Meet our steemwitness is a program put in place to know more about our steem witness, there roles and obligations. We need them as much as they needs us. Our witness are the leaders on the platform and thus it is our paramount importance that we due our due diligence before casting our votes.
In this episode of this interview I would like to introduce you to DanielSchwarz one of the most generous witness here on steem platform, very humble, he love to post about music, Greece or about steem, also love to curate and resteem meaning posts. He holds 68,000 SP and not powering down. can find liondani on steem at https://steemit.com/@liondani.
I welcome you to another episode of meet our steem witness 
and thanks for the honour 😃
Thanks for having me.It's my honour to have the chance for a interview with you.
How did you first hear about steemit and what made you decide to join?
I heard about it 1 April 2016 in bitsharestalk.org and I thought it was a April Fool information, so that delayed me to take proper actions to run "mining" servers like others did :)
I decided to join because I was already involved with bitshares and I was amazed with the DPOS consensus approach and had 100% trust on Dan Larimer's new project. I was confident he will build something as good as bitshares
or even better.
For steemians who don't know much about witnesses, can you give a layman explanation of what it is that witnesses do?
Witnesses run a couple of well equipment servers that are near 99.99% online and produce every 3 seconds new blocks (like BTC every 10 minutes). So they are the "miners" of our network BUT are elected from the community to do so (DPOS) without the
need to solve electricity hungry algorithms (POW) :)
What is the biggest challenge you have ever faced since you joined steemit?
That I had to "compete" so much smarter witnesses than me. :)
As one of the top witness what is your duty?
To be 100% standby for example in case of emergency's, and ensure the servers a running at all time (main server,backup server,seed nodes etc.) and are as secure as possible.
Do everything imaginable to promote steem and everything related to it that gives value to the network. Testing, curating content,promoting content,supporting the Greek community (and not only),making contests,donating, watching and voting for the best witness candidates
contributing, giving ideas for new features,supporting in general community members that in my opinion give value to the community etc.
I know that you are always busy with your computer trying to help the community, apart from that, what are the other things you enjoy doing?
Be with my family,watch a movie,going for coffee with friends/partners,driving my car,trying to play piano, reading the Bible.
What is the biggest challenge the steem community must overcome before it goes widespread?
Be open minded and be ready to adopt possible "new" blockchain technology's (like EOS) if it is necessary. (Is it? Would love to see comments on that.)
What is the financial advice apart what ceiling value do you steem has in terms if price?
Obviously I expect better performance than the majority of the top 30 "coins". So if we have a bull run again, we will for sure see new ATH, $10 would be reasonable I think.
Apart from the steemit community, there are still other sites created for steem user, I don't want to mention them but which one will you prefer and which one will you advice others to use?
Steepshot & Dtube for sure! I think both will be more popular than steemit itself very soon!
Steepshot will crash instagram. And Dtube will crash YouTube.
Can you tell the community one unique thing we probably don't know about you?
I was playing in past online Poker for a couple of years (before getting focused on cryptos) with the same username, "liondani", and was a well known member in the Greek poker community...
What makes you from different witnesses in the steem community?
Not powering down? :)
It is a good thing to be a witness and another thing is that being a witness takes a lot of time, how do you manage your time and keep balance with other things?
I am not good lately on time managing and that has a negative impact on me (don't sleep enough, no much exercise any more, gained some weight, not much time with family and friends)
But trying to fix that now. Because at the end of the day it makes you in reality counterproductive and less happy.
Where do you see the value of steem in the next 4-5 years along with the platform?
It all depends of the decisions of the key "players" of the platform. We can grow exponential but we can shrink also beyond our expectations.
Steemit as continued to grow more user day by day and am sure it will still continue to grow, now what is the biggest obstacle before steem rivals some of the online social media giants?
No. It could be only EOS if we keep a Grandiose attitude. Keeping humble and open minded (thinking outside the box) will give us the right direction for symbiosis. There is place for all.
With some of the current problems steemit faces, I.e. Whale circle jerking, pool draining, bot votes etc and some radical backlash some steemians, what, if any solutions do you see?
We must hear what the community has to say for problems like that and let the steemians actively evolve on witness decisions using maybe some kind of open polls for the community. I really would like to hear what members have to say on
the comments below for that same question.
What can you say on the recent scam and phishing war going on on steem?
Pretty much expected to happen. I would advise not to keep liquid steem or SBD on accounts (transfer on saving account), only Steem Power of course. So in case you get scammed you just recover your account before any loss of funds.
What is your preventive action you can give to the steem community to prevent there account?
Use only your posting key when you sign in. Only when you move funds use your active key, and go to steemit only via your bookmark and not from any other source/link.
If there was a worldwide internet and cellular blackout for a week, what would you do for those 7 days?
Reading and sleeping? Maybe going for a third kid?
In five sentences or less, can you tell steemians why you deserve their vote?
1)Because of my integrity 2)Giving back to the community 3)Not powering down 4)Being humble
If you could give advise to new users just starting out on steemit, what would it be?
Be you. Get connected. Up vote as much as you can. Enjoy it. Inch by Inch Play by Play....
Once again I would like to give a huge thanks to for having this conversation with me🤝🏻
I like to thank you for the honour and your patience ! Thanks
PROMOTING AND INTERVIEWING STEEM WITNESS IS ALL I DO
As steemit 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 people you are voting for and be informed. Head over to https://steemit.com/~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.
Now that you have read something about I strongly recommend you to choose as a witness. For now if you want to select it then open it [https://steemit.com/~witnesses] 
I strongly recommend you to choose as a witness. For now if you want to select it then open it [https://steemit.com/~witnesses] to be your witness today!
Thanks for reading. Till next time
You can check and read my previous interview with
reggaemuffin • exyle• adsactly-witness • felixxx • lukestokes • neoxian • abh12345 • good-karma •@aggroed and you can make sure you follow along with this next episode.
I remain my humble self
