It's been a while since I have done a witness update, mainly as there isn't a lot to say. I was reading a discussion by @blanchy wondering why no one has done any witness updates. When you read how boring this post is, you will find out why.

Anyway, I'm currently #14 witness. I joined July 1st, 2017 but I didn't make my first operation until 22nd when I followed @quickfingersluc. On August 16th, 2017 I announced my witness.

What do I do?

Downvotes

I am primarily known for downvotes, as use this feature more than anyone. In fact, I created an NFT in NFT showroom for my first downvote.

It is yours to own in NFT Showroom for the low price of 4444 Hive. This was created as a meme and the price is a reference to the hostile takeover.

I run a system I call ZERO that removes rewards from anyone on my blacklist. The system uses Hive's native blacklist system so it is open and usable and only focuses on rewards not reputation.

Despite what people say, I do remove people from my list but what Hive Watchers does has no bearing on what I do.

Hive Punks

I announced Hive Punks on November 10th, 2021 and launched on November 12th, 2021 right before Hivefest. This was the first generative NFT project on Hive and I created it at the last minute as a proof of concept what is possible on Hive.

You could mint your own punk for 20 Hive, a price a decided on despite the select few who knew about this project early suggesting 100 Hive. I chose this price as I wanted everyone to not only own their own Hive Punk but have a collection. On November 13th, the last Hive Punk was minted.

My main purpose was to show case what was possible on Hive but also fill in the gap where every other blockchain had Punks but Hive. I made a few changes to the typical "Punk NFT" formula that set it apart from any of the copycats.

Every mint was verifiable fair, this was critical to me as I wanted to prove without a shadow of a doubt that no one can cheat the system, not even me. This is very unique in the NFT space where most NFT projects give favorable mints to select people behind the scenes. Each punk was minted based on the transaction id and block number and could not be cheated.

There was a real time rarity system that tracked how rare your punk was that updated in real time as new punks were minted. This is something I regretted as it was too aggressive and caused some performance problems at launch when everyone was reading the database heavily at the time, but no one has done this in the past so it was kind of cool.

Every punk had a name and a job profession, this was a little flourish I added to the formula to give it a unique and fun spin. It created a few funny moments like a vampire that worked as a bloodbanker.

Out of only three vampires being randomly created out of 10,000 punks, the odds of it getting this professional is very low.

Monitor Witness

One thing I would really like to promote is my Monitor Witness script. I have a lot of odd things I created, but this is something I think all witnesses should run. Especially low ranking witnesses.

Monitor Witness does one thing, it reviews the logs of your node and will compare the last processed block to the multiple trusted nodes to see if your node is behind or not responding. This will pick up hardware failures, forking, software failures, and even Internet outages. It does this by using a heartbeat system, also called a "healthcheck". If the script doesn't report your node is caught up, the healthcheck will know something is wrong and send a notification. This is a huge benefit for nodes that don' t sign blocks often so you know before you are up to sign a block that you have a problem. It is amazing on top 20 witnesses who run multiple nodes as it can tell you when a backup node has failed even if it is still online and your IP pings and hardware checks don't know of any problem. You will know before you need to fail over to a backup. I run this on all my nodes, and I know within 2 minutes if I have a problem on any of my nodes.

Other stuff

I also run STEMGeeks community and tribe, as well as created a lot of odd tools here and there. I am a blackbelt in dad jokes and puns, and love discovering the unknown through data analysis. I always say data is beautiful.

About my witness

I'm a bit weird, so I run five witness nodes, yes five all geographically redundant.

I also know what is going on with every single one and when there is a problem immediately.

I have ping, hardware, software, and log monitoring on every node. One node runs on a mini PC N100 with 16G of ram, two run on AMD Ryzen 3600X with 32GB of ram, and two Ryzen 3600 with 64GB of ram.

It is obvious I am a little eccentric in how I do things and I'm ok with that. You should see my home lab.

Witness voting

This topic has come up a few times, and I am frequently asked to vote on witnesses and proposals. I have a very different view on voting for witnesses than most people. I don't care how often you post, if you are a friendly person, you up vote my post, or you even vote my witness. I care about one thing, can you, will you, are you able to, and do you know how to protect the Hive blockchain and know what to do when it is at risk. That's all I care about, that's what a witness is for and what is most important. They are not here to be your friend, curate your post, post about flowers in their backyard, or any of that. Anything they do beyond this responsible is a bonus and certainly has value, it just won't sway me unless the most important thing is true. As such, I rarely vote for non-technical witnesses as the rest is not as important to me.

I post a AMA post every few months to allow users a place to ask me questions which I respond openly to all manor of questions. Despite not being a popular person here, these same people who hate me always seem to come to me when they have a question about something they don't understand.

That's my TED talk, have a nice night.