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As we all know, witnesses are the backbone of the Hive platform, the unsung heroes who ensure everything runs smoothly. They operate critical nodes that keep the platform alive and thriving. Without witnesses, Hive wouldn’t exist, and without us, there would be no content to share and engage with, which is why we need to get familiar with who our witnesses are.
That's why I've created this special edition of "Meet Our Hive Witnesses." This interview series aims to connect with our witnesses, giving you a closer look at the people who keep Hive running. We’ll dive into their work, motivations, and insights through a series of thoughtful questions.
It is the fourteenth edition of Meet Our Hive Witnesses Interview and before I continue with the introduction of the next witness that has honoured us to be interviewed, I'd like to say that, as a Hive user who want to see this platform continue to grow and flourish, we all have 30 votes to cast for any Hive witness of our choice and I will say this is the most important 30 votes you will ever cast on this platform for any witnesses that you deem it fit.
In this Special Edition #14 of Meet Our Hive Witnesses, we feature Hive Witness @shmoogleosukami, who began serving in 2021 and has since dedicated over four years to ensuring reliable block production, decentralization, and Hive’s continued growth.
Welcome to my interview, it is a great honour to have you here on the show this week @shmoogleosukami
Thanks, below are the answers:shmoogleosukami
1 What motivated you to become a Hive witness, and how long have you been serving in that role?
@shmoogleosukami I first got interesting in becoming a Hive Witness shortly after the split from Steem when Hive was created, There were fewer witnesses running after the fork and having survived the hostile takeover I wanted to help hive succeed, it wasn't until I saw a post by @apshamilton detailing how he got a hive witness running under WSL 2 on a windows system did I become a witness. That made it possible for me to run a witness on my desktop PC from home at the time and on 27-1-2021 I finally became a witness. I've been a witness for almost 4 and a half years.
2 What do you believe is the core responsibility of a Hive witness, and how do you personally fulfill it?
@shmoogleosukami The core responsibility is to produce blocks consistently and maintain a node reliably, witnesses should also have an understanding of the inner workings of Hives code at least to some degree and be readily available in the event of hardforks and acute network issues.
I pay close attention to my node, checking in on it almost daily. I also have a number of monitoring systems in place to automatically disable my node should it miss a block and am also looking into more pre-emptive systems to notify of issue before blocks are missed.
3 Can you explain how your witness node is set up and what infrastructure you use to keep it running securely and reliably?
@shmoogleosukami My current witness is set up on a server I run at home which is a rarity, you can probably count the number of home run witnesses on 1 hand. It's a pretty old server, the hardware is over 12 years old but it's still more than capable of running a witness. It's a workstation motherboard, the ASUS Z9PE-D8 WS, running two Xeon E5-2960 V2 CPUs for a total of 40 CPU cores. It's got 256 GB of DDR3 ram and has 16TB of NVME storage running via a Asus hyper m.2 pci-e riser card, which is where hive is stored.
It's network connection is 1gbit down, 100mbit up and it's all plugged into a UPS battery backup power supply which can keep it running for about 10-20 mins in the event of a power outage, enough time for me to cleaning shutdown stuff and disable witnesses.
4 What challenges have you encountered as a witness, and how have you worked to overcome them?
@shmoogleosukami Most challenges I've encountered as a witness are a result of my own stupidity, being completely self taught in system admin and Linux there is a lot I don't know and mistakes tend to happen a lot. This used to result in big issues like having to resync my witness more times than I really needed too but as time has gone on I've learnt and built procedures to basically not screw up as much.
For instance in my last period of downtime which lasted for a little over a week, I almost ended up delaying it for a further 3 days by accidentally issue a replay command on startup shortly after finish a replay, my mistake for not carefully reading the commands I was executing. Fortunately prior to my mistake I had just finished a complete state backup of my node and was able to reduce what would have been an extra 3 day replay to being back up and running in less than an few hour.
5 What specific contributions have you made to the Hive ecosystem outside of maintaining your node?
@shmoogleosukami Being a technically savvy guy, one of my in my opinion very minor contributions has been bug reports, for the witness software itself I have reported two particular bugs one which I believe lead to some improvements in the peer to peer handling of hive witnesses and one issue related to hivemind the software that all the social media function run off of.
I've also reported a variety of bugs related to various front end as and when I see them, particularly some issues relating to hive-keychain on mobile, Ureka, a few peakD bugs. Lastly, I use hive, almost every day if that counts as a contribution. =p
6 In your opinion, what differentiates a great witness from an average one on Hive?
@shmoogleosukami In my opinion a great witness is one that is reliable, knows the inner workings of hive very well, can understand code and help fix issue as and when they happen but is also present in the social aspect as well. Running projects is also a plus especially if said project is self sufficient and brings great value to hive. Running an API node also gives bonus points, geo located witness nodes? more bonus points. It's why I vote for witnesses like @deathwing who runs a global API node network.
7 How do you engage with the Hive community, and what should users know about the importance of witness voting?
@shmoogleosukami I simply try to find posts that interest me and comment when I can think of something to say. I also more recently started trying to attend various events on the Hive discord to further engage and hear what fellow hivers are talking about.
Witness voting is very important, it's like voting for your local MP or governor.. It's important because it steers the direction hive goes, it also ensures reliable operation of the blockchain as a whole, assuming people vote for those who run reliable witnesses. Users have the power to move witnesses in and out of the top 20 consensus slots more power than they might think. When the masses move together, waves happen and with it change.
8 What are your top priorities or goals for Hive’s future, and how are you helping achieve them?
@shmoogleosukami My top priorities right now are to just keep everything running smoothly, which basically means keep my witness online and stable.
I have had thoughts of running an API node again, but recent health issues have meant I've been limiting taking on extra stress at this time so it's been on the back burner for a while.
The other thing I'm doing is running a VSC node and supporting the VSC project among some other projects.
9 Do you support any particular proposals or improvements on Hive? If so, why are they important to you?
@shmoogleosukami I'm supporting the VSC proposal as I feel it is very important to have smart contract capability available on HIVE, whether layer 1 or layer 2 like VSC it doesn't matter, Smart contracts and chain interoperability are too key things I'm very much looking forward to.
10 What do you think Hive witnesses should do better collectively to improve the blockchain?
@shmoogleosukami Creating a foundation perhaps, A proper incorporated company to speed run our way onto exchanges... But not really. At first thought it seems like an easy win but in reality it means being fully doxed, being liable to issues.. being the scape goat when things go wrong.. That's not what hive is..
Overall, maybe developing a consensus on like a roadmap. That witnesses specifically can say they endorse. So we can know what is planned in the next say.. 2-3 years or something. We have a roadmap of sorts coming from @blocktrades team but it's specifically work they are exploring or doing.
Being more consistent in our communication and wording. To be honest more recently we've collectively become more consistent in this regard with initiatives like the Swarm of Swarm dev posts over on @hivetoday, a great resource to see what's being achieved by various developers.
11 How transparent are you with your operations, and where can users track your performance or contributions?
@shmoogleosukami Well if you are referring to operations on chain, look no further than the data available on chain. With regards to performance, the only trackable metric really is missed blocks counter on the witness info, mine stands at 15 over the last 4 and a half years, which is pretty decent. Granted it's not a very good metric to go off of in general.
Otherwise there isn't really any one place to sum everything up.
12 What do you wish more Hive users understood about how witnesses work or what witnesses do?
@shmoogleosukami Not so much how witnesses work and what they do rather I wish more Hivers understood the importance of the governance system on hive and the need to vote for witnesses. It be nice if more people understood the power they have with their accounts and had the drive to use that power to shape hive the way they feel it should be shaped. Voting for witnesses that align with their wishes and visions. Voting for proposals they believe will be of great benefit to hive.
And naturally needing to understand what witnesses do and how they work is very helpful in that regard, even if it can be complicated and confusing at first.
13 Have there been any moments where you had to take a difficult decision as a witness? If yes, what was it?
@shmoogleosukami Thus far, there has not been such an instance.
14 Are there any technical or political limitations that restrict your ability to contribute more as a witness?
@shmoogleosukami Currently I don't believe there is anything that specifically prevents me from contributing more. Mostly my own lack of knowledge and my health are main factors preventing me from doing more. Oh and of course money.
15 Why should people vote for you as a witness,what makes your witness stand out from others?
@shmoogleosukami What differentiates me from most other witnesses is that my witness is run in my home on hardware I own and can touch, not in datacentres and the likes. One issue I see is that there are many witnesses that run on server hardware owned by the same company and often in the same datacentre. This leads to witnesses being geo-graphically centralized and if said company suddenly says no more crypto witness software then that's a whole lot of witnesses that may go offline all at once.
Running witnesses at home is about as decentralized and independent as you can get, It's been pretty damn reliable and stable over the 4 and a half years I've been a witness.
While I don't have any fancy projects going on hive like some witnesses do, I do keep close watch on development of hive, I make an effort to understand the inner workings and code and am readily available at times of HardForks and updates.
I appreciate all the votes I've gained over the years and am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this interview.
It is so awesome finally having a chat with you @shmoogleosukami
Thanks so much for creating time for meet our Hive witness. Have a wonderful day 🤝🏻
You're welcome.
NB: those were @shmoogleosukami exact words to the interview questions. Nothing was changed.
PROMOTING AND INTERVIEWING HIVE WITNESSES IS ALL I DO
! [ Special thanks to]
@canadian-coconut @felixxx @ausbitbank @ranchorelaxo @familyprotection @sanjeevm @gogreenbuddy @solominer @edicted @honey-swap @fedesox @trafalgar @yeouido.park @balte @xeldal @deepresearch @fw206 and everyone who has been supporting my interview. Thanks to you all.
As Hive users we need to do everything in our power to choose witnesses that will represent the community well. Before voting make sure you do some research on the witness you are voting for and be informed. Head over to https://wallet.hive.blog/~witnesses OR https://peakd.com/me/witnesses and click on some of the witnesses names, get to know them a bit better and do your part to make sure this community thrives.
You can read more about @shmoogleosukami here
please vote and support @shmoogleosukami to be your witness today!
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Thanks for reading. Till next time.
You can check and read my previous interview with @kyle ♥ @enginewitty ♥ @ura-soul ♥ @roelandp ♥ @vsc.network♥ @Actifit ♥ @thebbhproject ♥ @Stayoutoftherz ♥ @Wrestorgonline ♥ @Rishi556 ♥ @Botlord ♥ @yabamatt ♥ @seattlea and you can make sure you follow me to get updated with the next episode.
Help a soul today so that the world will be a better place for you and for me.
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