8000 followers. He posts a wide variety of content, including everything from highly creative humor to technical witness details. He has even taking on the challenge of rapping Satoshi Nakomoto’s entire Bitcoin Whitepaper Abstract. It certainly proves Fyrstikken possesses a viking-like willingness to take on any challenge. You will find it linked below.
As for why he chose his beat to be a cover of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D”, which you may know better as “the wedding song”, @Lexiconical feels unqualified to speculate. However, @Lexiconical does feel qualified to provide a relevant link, a phenomenal cover of Canon in D that was once a 100M+ views YouTube sensation:
Fyrstikken runs the @booster bot, to which he delegates 90%+ of his SP. Booster is a bid bot that provides upvotes for users in equal proportion to total bids received over a repeating, 2.4 hour bid period. Thanks to the large amount of SP delegated to @booster, it is a very powerful voting bot.
Fyrstikken is the owner of https://steemspeak.com, the “24/7 raw Steem talk community.” I love that he is available most days and nights on voice chat in SteemSpeak!
Fyrstikken holds 705,000 SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating a large amount of faith in Steemit.
Fyrstikken ‘s Current Witness Update: @fyrst-witness/upgrading-to-0-19-2-expecting-to-be-back-online-in-about-2-hours-0-19-2-fixes-a-lot-of-bugs-other-witnesses-should-follow
Fyrstikken’s Original Witness Thread: @fyrstikken/fyrstikken-for-witness-to-make-steemit-grow-and-prosper
Steamspeak: @steemspeak
Booster Bot: @booster
Bitcoin Whitepaper Rap: @fyrstikken/impossible-to-do-a-bitcoin-whitepaper-rap-challenge-accepted-youngogmarqs-this-will-be-legendary
Vote?
Given what we shared about the top 30 witnesses here, would you please join us in making witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because our witness votes are the most important votes we make on Steem? Each of us can vote up to 30 times which can take a consistent effort to ensure we have active witness votes. Make sure the witness vote ends up check marked blue after a refresh to verify the vote placed correctly!
If choosing 30 witnesses sounds exhausting, the easy solution is to set a proxy at https://steemit.com/~witnesses to make all our votes for us. For example, the Korean community on Steem consistently selects @clayop to place witness votes while the Spanish community tends to set @cervantes as a proxy. I am honored that 100+ of us with 257 MV in voting power are trusting me to make witness votes as a proxy. A proxy can be changed at any time and is all inclusive meaning if we want to make our own votes, we have to either do all of them ourselves or set a proxy.
Thank You for Reading!
@lexiconical and I hope you enjoyed this post and are splitting the author rewards for it! We plan to continue going through all of the active witnesses in future posts and appreciate your upvotes and resteems on this most!
Love,
Jerry Banfield and @lexiconical
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