Long Time User, First Time Witness!

That’s right...15 months after joining the Steem community, I decided to take the plunge!

I’ve been a regular content contributor and curator around these parts since August 2016. I’ve been in a lot of community discussions since joining and have followed the progress of Steem and its community members since then. I immersed myself into the cryptocurrency culture and observed the daily happenings on Steemit.com and other Steem interfaces, as well as Steemit.chat and Discord. I’ve also been a long-time supporter of initiatives and projects like Steemit Open Mic, the Steemit Culinary Challenge, the Steem Poker League, and many others over the past year. And you can even find me helping to reduce spam and plagiarism around the platform.

For those of you who have followed or are following me, you know that I create photo and video content. I often publish some humorous posts, usually combined with my photography. And for anyone who enjoys sports and sports-related contests, you’ve likely seen my name around the platform. I’ve been running weekly sports contests since September of 2016 – contests for the NFL, NCAA football, NASCAR, and Golf.

I’ve had a lot of people ask me over the past year if I was a witness or if I was ever going to be one.

After giving it a lot of thought…

@ats-david is now in the witness game!

Well, technically, @ats-witness is in the witness game. So make sure that you’re voting for this account, which will be kept separate for various reasons.

These are my initial server specs and witness parameters.

Server:
Ubuntu OS
32GB RAM
Intel Xeon CPU @ 3.40GHz

Witness Parameters:
Version 0.19.2
4-Hour price feed (from the Steemit.chat price channel…joking, of course. Or am I...?)
1.25% APR

What’s the purpose of my witness?

I started a witness account for two main reasons.

First, I wanted to hopefully have a voice in the approval of hard fork proposals. I’ve been around here a long time now and have taken the time to understand how different protocols work and how changes can affect behavior in the community. Instead of simply talking about these changes and hoping that other witnesses will take them under serious consideration, I decided to try to make an impact with my own vote, should I ever find myself in a position to make such a decision.

It cannot be stated enough that hard forks, which are protocol changes to the Steem blockchain, should be carefully examined and considered before being rejected or implemented. These considerations are not limited to the protocols themselves, but to how such changes can impact the larger ecosystem, especially when it comes to the social media platforms which have been built on the Steem blockchain. My goal is to provide valuable input on these matters from more than just a code-review perspective.

Second, if I should find myself in a good position, I wanted to direct some of the rewards into projects that I believe will have an impact on user adoption and retention and will help bring in more mainstream social media users, which crypto communities are mostly sorely lacking.

Any funds earned through this witness account will be used for a few projects that I’ve been working on and I will update via this account when they are either brought online or if an update is necessary. So, what are my plans if I receive any witness rewards?

If I’m able to cover expenses for servers, funding will be dedicated to the following projects:

1. At the top of the list is a sports website for news, opinions, scores, and contests. Early development is already underway and I will be looking for partners, sponsors, and contributors over the next several weeks so that tentative plans for deployment can begin. (If you are a talented writer and a knowledgeable and/or an opinionated sports fan, please feel free to contact me on my Steemit.chat account: ats.david.)

2. I will be deploying a self-tailored curation system for content creators. This will be based on a personally vetted whitelist that includes many users that I have followed over the course of the past 15 months on the platform. It will be manually monitored and updated to reflect any changes in content output and to add newly discovered quality contributors. Unneeded STEEM for other projects will be kept in this account as STEEM Power to help make this project successful. More details will be shared when the project comes online, which should happen very soon.

3. I will make occasional donations to initiatives and projects that I want to support, such as sports, music, and verified outreach/marketing projects with legitimate real-world applications and proven results. I will also use a portion of any rewards I receive to fund my weekly sports contests.

Consider me for one of your witness votes.

I know that being a witness is not a get-rich-quick scheme, so I understand that it will take some time to get my projects where I want them to be. With enough support, they can come online in a more timely manner, so please consider approving @ats-witness. You can approve me as a witness here: Vote for Witnesses.

If you’re just not into witness voting or don’t have time to learn which witnesses are doing what and whether they’re active or offline or not, please consider using me as a witness voting proxy as well. (This account will in turn be proxied to my main account.) I interact daily with lots of people in the community, including many witnesses and whales who are actively involved in development and bettering the Steem ecosystem. If you trust me with your witness votes, you can select me as a proxy here.

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Thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past year and thank you in advance to anyone who supports me in the future!

I know I'm an opinionated guy and can be blunt, and I know that's not always popular. But if you know me, you know that I'll give you my honest opinion...and sometimes I'll give it to you without you even asking! (I like to think that I'm good at anticipating an individual's or a community's needs.) I don't like to sugarcoat things or blow smoke. With me, you're almost always sure to know where you stand.

The one thing I strive for is understanding and honesty. While I may challenge prevailing wisdom and/or popular opinions, and sometimes even say ridiculous things (whether intentional or not), I do carefully consider all information and arguments and adjust my opinions as additional knowledge is gained. I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't.

So, a special thank you to those who dismissed me at first (or even recently), but still stuck with me or are still sticking with me currently. I'm asking for your support again to hopefully continue building and improving the community and myself.