I had the pleasure of having a chat with 
If you are new to The Witness Files, it is a series of interviews I did with some of our top witnesses, to get an insight into who they are and what they do.
You can find the previous issues of the Witness Files below: Issue 1 with @complexring, Issue 2 with @riverhead, Issue 3 with @picokernel Issue 4 with @jesta, Issue 5 with @roelandp, Issue 6 with @pharesim
Welcome to today’s issue of The Witness Files with
Thank you for taking the time to chat with me.
You’re certainly welcome, You caught me just before going outside to hunt maple syrup on my moose. :D
Tell me a bit about yourself. Who is
Well,
I’ve been in the crypto community for a number of years now but only in the past year or so truly started down what I consider “the right path” in terms of focusing on what I actually want to do with my life.. Which decidedly has me learning new programming languages in hopes of being able to provide services for folks.
Wen you’re not on Steemit, what do you enjoy doing?
Not on Steemit? is that even a thing? Truth be told the odd times I’m not working on Steemit or Streemit stuff currently is spent playing videogames and chillin’ with the GF (soon to be wifey, maybe).
How did you first find out about Steemit, and when did you first decide to become a witness?
I heard about Steemit nearly right off of launch from a buddy of mine whom I guess you could say is a “Steem Whale” now. Truth be told I didn’t really take the platform seriously at all and infact was sort of a troll when I got here. Sort of a silly start actually.
As for wanting to be a witness I saw an opportunity to do STEEM some service and jumped at it. This ecosystem is still so new and so much potential for greatness, figured may as well hop on board to help rather than kick myself for not doing it later… you know?
With regards to the technical aspect of my witness adventure, it took me a good 2–3 weeks gearing up and learning how to run the steemd software with any sort of finesse.. After that the rest was all just setting up servers and making sure my price feed is maintained. (I don’t use price scripts). Was amazing to learn new technology like what’s offered with STEEM which runs Graphene under the hood.. Compared to your “classical” crypto wallets like BTC, LTC and CLAM the complexity of STEEM is staggering…! That appeals to me as not only as a crypto enthusiast but also as a developer.
I know you have recently been spending a lot of time working on Streemit Online. For those not familiar with this project, explain to us what is Streemit?
Ah yes, Streemit. If you haven’t noticed yet while reading the answers to your interview kuestions I am a TERRIBLE writer / speller / grammar guy. I much prefer art or video as a medium to share my own work and I’m sure there are tons out there that feel the same way.
What streemit.online aims to be is a free to use video streeming platform where instead of writing long carpel tunnel inducing submissions, STEEM network citizens can come and streem their world and have other users watching actually tip them Steem Dollars right on site. The site runs on a non-profit model. I’ve no intentions of getting for running Streemit. Hope and goal is to have the site running and servers paid for each month through the tiny 5% fee taken on the tips and transfers on site. If that fails to raise the funds needed to run the site I’ll look into trying to improve site revenues to break even. Ads and intrusive popups are the last thing I want to see on the site (I’m sure many agree) so perhaps people opt to purchase the $1 a month VIP subscription, use the site a bunch and tip or donate to help keep the site going to allow those of us who don’t write well a place to streem for tips.
What is the current status of Streemit, and what is your vision for the future of this project?
Trying to put the finishing touches on it and get a few minor things implemented and tested before I announce a “Grand Opening”. :) The future of the project still has tons of room for expansion. A new streeming client, a look into VR streaming as well as linking into the steem blockchain are all on the horizon for streemit.
Still have to get ahold of Steemit Inc as well and see if it’s possible on their end to allow for built in embeds from Streemit onto Steemit posts to allow for embedded live streaming from the site as well as archived videos (for VIPs)
Right now all of our deposits are through coinpayments.net and on average it takes 5–30 minutes for the Steem Backed Dollars to reach your Streemit account. This is going to be looked at and improved in the near future. The withdrawal system went online (fully automated and INSTANT) a few days ago. It took me nearly a week of research and coding to be able to get the WP platform Streemit is currently running on to be able to send SBD from a wallet. Code used to run withdrawals might actually see a release here when I get a chance to make a nice GUI for the plugin. Right now I don’t believe anyone’s written a publically woocommerce Crypto RPC wallet control plugin so I’m pretty pumped to have developed one.
A few weeks ago, you announced the news that you managed to get SBD and Steem accepted on to coinpayments.net. Tell us what this means, and how this could be used by merchants and those in the Steemit community who maybe interested.
Coinpayments.net is a well known payment gateway provider based out of the west coast of Canada. An interesting thing about them and their site is that they offer shopping cart plugins for most popular CMS out there allowing folks to easily accept Crypto Coins like STEEM / Steem Dollars on your website. Given the fact that we only had 1 developer that I knew of working on a payment gateway plugin I decided to take it upon myself to contact their administrator to get SBD/ STEEM listed on their site so our ecosystem could more easily grow and flourish. Glad my campaign worked, I used Coinpayments on my own sites.
If you want to accept incoming STEEM, Steem Backed Dollars or 45+ other types of crypto currency go check out coinpayments.net (shameless ref plug) - It’s easy to set up and in no time you can be accepting the STEEM networks currency on your website or e-commerce store.
For the record I’m not affiliated with coinpayments.net at all. Although I’ve built a solid working relationship with their admin Mr.Data after talking with him to get the documentation needed for him to implement our wallet.
If you could make any one single change to Steemit at this moment, what would it be and why?
If I could change one thing about Steemit it would be the lack of transparency from Steemit Inc in regards to them powering down and selling. While I get it’s normal for start ups to take out funds to get things jump started currently I feel a fair amount of eyes are looking on the CEO and Developer accounts and wondering why they’re powering down massive amounts. That being said I do thing that the guys who made STEEM deserve handsome payouts… But if some plan or public mention of how much for what rather than the current “Oh god the developers are dumping/abandoning” would be great. :D
(Don’t take this as a slam Steemit Inc.
How do you see the Steem ecosystem evolving over the next year or two? And what new features and projects would you like to see implemented?
Oh man… We’re just in the infant stages of Steem I believe. I think we’re going to see some fundemental shifts in how things are run before a year or two for sure. There are many many moving parts to STEEM and to get everything dialed in might take a while. I look at Steem currently and do see vast improvements over how it ran months ago. We’ve got a long ways to go before we can reach the “mass appeal” that sites like Farcebook/twatter… And that’s ok. I like to think our userbase already has a higher IQ than both of those networks combined.. ;) “rome wasn’t built in a day” and next generation social media won’t be built to perfection instantly either. I’ve got high hopes though for STEEM.
Thank you for your time
You’re welcome, Take er easy eh?
Hope you enjoyed this interview with
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Jimmy