The third update in my witness post series - Informing you of my recent activities and why you should add me to your list of witnesses you vote for.
You can view my original witness application thread (from 22nd Oct. 2017) here for more details about me and more about what witnesses do for Steem and Steemit.com.
I am currently being voted for by 2 of the top 20 witnesses: @ausbitbank and @timcliff - Thanks guys!
Witnessing The Waves
Wow, what a rollercoaster since my last witness update. I had to take some time away from Steemit posts for a while to work on projects for clients, but was still monitoring my witness server and the general moves in cryptoworld and on Steemit. Since I last posted I also lost and then regained my largest witness vote for political reasons - but that's the nature of voting and elections, so it's to be expected!
The big news for Steem recently, especially for witnesses has been the massive jump in price of Steem Backed Dollars (SBDs) - which are intended to be solidly pegged at the value of 1 US Dollar. At the time of writing they are back up to over 11USD on Bittrex - having reached a high of over 14USD a few days ago. The standard response for this situation from witnesses is to change our witness settings to stop interest payments, but this alone cannot quickly rectify a situation where traders have bought up large amounts of SBDs on the open market and forced their price up.
Initially the only explanations I was hearing for the cause of the price jump was the good old 'pump and dump' where traders buy up large volumes of coins and then sell them at the higher price to other traders who want to jump on the bandwagon of what they think is a promising investment option. In this case though, it appears the situation may be a bit more complicated, since although the price was gradually dropping down back towards 1USD, today it has jumped up again in one go - back to over 11USD!
For now, there's not much to do but enjoy the increased value of your crypto and keep doing what you do to make Steem valuable for us all.
My Recent Witness Activity
In my last witness update I wrote about suggestions I was making to improve the witness voting process which meant that witness votes will expire after a certain time period or if the accounts involved are inactive. I am yet to fully finalise the proposal for this, but I have received significant feedback on the subject now and aim to finish the improved design in the near future.
I have also put together a design specification for my own Front-end Website for Steem! An entirely new take on the Steem idea that is intended to increase the balance in the the way that posts are rewarded. I won't say more than that at this timing - more to come soon.
The most exciting new development for me recently in regards to supporting and expanding the Steem eco-system has been connecting with my old friend (from 20+ years ago) who now runs 'the Blockchain Centre' out of Australia - he is expanding this chain globally and bringing blockchain education, training and facilitation to the physical world. I am currently making moves to find Steem a place in these education centres, which will significantly increase public awareness of both Steem and Steemit. If you are interested in opening your own regional blockchain centre, then read through this and contact me for more info.
Besides all this, my witness server is chugging along just fine - I have zero missed blocks (something that only around 14% of the witnesses can claim) and all of my settings are optimal.
My Current Witness Server Settings
APR: 0%
Account Creation Fee: 0.2
Block Processing Daily Average: 3
Blocks Missed: 0
Price Feed: Updated Hourly
Current witness rank: 82 of 100
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
View My Witness Application Here