Nice post! Glad to have you as a witness on Steem.
Currently only about the top 50 Witnesses stand much chance of recouping their running costs.
I don't know what number you use. At the current prices, only 2-3 blocks a day could be enough to make a witness profitable. This in turn mean a lot more than only top 50 witnesses are profitable. I would encourage you to correct this information or correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks - I was deliberately vague with that figure as I didn't have the exact figures in my memory. Checking around again it appears that maybe the level to breakeven for the cost of renting a typical server might be about 100?
One of the witnesses (dang) just quit being a witness because he couldn't break even, even though his own voting power was big enough to give himself a boost up to around the 100 mark. This is something I am new to, so am learning as I go :)
Btw, it would be great if you would spare me one of your 30 vote slots - are there many witnesses that you support and recommend? Besides voting for you, I am currently only voting for about 5 others who I know from communicating on Steemit. Cheers!
You clearly need to get more familiar with the witnesses. I'm surprise you are only voting for 6. Don't be too scared to vote for some bad "witnesses". Your choice will be better than random chance.
Block per day can be seen here. My guess is 2-3 block a day is enough to break even.
https://steemdb.com/@ura-soul/blocks
I don't have a free witness vote right now but I'll consider it in the future.
Yes, I do need to examine more of the witnesses and their stats to figure out who to vote for - I just thought maybe there were some you voted for due to their intentions on a personal level - these are how I ideally choose who to vote for, coupled with their technical abilities and performance, since they will maybe influence which hardforks get support and which don't.
Thanks for the link to steemdb, I hadn't seen the witness block log there before - I was surprised to see that your graph only shows a few blocks from the last few days. I was able to see the list of witnesses that you are voting for in there too (although it might be a bit out of date since mine is out of date - i stopped voting for jerry and added a couple of others). I happened to notice that these ones in your vote list are running old versions of the witness node software:
joseph
theprophet0
krnel
It would be greaat if you would consider switching one out for me to give me a chance to perform better. :)
I don't recommend specific witnesses because there's a reason I vote for each witnesses I vote for. What witnesses you should vote for according to me, the 30 witnesses I vote for.
There's good reasons to vote even for witnesses I don't vote for. All witnesses have their reasons to be here.
As for the witness version, the 0.19.2 only affected the seed nodes according to gtg. I can't confirm this though, I tend to think it is exact.
Also the steemdb lists votes received and votes cast are updated maybe once a day or close to it possibly more often.
As for the graph, it only shows a couple of days and half a day for some reason. Graph from any witness look the same. The graph don't show earlier days even though the witness were active.
OK, sure, I understand about your voting choices. Thanks too for the tip about the graph.
I looked through the release notes and code changes for version 19.2 in github and found that there were a few bug fixes in 19.2 that led them to say that:
Steem Equality 0.19.2 Release Notes
We recommend everybody update to 0.19.2 due to p2p network stability fixes.
I am quite experienced in managing open source projects in Github now, so maybe at some point I will even get involved with bug fixing there.. But not right now!
OK, sure, I understand about your voting choices. Thanks too for the tip about the graph.
I looked through the release notes and code changes for version 19.2 in github and found that there were a few bug fixes in 19.2 that led them to say that:
Steem Equality 0.19.2 Release Notes
We recommend everybody update to 0.19.2 due to p2p network stability fixes.
I am quite experienced in managing open source projects in Github now, so maybe at some point I will even get involved with bug fixing there.. But not right now!
We recommend everybody update to 0.19.2 due to p2p network stability fixes.
Yup read that push. Encouraged every witnesses to update at first then partially change my opinion when I read gtg comment about this issue.
Witnesses which are on 0.19.1 didn't seem to have issues nor did the network at large had issues. Doesn't mean it couldn't cause issues. Updating was so painless, I think they should have done it, yet now a serious enough issue for them to lose my vote at this moment.
You'll catch up pretty quickly on learning about the witnesses, who they are and what are their strength and weaknesses.
Thank you again for supporting my witness and I look to collaborate even more with you in the future.
It's good to know you can code. That's obviously a good asset.
I don't really know what gtg does in regards the actual coding of Steem - I only know him from his posts in the witness group as gandalf and his 'steem in a box' system (which repeatedly failed for me and which caused me to lose 5 days attempting to figure out why.. thankfully, tim cliff's manual system worked first time).
I agree, in general it is best to update when advised to - unless there are very specific changes that you totally understand 100% and know 100% will not be a problem to not integrate. Given the ongoing problems with Steemit and the fact that their real causes have not been transparently revealed, I think it is a good idea to do everything possible from a witness position to mitigate that. While I have no specific reason to think that the problems are related to a failure to update or even to anything involved with steem itself - as a 'best practise' for system maintenance and debugging it is usually best to be running the latest version.
I am actually a trained system architect, designer and developer - so I am a bit more like Dan than an average coder and that's part of why I usually leave coding to others who see themselves as more development oriented than as designers/architects.. That said, I do have a few projects on Github for PHP.
Hmm, that must have been a frustrating experience with Steem in a box.
Steem in a box is from someguy123. His Steem in a box is awesome. Do you remember what was your problem? I faced one issue the last time I installed it. One script file need to be edited to change one address to link to a working seed node for the wallet to launch correctly.
Well that comment was suppose to have been posted days ago. I just noticed it not posted.
I disagree in voting for 'bad witnesses'. Your votes should be there for a reason, not just 'randomly' plopped on someone that hasn't ever given you a vote or comment or you've not seen around the community or hasn't done anything you approve of. Make your votes count my man.