Interview with @neoxian: Witness awareness

My first article about Witnesses and all the fantastic things they do to keep the blockchain and community health achieved it's intended goal of spreading Witness awareness. The amount of feedback I received from new steemians (and old), who had no idea about what the Witnesses do was so overwhelming that I had a hard time replying to all of the messages I received.

Thus, my mission has been kickstarted into high gear, and I fully intend to interview as many Witnesses as possible to get an idea of what they are up to and how they help our community grow. For those of you who don't know exactly what a witness does, please read my last post HERE and you will get an idea of just how hard these folks work.

Today, @neoxian #58 on the witness list has been generous enough to answer a few questions to continue the saga. @neoxian is a seasoned steemian and is also occassionally active in the PALnet Discord chat at https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw where the minnows grow.

I noticed that you are a silverbug, can you tell the steemit family a little more about yourself?

I'm a silverbug, an anarcho-capitalist, an atheist. I'm a software engineer with 20+ years of experience and still have a full time job in spite of my recent gains from the cryptos. I'm a pretty big geek and enjoy playing video games (Minecraft!) when I'm not steeming. I love all things cyberpunk.

How long have you been on steemit.com and when did you become a witness?

I've been at Steemit since last July, so it's nearly a year. I became a witness only 4 months ago, when I found my first block: @neoxian/i-got-a-block-i-m-an-official-witness

Server maintenance and the costs associated create a very high entry fee into being a Witness. What made you want to get into such a difficult and politically driven job?

I became a witness to learn more about Steem and Steemit, and to help create blocks for this system, which I think is really cool, to think that I form a small part of the backbone of this awesome system.

How much time do you spend a week maintaining your node(s) and what are your contributions to the steemit community?

I'm pretty casual with my witness node, probably just a few hours a week right now. A month ago I had trouble dropping blocks here and there but lately it's been smooth sailing. I try to make sure all my parameters are up to date and make sense.

Contributions to the communitiy: I post a lot, I comment a lot. I curate, and I'm often seeking out good posts that arn't making very much and vote them up. I've often helped Steemcleaners fight against spam and plagiarism.

While looking at your blog, I noticed that you are constantly loaning out your SBD to users who need a temporary boost in funds. What made you decide to do this?

My original loan shark post was a joke, just an excuse to post something different, but people took it seriously so now I'm a loan shark. People love it and I do make a little extra money on the side.

You are active in the PALnet discord server, and at one time, you were delegating SP to baby minnows to boost their SP. What kind of impact do you think this has on the community?

Well I hope it's helped, I know it can be hard for new people starting out, so these types of initiatives are important.

According to steemd.com/witnesses, you currently sit at number 58. What is the highest rank you have held, and what kind of a difference was that in blocks per day?

I've been as high as 57, and I was getting maybe 12-14 blocks a day, now I seem to be getting around 11, which is still fine! I feel honored to have even helped make a single block, so all the extras are just bonuses.

With the recent influx of new users and HF19, what changes would you like to see to the Steemconomy and how have you had to adjust your Witness node?

I've adjusted my SBD interest rate to 0 to help combat the high value of SBD. I doubled my blocksize to 131072 when I heard that some newbies were having trouble posting due to bandwidth limitations, and to demonstrate the Steem is better than Bitcoin.

I've posted many ideas to improve Steem in my blog:

1. Open to specify 75% SBD / 25% SP payouts - to help combat high price of SBD

2. Reputation system based on followers and muting, rather than the current system.

3. Integrating robot9000...lots of other ideas.

Though I think that HF 19 has had some good effects, I still worry about the self voting that has resulted from the lack of voting synergy. I've tried to think of ways of reintroducing this synergy but it's a very difficult problem.

There are two "dead witnesses" above you, which is part of the reason I am doing these interviews. Why should steemians vote for you and get you into the top 50?

I'm not sure, I'm not very good at selling myself..

Neoxian: Better than a dead witness!

My strongest selling points: I'm a very active poster, curator, commenter. Some witneses are very quiet and this seems wrong to me. There is something to be said for eating your own dogfood. I do love this system and I'm here

First, point your browser to https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Vote away, using your best judgement. If you want to know more about a Witness, be sure to visit their Witness feed. You can always add in a witness who is not in the top 50, or you can choose your favorite witness (or other steemian) as a proxy and delegate your votes too!

@neoxian witness thread

Previous Interview threads

@ausbitbank

@aggroed

@theprophet0

Upcoming Interview threads

@someguy123

@dragosroua

You can verify how well these witnesses are doing their job of verifying blocks a couple of different ways and this may also factor into voting choices.
Stats on Witness activity are available at
Steemd & Steemdb

Thanks to the PALNet and MinnowSupport project

The PALnet and MinnowSupport project is one of the fastest growing Steemit social groups supported by @aggroed @ausbitbank @theprophet0 @neoxian @someguy123 @thecryptodrive @teamsteem @canadian-coconut and @acidyo. We have over 1850 members dedicated to helping each other grow into dolphins and eventually whales, and are fueled by member delegations.