Smooth has been an active and well-known member of the cryptocurrency community since (at least) 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?" This discussion is interesting, but if you trouble yourself to read it remember that BTCTalk is fairly hostile to alt-coins in general (in my experience.)
No stranger to technology, @Smooth has years of experience in operating cryptocurrency nodes, mining operations and related services. In short, he has the experience you might expect given his involvement in what this author considers one of the better-designed cryptocurrencies, Monero.
Naturally, his server 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. These are objectively true statements, which I myself have also written on in the past. Nevertheless, it tends to be a bitter pill for those who feel they would be more advantaged by a pure meritocracy.
Smooth has also engaged in an interesting “random voting project”, which he calls “happy hour voting,” and which you can probably guess involved voting...randomly. Lately, he has reduced his posting frequency.
Smooth holds 930,000 (recently, as much as 1.1 million SP) and is powering down. 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
Please see the acknowledgement post here.
If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).
We also have a Radio Station! (click me)
...and a 4800+ user Discord Chat Server! (click me)
Sources: @Smooth
Copyright: Monero