In a handful of months from now I would complete 2 years on Steemit and what a ride it has been so far! Suffice to say I fell in love with this platform and Steem blockchain very early on! In the past year I’ve made it my full time job to evangelise this incredible platform and technology which as we know has the potential to change the face of social media and the world if it is properly developed.

Summary of my Activity on Steemit

I’ve been focused on the community building aspect of the platform since the day 1. I’ve curated for top whales, and have helped start initiatives such as the SteemCleaners project, Robinhood Whale and have been core team member of the incredible Project Curie. I’m also an active admin of Steemit.Chat from it’s early days where I've assisted many users over the past year and half.

I’ve also had the pleasure of helping @roelandp and Steemit Inc in the perfect execution of two SteemFests with my amazing team—firepowercrew. I've also sponsored and subsidised tickets to SteemFest for a few users. My work is largely detailed on the platform. I’ve also assisted users such in recovering their accounts.

Recently I’ve been building up the Indian community. My initiatives have helped in growing and retaining userbase from this region in the past year. I've also been able to inspire and motivate many others to do similar things in their areas.

The feedback I've received from past year of work on the platform have made me move in this new direction. I love onboarding content creators and investors onto our platform. India for example is the biggest userbase on Facebook today, and it would be great to see such numbers on Steemit.

Therefore, I felt it would be a logical step forward in my work on Steemit to run witness nodes.

Becoming a Witness To The Amazing Steem Blockchain

For the past two weeks I've been running a primary witness node, backup for failover and a seed node on excellent dedicated server hardware. I should have started this long ago and I could have achieved a lot more for our blockchain and Steemit.com but better late than never eh? I also got a good push in motivation due to a few users recommending me to do this over the past year.

Running a successful witness will allow me to contribute to the smooth functioning of our blockchain, as well as fund further community initiatives and better support growth initiatives from potentially one of the biggest markets for Steem in the world.

I think it’s great to have witnesses (top and backup) to the blockchain who are not only developers, but also marketers, social leaders and community builders who can elevate this blockchain technology to the next level and take it across the globe. In my opinion this is a healthy mix.

My role as a community builder is all about bridging the gap between developers, their product and end users who can make use of these amazing technologies in their daily lives. Because in the real world, you can build anything and all you want, but it doesn't mean people will simply come over to use the product.

I will run a strong witness that supports the Steem blockchain from India, and ensure we support the blockchain in its growth in the years to come.

Witness Node Details

Primary Witness Node
Ram	64 GB DDR4
CPU	Quad-Core CPU
Disks	2x500 GB SSD
Internet Connection	1 Gigabit

Backup Witness Node
Ram	32 GB DDR4
CPU	Quad-Core CPU
Disks	2x500 GB SSD
Internet Connection	1 Gigabit

Seed Node
URL	seed.firepower.ltd:2001
Ram	32 GB DDR3
CPU	Intel Xeon E3
Disks	2x120 GB SSD
Internet Connection	1 Gigabit

I’m happy to announce that, I’m off to a good start and I’m currently in 104th position. I have been signing blocks for about 2 weeks now. I wanted to take my systems for a test ride and ensure everything is running perfectly before making this post. So far things are running perfectly fine. It wasn't as complicated as its generally made out to be, and I’m constantly learning more.

My dedicated servers are located at strategic locations ensuring excellent connectivity. They have been hardened to prevent any security issues. I’m open to scaling up the hardware based on the needs of the blockchain. They have been setup from the ground-up from scratch to do their job perfectly. I’ve missed ZERO blocks since I’ve started my witness 2 weeks ago and you can expect reliable witness nodes from me.

How To Vote for My Witness

If you are convinced that my contributions have helped this platform, our blockchain and would like to see me continue my efforts please vote @firepower for witness. Please do not capitalise any letter when voting.

You can do it by visiting https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Login with your Active Private Key or Master Key. Please scroll down and type in my witness name firepower in the box. You can vote for 30 witnesses and it doesn’t cost you anything.

If your vote goes through then this is how it would show:

Current ranking:

^Source

Moving up the ranks will allow me to sustain my costs for running the server, fund my projects and continue being a reliable witness to the blockchain and sign greater number of blocks without issues.

Would you like to proxy me?

Some users have gone ahead and proxied me as they felt I'm capable of deciding other witnesses for the blockchain on their behalf. It came as a surprise but I felt it was great that many have put their trust in me. By proxying me you will be putting an experienced and established user on Steemit in-charge of voting other reliable and trustworthy witnesses for the job of maintaining the blockchain.

Therefore, If you want me to be a witness proxy for your account and vote on other witnesses on your behalf then you can do it from the same page using your active or master key. Again none of this will cost you anything and takes only few seconds to do it.

I will continue promoting Steem blockchain and cryptocurrency (Communities and SMT when they arrive) along with all the great apps on it such as Steemit, DTube, Busy.org, Utopian, Steepshot, Esteem mobile app, Chain-bb, Zappl and others.

Some Future Plans

I’m trying to get Indian exchanges interested in listing a Steem/INR pair. In fact I've had a rep from the top Indian bitcoin exchange sit unofficially in a recent meetup to understand the response towards Steem cryptocurrency and blockchain. Overall the feedback received was positive. But we’ve got some work to do!

I’m currently gathering information on the legal and financial regulations that goes into running a cryptocurrency exchange in India-for some larger plans I have in the pipeline. Running a successful witness will certainly help with these endeavours in a big way in the long run or at the very least there it will be a good learning curve.

Nothing would make me happier than my countrymen and women being able to trade into Steem directly with Rupees! I’m certain it would happen someday and it would help in faster on-boarding of investors like never before.

However, I won't be stopping here, in fact I won't stop until I connect Steemians across the world with each other and bring users who have never heard of this empowering technology onto the various apps on the Steem blockchain.

A Few Contributions To Steemit

You may look at some of my contributions to the platform to learn more about the work I’ve put in on Steemit over the past year and half and I intend to do a lot more of these in the years to come!

Introduction Post-Hi Steemers! This is Firepower—I'll let my pictures to tell you an AWESOME Story!

-Dummies Guide to Using Steemit.Chat Effectively Everyday!
-Observations Fighting a Serial Plagiarist—True Story!
-Steemit Veni, Vidi, Vici! SteemFest 2016—Together, WE made it happen! Thank you Steemians!
-Starting 2017 with a Bang by Bringing Joy to HIV Positive Kids!
-Paying It Forward: Quick Recap of Few Good Things Done Right in 2016!
-How I faced my demons and fought back!
-Successful #1 India Steemit Accelerator and Steem Cryptocurrency Meetup 2017!
-My Most Incredible Steemit Milestone Moment and Why It Means the World to Me!
-Press Coverage of #1 India Steemit Accelerator in Top Indian News Publications!
-Top Indian News Publication—TheQuint Features My Story as an Early Adopter to Bitcoin, Steemit & More!
-Dummies Guide to Basic Steemit Account Security + Account Recovery Guide! Must Read For Steemit Users!
-I Donated $1300+ Of My Income Earned On Steemit Last Month and This is My Mid-2017 Donation Update!
-Introducing The Youngest Female Surfer and Other Cool New Users from India to Steemit Including my Mother!
-Successful #2 India Steemit Accelerator and Steem Cryptocurrency Meetup 2017 at Robert Bosch India HQ!
-My 1st Steemit Anniversary — Looking Back at an Amazing Year Of My Life!
-Contest #1—Win a Free Ticket to SteemFest 2017 at Lisbon!
-Contest #2—Win a Free Ticket to SteemFest 2017 at Lisbon!
-Steemit Veni, Vidi, Vici Lisbon! SteemFest² Was EPIC! Few Thoughts On Key People From The 2017 Edition!
-Steemit Mentioned In: How to File Tax Returns in India for Your Bitcoin Profits—My Latest Feature In TheQuint!
-My Past Year On Steemit—Quick Recap of 2017!
-India Steem Meetup #1 - We Start From Jaipur For The First Meetup of 2018!
-India Steem Meetup #2—An Incredible Meetup In Bangalore—IT Capital of India!
-India Steem Meetup #3—An AWESOME Meetup In Mangalore—The City Where It All Began!
-India Steem Meetup #4—An AWESOME Meetup In New Delhi—India's Capital and 40+ Attended!
-Presented Steem Blockchain, SMTs, Steemit & Other UIs at Blockchain Bangalore Meetup!
-Let's Watch This Fun Video From India Steem Meetup #1—Jaipur Edition!
-Let's Watch This Fun Video From India Steem Meetup #2—Bangalore Edition!

I will keep you updated on my witness and my projects as always.

Thank you for your time, consideration and support!