We're now in the final 3 hours before the Steem network upgrades to "Equality" v0.19.0 .
I can feel the tension and uncertainty in the air !
This week I've gained over 100 new voters, some with decent SP holding but not quite enough to advance another rank yet.
I now have 408 witness votes and I'm at rank # 27 :D
Witness node operations
This week I upgraded my node to the latest release version of steemd from the release candidate version I had been using.
I temporarily disabled my signing key using 
It took a little longer then I expected to get my node back online, and I made a stupid mistake copying from my own outdated notes - I re-enabled using the wrong signing key causing my node to miss a block anyway.
I facepalmed, fixed my fail and since then it hasn't had any issues at all running the new software since.
- 1 missed blocks this week (10 ever) .
- I'm now witnessing an average of 52 blocks each day .
Price feed and current network parameters
- I publish an unbiased price feed - last update was $2.220 SBD / STEEM .
- SBD interest rate remains steady at 0% - to discourage hoarding whilst SBD is overvalued
- Account creation fee remains at 0.2 STEEM - attempting to reduce signup cost (info)
- Maximum block size remains at 131,072 - to lower the SP requirements to transact (more info).
Steem Dollars still trading above $1
Steem Dollars continue to be in high demand, currently priced at $1.75 USD per SBD .
I'd still really like us to attempt timcliff's proposed solution to restore the $1 SBD peg (TLDR: Reverse Conversion) .
Steemians should be taking advantage of these higher prices and sell SBD above face value while you can.
Do not use the internal convert option in your wallet for SBD's at this time - you will get a better deal on exchanges.
You should also avoid doing 100% Steem Power posts at this time, you will make more money if you use the 50/50 option and then trade the SBD you get for Steem.
On the upcoming hardfork
The next hardfork is scheduled for: Tue, 20 Jun 2017 15:00:00 UTC
The upcoming tweaks to vote power and the daily vote target/rate will change the way both users and bots curate on the site - and it's extremely hard to predict what the trending page and payouts will look like in the upcoming days/weeks .
I don't expect it to be immediately devastating like the last major fork was because the reward pool will remain intact .
However past story payouts could potentially see major changes - if you have mostly whale support your payout may drop, if you have a lot of minnow/orca support they may rise.
Since I've been blessed with delegated SP I've been really enjoying my increased influence here and I think I've voted fairly and used that influence to reward a huge amount of people.
Having a lot of SP means you can vote with a low vote strength and still make a worthwhile impact on payouts but for a larger amount of people overall - the current 40 vote target means I could give 4000 1% votes out every day (for example). Moving to 10 means that I can only vote on 1000 people before losing vote strength.
I'm trying to stay positive and think of the increased minnow influence - but all I can think about is how is this going to affect some of my recent projects like 
Steemfest Travel Fund
I have been fundraising for the Steemfest travel reimbursement fund using a combination of my powerdown , sending post rewards and direct post beneficiary splitting.
Unfortunately I didn't realise at the time that rewards split using this method are sent as Steem Power only - not liquid funds :(
These are the payouts visible in the t-r-f transfer history :
5 days ago { "type": "comment_benefactor_reward", "benefactor": "t-r-f", "author": "ausbitbank", "permlink": "-from-0-to-100k-aud-in-11-months-thanks-to-steem", "reward": "547792.721399 VESTS" }
7 days ago { "type": "comment_benefactor_reward", "benefactor": "t-r-f", "author": "ausbitbank", "permlink": "new-seed-node-online-a-seedsteemvizcom", "reward": "727293.401466 VESTS" }
But right now the funds sit in limbo unclaimed and unusable - I made a mistake but there's still time.
We need 
Donation total so far :
- Steemfest Travel Fund post rewards donation #1 - 552.036 SBD / ~$960 USD
- 1 powerdown of 1346 Steem (currently valued at $2900 USD)
- 351 Steem Power from my my seed node announcement post (currently valued at $760 USD)
- 264 Steem Power from my from 0-100k AUD in 11 months post (currently valued at $570 USD)
= ~$5190 USD donated for Steemfest :D
now supports 119 Aussie steemians
I've been delegating SP and donating post rewards to try and kickstart a few initiatives for the Aussie community - 
After being around for less then a week @centerlink already sponsors 119 Steemians with votes.
I've spent some time customising my own version of 
Vote power is set at 10% for now, but will need to be decreased further when the hardfork kicks in soon.
Checking
#teamaustralia member 
Entries are still open for 3 more days - just send $2 SBD to chook raffle to enter the draw!
Witness Update Post Reward Giveaway Update
Whilst looking through this weeks blocks witnessed by my node I wasn't able to find enough eligible quality posts for every day that I felt were worthy of being sent at least $50+ each.
So I've decided to postpone this weeks giveaway and will instead use the liquid rewards of this post to powerup up both 
I will continue the giveaway in my next weeks update, but this week it was just a really unlucky selection of blocks I ended up getting - mostly filled with votes and comments not top level posts.
Last weeks winners:
Last week we had 8 different winners , you can learn more about the selection process in last weeks update .
- The remaining 7 users got a 10% share and each 21.7 Steem Power worth ~$46 USD
- Split 1 went to
for "Product Design - Mobile phone stand with STEEM Logo" (block 12749805 on 2017-06-12T07:31:54 )
- Split 2 went to
"Gold and Silver - long term view" (block 12739493 on 2017-06-11T22:56:12 )
- Split 3 went to
for "My latest creation is a bit odd..for me." (block 12708815 on 2017-06-10T21:22:09 )
- Split 4 went to
for "Lies, plain & simple. The saga of James B Comey & the deep state." (block 12676044 on 2017-06-09T18:03:33)
- Split 5 went to
for "Great Barrier Reef, Rottnest Island - Fish, Sea Lion & Turtles - Underwater photo series" (block 12635343 on 2017-06-08T08:04:18)
- Split 6 went to
for "Food Is Definitely Art! But Is The Beauty An Indicator Of Its Taste?" (block 12613061 on 2017-06-07T13:29:42)
- Split 7 went to
for "DIVERTIMENTO" (block 12583372 on 2017-06-06T12:44:33 )
- Split 8 The remaining 30% went to
It's the final countdown !
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