Last month, @jesta stopped maintaining STEEM.WS - the first public public RPC node.

For those who don't know what an RPC node is: - An RPC Node is a server which allows applications to interact with the STEEM blockchain. When you use Steemit.com, your browser connects to the RPC node ran by Steemit Inc. (wss://steemd.steemit.com), which gives it information such as posts, upvotes, whether your log in is valid etc.

Example: An RPC node is used by applications such as Steemit.com, AnonSteem, Busy.org, and other software built on the STEEM platform. They require a lot of resources to run (currently requires 104GB of RAM and rising every day).

While Steemit.com runs a public one now, it has shown to be unreliable at times, and so we needed more, to allow for less centralisation, as many projects depend on Steemit Inc's server.

We're now running our own public RPC node to help the community out.

We've added it to the STEEM.CENTER Public Websocket Server list

Server Specs

CPU	6 core/12 thread Xeon
RAM	256GB DDR4 ECC
Disk	2x500GB SSDs
Network	1gbit/s from Germany

Example usage for developers

Below is an example of using it with @xeroc's Steem Piston for Python

>>> s = Steem('wss://steemd.privex.io')
>>> s.info()
{
'last_irreversible_block_num': 14859862,  'average_block_size': 7965, 
'current_aslot': 14919325, 'vote_power_reserve_rate': 10, 
'recent_slots_filled': '340282366920938463463374607431768211455', 'total_vesting_fund_steem': '182912559.617 STEEM', 
'id': 0, 'max_virtual_bandwidth': '5522640076800000000', 'pending_rewarded_vesting_steem': '140917.569 STEEM', 
'sbd_print_rate': 10000, 'current_witness': 'pfunk', 'current_reserve_ratio': 418, 'sbd_interest_rate': 0, 'total_reward_shares2': '0', 
'total_vesting_shares': '377320641918.431436 VESTS', 'confidential_supply': '0.000 STEEM', 'time': '2017-08-24T16:46:15', 
'num_pow_witnesses': 172, 'maximum_block_size': 65536, 'confidential_sbd_supply': '0.000 SBD', 'total_pow': 514415, 
'head_block_id': '00e2be6ab125cd49024e201a6b76b083a798bc46', 'virtual_supply': '256893632.509 STEEM', 
'head_block_number': 14859882, 'current_sbd_supply': '3465411.913 SBD', 'total_reward_fund_steem': '0.000 STEEM', 
'pending_rewarded_vesting_shares': '291265727.299673 VESTS', 'participation_count': 128, 'current_supply': '254121302.979 STEEM'}

THANK YOU TO THOSE WHO HAVE FUNDED THIS PROJECT

MSP Logo by @malicered

A big thank you to everyone from the @minnowsupport project, including @aggroed, @followbtcnews, @reggaemuffin, @swelker101, as well as those outside of the project such as @lukestokes and @timcliff (who will be pledging an amount each month to keeping it online).

You can join the Minnow Support Project discord at: https://discord.gg/2HQU5sj

20 days ago Receive 100.000 SBD from lukestokes To support your work putting together a full API node. (to @someguy123)
24 days ago Receive 30.000 SBD from swelker101  RPC node donation
24 days ago Receive 100.000 SBD from minnowsupport  NVME server
24 days ago Receive 75.000 STEEM from reggaemuffin  For the RPC node, you guys got our support :)
24 days ago Receive 50.000 STEEM from followbtcnews followbtcnews for server for blockchain node
24 days ago Receive 100.000 SBD from aggroed    NVME server
23 days ago Receive 20.000 SBD from dimitrisp   RPC node donation

SPECIAL OFFER

Want to run your own RPC server? Need a server provider that accepts crypto (inc. STEEM and SBD)?

We're now selling this exact same 256GB RAM server on our website for a very low price (it'll probably be going up in the next few weeks, so grab it while it's cheap!): https://www.privex.io