19.2 Update + New Backup Server + SteemJ Progress! Witness Update #2!
The last ten days on Steem have been exciting as a witness! Here is a list of what I am contributing!
Projects
- SteemJ growth project! @sarasate spoke with me about our next steps and we have decided we need SteemJ to do three key things. First, it needs to have a peer to peer fiat exchange directly among users. This will minimize the need to use exchanges and be critical in the case of a disaster such as an exchange going down. Second, SteemJ needs to allow for jobs posted and filled because this will give us all the ability to more effectively collaborate online in our work combined with attracting freelancers and clients to Steem. Third, to support the first two, SteemJ needs profiles with more data to support making exchanges and job posts. To maximize user growth, we will post our growth project soon following the crowdfunded marketing protocol to ask for support from Steemit because we want to get as many users as possible and start with no revenue model initially.
- Testing DTube! https://dtube.video is a huge opportunity for us on Steem and with it being new, we have few tutorials and many errors making it challenging for new users to get started. I am checking DTube daily for errors and making a getting started guide featuring a troubleshooting tutorial. I have hit so many random errors from snaps not uploading to videos never going through on uploads and fellow users have too. I am pushing the limits for the purpose of making a tutorial showing exactly how to upload different types of videos on DTube and how to get around errors. So far I have managed to get every video I have tried to upload on DTube even if it took several days to get it right. Today's video failed on Google Chrome and Safari for different reasons on my iMac on four or five attempts. After handbraking it down to 720 and uploading it on my Windows PC, the upload appeared to go through on both Chrome and Microsoft Edge. Soon I will share all of what I have learned in the shortest format possible ... which probably will be 30 minutes :)
- Backup server! Becoming a top 50 witness and reading what happened with @furion at https://steemit.com/witness-update/@furion/lessons-learned-from-failing-as-a-witness motivated me to rent a backup server to help ensure if I miss a few blocks I can automatically switch over and fix the main server. The backup server I just rented from @privex is on a different continent than my main server and has the same specs as my witness and seed. I am planning to make one of the first video tutorials showing how to get the witness up from zero! This new server brings my total hosting costs to about $540 a month for the witness, seed, and backup all of which are ready to handle a top 20 workload with the specs pasted below.
- Top 50 witness report! This week I started a collaboration with @lexiconical to help introduce the top 50 witnesses to our community which will hopefully increase voter participation!
- Updated to 19.2! This month I hired @someguy123 to help me manage my witness, seed, and backup because he has the technical skills I lack and two of us watching my servers is much better than one! He upgraded my servers today to 19.2 before I even saw the update was out and is available to answer questions because I collaborate with him in managing my servers to ensure I can continue educating as a witness on the technical details. Our collaboration is currently limited to his access to my servers and support via steemit.chat. All have the witness posts and guides I have done from scratch myself the same as I have done this post!
- Delegated! In a humbling realization, I have noticed my voting mostly consists of about 25% voting my friends up, 20% of voting my own posts up, 30% in voting posts up from upvotable, and the rest voting up comments on my posts. Not only is this time consuming but I feel there are better ways to put my Steem Power to work given my responsibilities as an author and witness already. Do I really have time to do a great job in curation also? This month I am testing delegating the majority of my Steem Power out including delegations to @minnowsupport and @eco-alex to assist in curation projects combined with a delegation to @aarellanes who helps with upvotable. In addition to these delegations as gifts, I also tried renting my Steem Power out on on https://www.minnowbooster.net/market to help me educate investors seeking to get a return on Steem Power how to do the same and to help authors learn how to build influence and earnings with rented Steem Power.
- ChainBB! After months of seeing posts about @jesta's ChainBB at https://beta.chainbb.com/, I am learning more about ChainBB and planning to do several posts!
- Local Steem meetups! Last month I hosted the first Steem meetup in the USA as seen at https://steemit.com/meetup/@jerrybanfield/first-florida-steem-meetup-photos-and-video. More meetups in Saint Petersburg, Florida and Orlando, Florida were requested by participants along with those unable to attend the first one. I am beginning the planning for two more local meetups in Florida during 2017. Posts seeking agreement on dates will follow shortly!
- Steem taxes! After my initially ultra conservative tax payment system which matches accounting on websites like Coinbase, I am working on an updated Steem tax payment system that is simple and easy to use. The idea is to only report what is sold out of Steem because doing income on the day received and then capital gains both creates a ton of extra work in tracking Steem Power and SBD every single day while potentially creating a big overpayment if the price of Steem goes to 0 at the benefit of allowing capital gains if it goes to the moon. The IRS has not made it clear exactly what is absolutely right for taxation of Steem, Steem Power, and SBD rewards meaning we are all just guessing at this point. I am going to take the most reasonable guess to report income I receive back in USD on the day I receive it and if I need to change it, I will be happy to adjust the difference.
- Autovoters! With the clear way to maximize curation being to get good autovoters setup, I am beginning research into Autosteem and steemvoter to see which is best while comparing the benefits and liabilities of autovotes versus manual votes.
- Fully voted! I finally made the last of my 30 of my own witness votes and will consistently make posts explaining why I am voting for each witness going forward.
Server Specs
My witness server, seed, and backup all have the following:
64GB DDR4 RAM
Intel Xeon E5-2630 (6c/12t)
2x 240GB SSDs
1Gbit/s
Thank you!
I am very grateful to now be receiving 23 blocks a day thanks especially to a vote from @clayop for me as a witness this week which landed me in the top 50! Here are my witness details from https://steemd.com/@jerrybanfield with no new missed blocks during the last 10 days.
Guides
Here are the witness guides I have made in my first two months to help make it easier for any new witness to learn how to join us!
- Get a Steem Witness + Seed Online Today with These Ubuntu Linux Commands at https://steemit.com/witness/@jerrybanfield/get-a-steem-witness-seed-online-today-with-these-ubuntu-linux-commands
- Steem Witness Basic Training at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jerrybanfield/steem-witness-basic-training
- Launch a Steem Witness Today at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jerrybanfield/launch-a-steem-witness-today
- How to Start Getting Steem Witness Votes at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jerrybanfield/how-to-start-getting-steem-witness-votes
Votes
I am voting for the witnesses listed below at 296.643 MV.
@adamm
@aggroed
@blocktrades
@busy.witness
@chainsquad.com
@clayop
@curie
@drakos
@followbtcnews
@furion
@good-karma
@gtg
@jerrybanfield
@jesta
@klye
@krnel
@lukestokes.mhth
@moisesmcardona
@netuoso
@personzzz
@pfunk
@riverhead
@roadscape
@roelandp
@someguy123
@swelker101
@teamsteem
@thecryptodrive
@wackou
@xeldal
I review my witness votes each week and make adjustments based both on contributions I see and on witness basics such as staying updated with the newest version and quickly correcting missed blocks as I did after I missed my first last month and am hoping to be best prepared for soon with a backup server. Recently I removed several witnesses that were not updated to the current version of Steem with the help of https://witstats.steemliberator.com/index.
My votes are mostly for the top witnesses giving a lot to our community while a few of my votes are helping newer witnesses have the chance to level up further. I would appreciate if witnesses consistently provided transparency in witness updates as to how votes are chosen and I will seek to continue to improve this myself in future posts which provide more details about what specific witnesses do and therefore why I am voting for them.
When we see witnesses especially in the top voting for other witnesses that are offline or running an old version of Steem and missing blocks, it lowers the perception of fairness in witness votes to the community and discourages new witnesses from trying. Many of us currently have votes for witnesses disabled or running Steem 19.0 or older as seen in several recent witness posts. Would any of us like to make a post showing the current witness votes for all top 50 witnesses by those updated, outdated, and disabled because I think we would all benefit from seeing this data in a simple format?
Thank you again!
Thank you for reading my second witness update! Every day I think about how to be of greatest service and am working to make Steem the divine gift we need it to be for forgiveness and freedom in this world! I am very grateful after two months as a witness to have 550 votes today especially from these top 7 upvoters from https://steemdb.com/@jerrybanfield/witness.
Love,
Jerry Banfield
PS: Witness votes are the most powerful votes we make on Steem because one vote for a witness lasts indefinitely! Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because when we make our votes, we feel in control of our future together? Thank you to the 550 accounts voting for me as a witness and the 184.2M VESTS assigned from users trusting me to make all witness votes by setting me as proxy!
Thank you to @barrysamways for drawing this image and providing a complete tutorial showing how he did it
Thank You Jerry for sharing Your Witness list because You've done the research that many of us may not have the time to do...
AND, Yes IF You haven't already Voted 4 @JerryBanfield as a Witness, please consider doing so.
ALSO, Thank You 4 voting 4 TeamSTEEM... a personal favorite for many different reasons... Perhaps this is because he REALLY works hard, which is easy to observe by just looking at many of his Posts... his Posts ( he spends between 8-14 hours per post) are Always Full of helpful information WITH the appropriate, corresponding Links
...AND he has been doing this for OVER 16 months... many of the newly risen Top 40 Witnesses are relatively NEW to Steemit.
ALSO, I truly know that BOTH @JerryBanfield & @TeamSteem are FULLY committed to making Steem The Best That it Can Be...
Please consider writing in TeamSteem name just under the 50th Witness with the link below:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Respectfully Requested, Sacred-Agent
Cheers !!
@teamsteem has helped me a lot here which is why he was one of my first witness votes also and I am grateful he is one of my top witness voters!
I really appreciate what both of you did for me and for the success of Steem! Thank you guys! I mean it!
Right on spot @sacred-agent. I simply love @teamsteem, his comments and posts are always so charming making him one of the first witnesses I ever voted for.
And Jerry I do not even have to mention your greatness, you are a wizard!
（＊＾Ｕ＾）人（≧Ｖ≦＊）/
Wholeheartedly agree. Team-Steem is one of my most diligent supporters, and a great poster.
i porsonally used steemvoter and it works fine!
Thank you Marco for helping me to get motivated to setup my own steemvoter which I plan to do today! Would you add me to your witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because you have 28 more votes available and your vote for witness would be a big help?
The Witness' path seems to be full of excitement; may be I will look into how to buy and set up a Linux server as well... Anyway, appreciate that you share your contagious excitement with us and give us in this way a portion of this excitement for ourselves.
Learning the linux box was probably the turning point for me.. Always was a nerd and firm believer that if you want to learn something bad enough you will. Good luck on your sysadmin adventures!
Thanks for encouragement, still didn't decide though... :)
youll find it more efficient to just rent a server and be able to click a button to upgrade server hardware , @klye knows hat im talking about
Noted.
wow someone just delegated me 7,638 Steempower so my Upvotes are now worth 50 cents so I just pushed your comment up to $2.38 so now you can tell your friends you made $2.23 offa single steemit post wiuth just one word!
$ 2 per word is pretty good XD
@cryptoeera thank you for your thoughtful comments on hundreds of the posts I have authored including this witness update! With over 10,000 Steem Power, your vote makes a big difference for witnesses! Would you join us in voting for witnesses today at https://steemit.com/~witnesses by making individual witness votes or setting a proxy to handle all voting because our witness votes are the most important we make on Steem?
Jerry, my research regarding witnesses is very limited and I sincerely don't know who deserves to be at the top. I also still am not sure how secure is Steemit because of this witnesses thing and what is the level of the platform's decentralization because of them...
@cryptoeera thank you for explaining what you are thinking about witness voting! The easiest way to fully participate is to set a proxy to someone we trust because the proxy then makes all the votes on our behalf at https://steemit.com/~witnesses. The proxy can be removed at any time when we decide to do our own research.
"and reading what happened with @furion"
Glad I could point that one out to ya, it was good reading. Thanks for pumping up the monthly hosting budget - that's more than I expected, but a good investment.
"I am working on an updated Steem tax payment system that is simple and easy to use."
I'm glad I could be of inspiration ;) Let me know if you hit any snags.
"This week I started a collaboration with @lexiconical"
10 done so far!
Thank you Jerry!
I love what u do. I love how you do it! Thanks for all your dedication to what and who you believe in.
Alex same here and I am excited to read your newest eco builder posts! Thank you very much for trusting me to make all your witness votes as your proxy!
thank u!
oh and the latest part is already out ;-))
https://steemit.com/blog/@eco-alex/the-remarkable-diary-of-an-ecobuilder-part-5-a-plan-and-vision-was-born
Have you heared about the opus foundation? They want to bring the blockchain technology to the music industrie. It's still very small, but alot of development has allready been done. I wonder if it could be the next "big thing"...
Nice, interesting drawing!
Thank you Tomas I hope you are enjoying New York!
Yes, it was awesome thanks :)
finally found a good idea on how to pick witnesses. Are they keeping up to the latest releases? How many blocks are they dropping?
Can use those two simple rules to see who cares enough to spend the time to keep their witness task running clean
Great system Dave to keep voting simple and maintain a solid list of witness votes! Thank you for including me in your list of votes!
Thanks for the update Jerry! The rate at which you've established yourself here is impressive, well done. Looking forward to the future of STEEM and thank you for your efforts on the network. :)
@kyle thank you for your kind feedback here and for your witness guides which gave me the courage to try!