Been a moment since I've officially released any information about what it is I've been doing for the blockchain as a witness so here goes everything (well, almost).
The Websites
Well , there are quite a few now but we'll focus on two for this article. Firstly, Steemit.Chainchopper.com is our information website where I'll most likely be posting updates about our witness program and information about steem seed consensus nodes and full RPC nodes. There's also an active list there which shows our community nodes (which are currently showing offline and in red) and nodes owned by top 50 witnesses are in the list for good measure. And Lastly, Steem Backed Which is our staging platform for our web based technologies and frontend for our
app api. We've also created a GitHub Where we'll upload code and collaborate with the community on some of our open-source projects.
The STEEM Seed Nodes
I have run 2 of our community nodes for 2 months straight, hoping that someone from the top 50 witness league would show support for a project like this as other have who are not. The project was started to allow steemians to vote for a witness that has the sole purpose of producing blocks to pay for setting seed nodes. Though this is something that everyone will benefit from as I've explained in previous articles The reception of the concept has been lukewarm at best. After running two nodes plus a witness server out of pocket, I had to make the choice to disable the seed nodes until we can afford them (which we honestly could do with the witness just writing a few blocks/day) As the witness produces more blocks, the more nodes it will produce. Don't fret though, I can do a "replay" on these nodes at any time as I still have the ability to reactivate the instances as we produce enough blocks to fund them. The only thing needed from any and everyone (presumably) to support this project is give an easy simple and free witness vote which can be given by anyone with a steemit account by clicking this text. Honestly, consider it. Everyone on steemit gets 30 votes which means 30 different witness choices. This vote does not affect your reputation, voting power, or account value in any way. you'll be glad you did!
The Plugin
Goal: @TheCodex And Myself @JustinAdams Will Create A Free WordPress Plugin That Allows You To Place A Customize-able "Donate" Button Anywhere In Your Blog That Accepts Short-codes Including Widget Areas. The Plugin Will Be Compatible With Any Wordpress Theme. It Will Perform The Donation Transaction Via Steemconnect Without Redirecting The Visitor To Another URL For Confirmation, Thus Keeping The Process Seamless Thanks To @Yabapmatt And His Work With SC2pay. We've also started an
project to help get funding for our nodes (firstly) and our plugin. The links tho those you can find Here
What Will We Do:
* Create A Secure Web Server To Demonstrate And Host The Plugin Files For Distribution And Public Download
- Create An App On Steemit Called
- Create A Github Repository For The Plugin Files On Github For Community Collaboration
- Develop The Plugin And Code It's Features
- Release The Easy To Install And Simple To Use Plugin To The Community For Free On Our Website And Github
Repository. We Have Set A Deadline And Intend To Deliver The Finished Plugin By 5/12/2018.
Below Are Some Screen Shots And Concepts For Work In Progress:
A button shown on the front-end of your blog allowing users the ability to instantly donate STEEM/SBD to a user that is predefined in a shortcode or defaulted to a user entered in the back end. There will be no requirement for the donation recipient to add any keys to the wp-admin area.
A Modal Pop-Up Window That Will Allow The Sender Of A Donation To Enter The Amount To Send As Well As Choose The Currency Type. The Colors And Text Displayed Will Also Be Customizeable.
Steem Connect Will Be Used To Handle The Transaction Seemlessly Within Your WordPress Blog Pages Without Re-directing The User To Another Screen.
The idea is that once the transaction is completed, the blog owner will be able to set a redirect URL, or enter a message that will appear above the donation button on the front end after payment sent has been confirmed
A preview of what our admin dashboard looks like showing the work-in-progress of the STEEM/SBD WordPress plugin. The official name of this plugin has not been decided yet so any feedback on that would be great from backers/supporters. At some point before official launch, perhaps we'll allow the top backer to vote out of our top name choices?
The Bots
(our steem soldier) Was introduced as a bot that upvotes all new posts created by people that vote for 
witness. To get on the list, simply vote for the witness. We had some problems with it at one point but those have since been fixed. The bot also has other functions i.e. allowing people to delegate to it in exchange for returns on the accounts it upvotes via curation, as well as allowing anyone to subscribe to it by posting a small fee and a steemit.com post url. These features are disabled and inactive right now as we do not have enough SP on the account to honestly do much yet. I have donated 33% of my own hard earned SP to it however (still not much), and hopefully we can get support for it soon so we can start it up officially. Stay tuned/follow this blog for more news on that.
The App
Was created to perform transactions for us and our partners during testing and development of our steem applications and eventually our live production versions of these apps. Though the app is there it is hidden in the list at this time until we have perfected some of its functionality.
The Game
I can't talk much about this yet but hopefully I'll be allowed to show screen shots of it at some point here soon. My team felt that even divulging the name of the game would be giving away too much, but definitely look forward to this one as it is at the top of our list as one of the first apps to take advantage of the new technology we're bringing to steem. Not to tease, but it's worth mentioning because I feel it is important to know the types of industry that I as a witness and otherwise aspire towards.
The Witness (Last but not least)
We have been driven from the beginning with an opportunistic vision to provide decentralized technology and resources to the blockchain as well as a huge advocate of decensorship and freedom of speech and expression. Our goal is to create a fail-over for steem/steemit data in such case that the few that currently own and operate it should decide that politics and profiteering has priority over network stability and availability. We have this far moved from position 379 where we started on the list and though we have only written 3 blocks in the 3 months we've continued to be a community driven witness, & still remain vested in steem/steemit and have not withdrawn a single penny out of our wallet outside of the network. We have currently moved up to #116 which is great but at 1 block per month as it stands currently, it is still not enough to produce the amount of blocks needed to sustain itself as a witness and the nodes that its supposed to represent. Hopefully by now I have instilled more faith in myself and this project from a community standpoint, and maybe we will even get more high powered witness votes from whale users to support the movement. I'm ready to get these nodes running ASAP and I know you guys are tired of hearing me talk about it!
Okay, I think I have covered mostly everything that I can talk about right now or that probably should be included in one post. Thanks a ton to everyone who has supported our initiative for their support . We hope that those that are reluctant to give their witness votes, only do so because they truly have vested interest in the platform and require "Proof Of Brain" before they see fit to distribute one of those votes. That being said, I can only hope that I have demonstrated at least that as much to suffice that inquiry :D