in this post he has compiled 19 questions from 10 steemians and here are my answers. Hope my voice is heard! Also, on the very end of the post I will show you how to vote for me. Hope I deserve your vote!
What is your position/stance on bid-bots (ownership/delegations/opinion)?
To be honest with you I do not have a solid position, so I belive more discussion is necessary.
Personally I have used them in the past to see if and how they work, and though I can testify it was being profitable, I didn't feel the fulfillment of getting organic growth. Some delegation and voting bots can be helpful for you to boost your reach, this is undeniable, but Steem is all about organic growth and organic reputation, so I can see the point that this is like "cheating the system" and this is why I have stopped using.
But growing on Steem is hard, so, I FOR NOW do not endorse nor condemn those bots, my position is that there should be more discussion about it between both witnesses and non witnesses users
What does the witness want to do to make the blockchain more user-friendly and help to on-board new users. What do THEY personally want to see done and what will they do to get it there?
Now this is an answer I am excited to give! First, let me mention the projects I am running solo:
: is a project to bring more brazilians, capillarity on promotion is important, in this project I am making tutorials for steemians to give the link to their friends so they can make people know more about Steem without having to type the same things again and again and again!
But just teaching people is not enough, so, as soon as I get a crowd of followers and readers and become bigger I will start donating Steem accounts for indicated NEW members, this will definitely and effectively onboard new users.
But just bringing people is not enough, so in this same project I will "adopt" a few users (new or not so new) that stand out from the rest of the crowd, so I can help them grow, we all can win with that.
But just "adopting" one person to help him grow won't turn Steem into a crowded place, so I will also, as soon as enough users join, of course, start doing content curation, and this is good for both ways! The readers will find new content and new writers to keep them engaged and help to build a strong and united community. The writers will get exposure, this will incentivize them to make better and more engaging content and also, of course, reward them for thatSteem API programming tutorials for non programmers: here on this very profile I am making a tutorial series on how to use the Steem, SteemConnect and DSteem APIs to build Steem dapps, I want to empower people so that everyone will be bottlenecked by their creativity only, and not by their technical skills, this last project is both on English and Portuguese and I will add Spanish translations too very soon. The former one is Portuguese only to focus on building a solid and local community
Do you think votes for witnesses should last indefinitely or should they time out (or perhaps decay over time) so that periodically voters will need to reevaluate and affirm their positions by recasting their votes?
I do believe it should time out. The way it works right now, in my opinion, is like if you have elections but with a new rule, if the new president has less votes than the last of the last election, the last will keep it's power and the new one loses, even if the old one is not running. I might be wrong, I would sincerely like to read the arguments to defend the position that the votes should last indefinitely to widen my view on this topic. But so far, I believe they should time out (or better yet, decay, as you have said, this is a very clever idea)
Do you think the 30 witness votes each steemian gets is the correct number, especially in light of the fact there are only 20 top witnesses to be seated?
I don't see anything wrong with 30 witnesses, though I have always thought of maybe making a system, like the upvote, where you can choose how much power to give to each witness, so you can do 90% for one and 1% for 10 others, for example. But this is just a brainstorm, I have never put much thought into it, but I agree with having more than 20 votes exactly so other witnesses can get a chance to be heard
What is a concern or two that you have about the #steem blockchain?
Scalabilabity is the main one. It is too expensive to run a server, there are only 20 main witnesses and if all of a sudden we blow up with millions of new users, first, maybe even the top 20 witnesses won't be able to handle it and we would lose all the small ones... Blockchain is inherently an innefficient (in terms of speed and resources usage) database, so, as a developer myself, scalability worries me a lot...
Another minor concern is economic scalability, tight now, honestly, I can't see many benefits for content producers to hold more than a couple hundred Steem Power, really... There should be new or more incentivized use for Steme Power, like, maybe, paying for post promotiong on the promotion tab with RC, that would spend resources and would incentivize people to power up to promote
What are you hopeful about for the #steem blockchain?
I have big hopes for new apps, this is why I make tutorials to empower people and try to make new developers. Steem is a blockchain made to empower apps, in the next 5 to 10 years we might see very creative usages, I just hope that the hardforks leads us to a way that Steem coin gets incentivized so we can economically benefit from the new apps and blockchain solutions using Steem
What is the monthly cost of equipment?
Very high, I own a (very small) hosting business, so, by dedicating so many resources to the Steem Witness server I can't get a precise number of the server costs, really, but I can estimate how much I am giving up on making, so I would say I am having a monthly loss of over $200 USD dollars, maybe near $300 because the 2 NVMe SSDs are expensive and the 1Gbps dedicated link is also not cheap, it is quite a big hit on the budget, but the fun pays off haha
Where do your earnings go?
You are very optimistic haha, I imagine you made this question thinking about the top 20 witnesses, maybe.
So I will talk about where my investments (you can call loss, but I call investments) go, and what are my plans on what to spend in the near future
- Witness server
- Buying and donating new Steem accounts for new users
- Delegating (once I have enough SP to be significant)
- Small giveaways like Steem Monsters (spoiler)
- IPFS server to help dtube hold more content (still now ready though)
[What are some of your] Current projects?
- Teaching Steem programming for beginners to make Steem dapps
- Server to host IPFS files to help descentalized projects like dtube (still working on this one)
- I am building a dapp but this is pre alpha, so I can't share much news on it yet
[Will you provide an] Alt accounts list?
Other than this main account I have
What are the benefits associated with being a witness?
I like the fun I am having, but I am a total geek so this might be for everyone. The campaign is also fun and the support I am getting, though still smalls gives me a sense of responsibility and being actively making new projects for the Steem to grow, because "being a witness" itself is just starting the server and running on loss (really,only the top 20 probably make money with this), but by BEING A WITNESS, the latter one means interacting, doing a campaign and working on projects has helped me to learn more about the Steem both technically and economically, this is also helpful for my programming tutorials after all!
How do I become a witness?
It is not hard, you just need a Steem account and a computer online 24/7 (or a server). The witness 
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/the-easy-way-to-install-or-upgrade-to-hardfork-20-steem-in-a-box
but make sure you are comfortable with using the command line and linux before starting! and be aware you will most likely run a loss for weeks if you are lucky and forever if you are not so lucky, so consider being a witness as a work you have to pay to work, not a work that pays you to work, so it requires lots of passion!
What do you think the SBD [STEEM] price for a new account should be?
by:
I have never put much tought on it, but my server is requesting 3 Steem to create accounts as this is the consensus of most (all last time I checked)top 20 witnesses. If you didn't know, the witnesses set the price in Steem for new accounts, you can find on https://steemian.info/witnesses
on the column Reg.Fee (Steem) how much each one requests to create account. It is a bit complex to explain how it works, but there you can find how much all the witnesses think the register price should be at!
What is a witness and how I become a good worker?
by:
Unfriendly answer: a witness is a server that is assigned to produce the blocks delegated to an account that was chosen by the blockchain leveraged by the community votes
friendly answer: a witness is a person, or a group, that runs a server, or more than one in the case of the big guys, to produce blocks for the Steem blockchain, a witness is like a blockchain-miner-politician, it has to do it's campaign and get votes to only then be able to produce blockchain blocks.
To be a good witness is hard, I wish I had this answer for you... What I am doing to try to be a good witness is to create projects to both engage the community and actively make people better, by teaching them on the tutorials for example, in my case I believe I can only grow if I make the people around me either grow with me or around me, I don't believe in magic and I don't home someone will get me votes or recognize my work, so I must make the people around me big enough to help grow. This is being active instead of passive in my opinion, and being active is key for a good witness. I am also trying to bring new people to Steem and keep them there, so I believe this would also make me a good witness because the people I bring can see me as some sort of leader as much as the people I have helped to grow.
So, I don't have an answer on how to be a good witness, but those are my actions and I hope they lead me to the path of being a "good work"
Have you implemented any new procedures for evaluating potential hardforks?
No, I am too small and the Hard Fork 20 was too recent, so the next one is not on my priority list (not yet), so I will just follow the discussions, maybe give my opinions and suggestions if I happen to have one about something, and fork with the top 20 when they do. I am just afraid my voice won't be heard if I have new and better ideas.
How does a new user make the availability of his vote known to the cabal of witnesses wannabes trying to overthrow the current witness regime?
Hi, I am sorry, but I did not understand your question (I am not a native English speaker, keep that in mind, I am sorry), so I will giving 2 answers assuming 2 possible interpretations of what you have tried to ask
How does a witness make his campaign known
It is hard, a new witness needs to make projects that attract people, then the people after seeing his work can vote for him, I believe that before asking for anything I have to work and show I deserve it. There might be easier ways to get visibility, but I am doing partnerships, being active on communities and pushing my projects to make Steem grow and hopefully consequently get more votesHow does a voter gets to know smaller witnesses that can get his vote
A voter finding a good small witness can be as hard and the opposite, one can search ont he tags #witness-update and witness-category and follow projects like
The list provided at https://steemian.info/witnesses of all the witnesses is helpful and more complete, though less friendly
Should we have interest for SBD?
I don't think we should. We already have the function to switch sbd to steem and back and forth to keep the price under control and the supply of SBD is too low. If it has interest and the supply grows it would make the price drop. Making a stable currency is hard and I expect that in the next few forks the economics of this improve, but having interest (inflation) might not be a good idea
What takeaways do you have from the Hardfork 20 issues that occurred?
Hard forks should have more tests and focus on the user experience. We are small and even Facebook has bugs that take it down sometimes, but we had problems for many days. BUT
I hope people start voting on real and engaged programmers and developers for the top 20 witnesses!! The top 20 does not seem to be engaged on the technology and this drives me insane. How can people put non programmers on the top 20 as the top 20 are the guys that decide which way to go? It is like having a doctor that does not know medicine but can use google to find what is your issue...
People need to learn how to vote on more technically capable witnesses because they lead the path, and witnesses should SHOW MORE DEDICATION TO THE TECHNICAL ASPECTS! (Sorry for the caps lock) Even if they are not developers, if they are on the top 20 and making a couple thousands a month, maybe hire one or two developers to work for Steem... That is what I would do, but I AM BIASED, I overvalue technical and programming knowledge, but I think and hope my point makes sense.
Do you think 20/21 top witnesses a good number or should there be more or less?
For now it is enough, the economy is small and there is not enough resources to pay for 100 top witnesses for example. That said, I feel like most witnesses waste their rewards, they should hire teams and focus on making the technology better, they lead the way, they should behave as such.
But there should already be a discussion on the scalability, first, to add more witness to increase the decentralization, second, to somehow leverage the resources consumption between the witness that is producing the block and the ones on stanby. My witness gets one block every couple of weeks AND THIS IS A HUGE WASTE OF RESOURCES! Scalability and centralization worries me because even if we have 1000 top witnesses, we would still be bottlenecked by the slowest one
VOTE FOR ME!
To vote for me, simply use the SteemConnect link below
https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=igormuba&approve=1
or go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses
(note, it is /~witnesses, not /witness)
Scroll all the way down to "If you would like to vote for a witness outside of the top 100, enter the account name below to cast a vote."
type igormuba and click vote