This here is the first Q&A post, of hopefully many, for the Witness Survey Series by @witnesssurvey.
Q: What is your position/stance on bid-bots (ownership/delegations/opinion)? – @abh12345, @ammonite
A: I believe in giving people the power to influence and work towards their success. If that means being able to use promotion-services (which bid-bots are part of) to have their content seen in a healthy & responsible manner, then I'm in favour of promotion.
I developed Smartsteem.com, with the goal of giving Steemians this power, while at the same time also taking responsibility for stopping abusers of the system. On the other hand, Smartsteem.com is also an important way for stakeholders to earn with their investment in Steem.
If Steem changes and promotion becomes unnecessary because content discovery is good enough and investors have others ways of earning similar amounts of revenue with their invested STEEM, then the current business model of Smartsteem will be redundant and the focus will be shifted onto other things.
Until then, my mission with Smartsteem is to provide good Steemians & projects with the power to influence their success via promotion and to incentivize Investors to invest in Steem and hold their stake as Steempower.
Q: What does the witness want to do to make the blockchain more user-friendly and help to onboard new users. What do THEY personally want to see done and what will they do to get it there? – @ericwilson
A: Good question. First of, what exactly do you mean with users? Do you mean bloggers & vloggers? Or maybe developers & entrepreneurs? Me personally, I'm focusing on the second group - developers, entrepreneur, investors & stakeholders.
Which means, my decisions might differ from others who are putting the priority on attracting as many bloggers & vloggers to Steem, which is, of course, important as well.
Now, regarding the second question - what that group would like to see on Steem: this differs again for each different type - developers don't want to spend much time learning how everything works, so guides etc. are important. Investors want to understand why they should invest in Steem and what their revenue is. And of course, there are even different types between investors.
So as you can see, this question is very complex, but I'm working on projects that have the goal to attract developers, entrepreneurs, investors & stakeholders to Steem.
Q: Do you think votes for witnesses should last indefinitely or should they time out (or perhaps decay over time) so that periodically voters will need to reevaluate and affirm their positions by recasting their votes? – @harvhat
A: I believe in a reasonable Witness-vote decay.
Q: Do you think the 30 witness votes each Steemian gets is the correct number, especially in light of the fact there are only 20 top witnesses to be seated? – @harvhat
A: 30 witness votes is a good number. Some argue that a lower amount would result in voters having to vote for really good witnesses, which makes sense. But I don't see a reason to change it right now. However, I'm open to having my mind changed.
Q: What is a concern or two that you have about the #steem blockchain? – @johnspalding
A: It is severely undervalued because dApps are not being highlighted enough. People still believe that Steemit equals Steem - which is absolutely wrong.
Another concern I have is the fact that most of the development is being done by Steemit Inc. and after nearly 3 years, we still haven't created a concept how to incentivize community developers to work on blockchain code.
Q: What are you hopeful about for the #steem blockchain? – @johnspalding
A: For Steem to become a global hub for dApps and communities.
Q: What is the monthly cost of equipment? – @abh12345
A: 579.41 USD (3 Servers + 2 small servers for failover & co.)
Q: Where do your earnings go? – @abh12345
A: I'm automatically delegating all of my Steempower on @therealwolf (producer, curation & author rewards) to @steemtank, to reward developers & entrepreneurs. Usually, the rewards are a bit more than I pay for server costs, but right now - it's only covering a bit more than half of it.
Q: [What are some of your] Current projects? – @abh12345
A: I'm working on many different projects, but they have one thing in common: they are all for/on Steem.
- Smartsteem.com
- Steem Tank (@steemtank)
- Steem Anchor
- Witness Essentials
- ...
More info here: https://therealwolf.me/projects
And more projects in the pipeline (really good ones) - but am only going to talk about them once they are release-ready.
Q: [Will you provide an] Alt accounts list? – @abh12345
A: Everyone who has a little bit of Sherlock Holmes in them, is able to find them quite easily. :)
Q: What are the benefits associated with being a witness? – @klassic
A: You mean besides taking the blame for everything? ;) Just kidding. I'm grateful to have become a witness, but it is a tough job, especially as a backup-witness. Rewards are usually just as high to cover costs (or even lower right now) and it's very difficult to go up the ranks.
However, since I'm so invested in Steem, it's obvious for me that I want to be even more responsible for Steem's success by being a witness.
And I'd say that the basic task of a witness is to provide witness nodes & infrastructure, the rest is individual. I personally want to be the voice of positivity on Steem and bring much value to Steem with dApps & projects.
Q: How do I become a witness? – @steemingmark
A: You set up a server with steemd, you enable your witness and hopefully produce your first block without errors.
Q: What do you think the SBD [STEEM] price for a new account should be? – @harvhat
A: I think "free" accounts in the meaning of having no SP, but RCs are very important to attract people using Steem for payments. Regarding STEEM price for accounts without using RCs, I currently have it set to 3 STEEM.
What is a witness and how I become a good worker? – @rubaethsyed
A: Check out these two posts:
@therealwolf/steemship-to-mars-step-1-witness-voting
@therealwolf/fantastic-witnesses-and-how-to-find-them
Q: Have you implemented any new procedures for evaluating potential hard forks? – @patrickulrich
A: Reviewing and testing the code.
Q: How does a new user make the availability of his vote known to the cabal of witnesses wannabes trying to overthrow the current witness regime? – @grimgriz
A: Not exactly sure what you mean, but usually the Witness (me) is providing as much value as possible, so that voters can't do anything else than vote for me.
Q: Should we have interest for SBD? – @patrickulrich
A: Only if the supply is much lower in addition to the price being lower than 1 USD.
Q: What takeaways do you have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred? – @patrickulrich
A: While there was some downtime and voting power was drained, the situation wasn't as bad as people painted it. Right now, we have a well-functioning Resource Credit system. With that said, more tests have to be done prior to the next hard-fork, but I'm sure everyone learned out of the experience. Now is the time to look forward.
Q: Do you think 20/21 top witnesses a good number or should there be more or less? – @harvhat
A: Could be higher - could be lower. In my opinion, there are more important topics (like vote decay) that can be addressed. For now, I think the number is totally fair and should stay like this.
It was a pleasure answering these questions. To everyone who participated, even those who asked the difficult ones - thank you!
Wolf
Do you believe that my work is valuable for Steem? Then please vote for me as witness.