In this series of articles, I share my real-life experiences to becoming a STEEM witness. I hope you'll find this entertaining and informative. I'll cover:
- The conclusions of my initial research. (TODAY's TOPIC)
- Choosing and buying a server.
- Setting up a home server.
- Running a witness node on my home server.
- Initial results (steem power) from running a witness node.
- Become a witness (person)
- Adding server power.
- Become a top 50 witness.
- Maintaining an expanding your servers.
- Become a top 20 witness.
- The future of steem witnesses.
The conclusions of my initial research. (TODAY's TOPIC)
So...I've been reading a lot about becoming a STEEM witness. There's a lot of information out there - mostly steem posts that contain more or less technical information depending on the author and who they're trying to reach. Some authors have made the process vastly simpler by providing scripts or docker images. Others have provided step by step instructions that do what they've chosen to do. Still others have offered hosting services and technical support.
Long story short, I've decided to buy and host my own server. Here are the pros and cons of this approach:
Pros:
- Less than $200 capital invested up front
- Lower monthly costs ($63.50/month) (Versus $ 271.72 monthly for AWS running Linux on t2.2xlarge)
- Tax deductions for creating a workspace in my house
- More learning opportunities using docker and virtualization
- More control over the hardware
- Opportunities to offer hosting and other services
Cons:
- Upfront capital costs
- Less support from a steem expert, witness, and hosting provider like
- Likely outages due to power and connectivity failures (However, I may eventually spring for a backup service.)
Shopping time! I'm looking at these servers in the $100 - $200 range.
Will probably end up getting something like this one: