Current policy:
- Unbiased price feed ( previously was set to 1% below observed market price )
- Minimum account creation fee set to
20 STEEMwhich is currently worth ~$4. This is going to be revisited after HF17 due to delegated bandwidth feature and its implications. - SBD interest rate at 1.5%
Current, observed parameters:
Real SBD value: $1.040
STEEM value: $0.200
current_sbd_supply: 1051594.546 SBD
sbd_interest_rate: 225
account_creation_fee: 25.400 STEEM
Upcoming Hard Fork
https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/v0.17.0
As I mentioned already in my previous post and discussed a lot I support upcoming changes while being neutral in the worst case(s).
Yes, I am aware of some existing issues but I do not consider them as critical.
True, I am not an expert in every field so I might be underestimating some of them. Still, I believe that HF17 pros outmatch its cons, and after adding time factor choice is obvious to me. In the end we would move forward at the cost of some additional challenges on our way. We can cope with these challenges because we have great devs among our community and experienced witnesses. It's nothing new to us, right?
Standing idle on the crossroads would not make Steem great.
For non-technical readers wondering what it is all about with HF doubts there is a pineapple pizza analogy.
Useful resources
My full node with a public steem API is available at gtg.steem.house:8090
Node is still running v0.16.3 built with:
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE = Release
LOW_MEMORY_NODE = OFF
CLEAR_VOTES = OFF
Available APIs:
public-api = database_api
public-api = login_api
public-api = account_by_key_api
public-api = tag_api
public-api = follow_api
public-api = market_history_api
After weeks of operation node feels fine and is processing more and more requests while still keeping very low latency. Disk throughput is relatively low because most of the data fits in RAM.
I am also serving an always up to date blockchain data:
https://gtg.steem.house/get/blockchain/
There's also highly compressed version at blockchain.xz (current as of March 21st, compatible with versions v0.16.1 or greater, including v0.17.0, i.e. no need to resync, just replay) that might be useful when dealing with upgrades, hard forks, etc. or by those with slow connection. Smaller size (only ~3.6GB) at the cost of missing few days of blocks (which would be synced "normal way").
It's also compatible with pixz which can significantly speed up decompression time on multi-core machines.
Back from vacation
I was enjoying my well-deserved vacation. (Steem is all about subjective point of view, right? ;-) )
Thank you all for helping me fulfill my duties, keeping me updated and securing various "just in case" scenarios.
Special thanks goes to: 
If you believe I can be of value to steem, please vote for me (gtg) as a witness either on Steemit's Witnesses List or by using your cli_wallet command: vote_for_witness "YOURACCOUNT" "gtg" true true