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RE: 2018 Beginner's Guide to Setting up A Steem Witness and Seed Node
This is something I would totally do if I knew what the monetary ROI is. You speak of renting servers. If you were paying for a server, what do witnesses potentially earn from being one? I also would build my own hardware optionally as well and just host it from my house. But quite simply, what is in it for me? When is the approximate break even point? I am an IT professional of 25+ years. I run a cryptomining rig on Ubuntu.
I am not afraid the of the command line. I prefer it. I'm and old DOS guy and am no slouch with Unix derivatives.
Unlike BTC mining (POW) Steem's Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) requires that you receive votes from the community in order to begin producing blocks. So you could potentially make nothing from being a back up witness. But the top 19 witnesses are making roughly 1,800+ SP per week last time I checked. When you get outside of the top 19 you are rotated out, depending on your rank, as a backup witness.
So the goal of every witness should be to engage with the community, build their trust, and campaign hard. I'm very active in the community so I knew this would be a good fit for me. Btw, you can learn more about earnings here: https://steemit.com/@witnesswatch
But to answer your question...
You're supporting and securing the blockchain. It may not monetarily reward you at all.. but it's a good feeling just to know you're doing your part to ensure Steem is stable and running smoothly. I may make it up into the rankings where I'm making decent money, but I'm not counting on it. I'll continue to be a witness either way.
Ok, that helps. I see why there is incentive and why so many people are constantly asking to be voted for as witnesses. They want their investment to pay off in steempower and to see the blockchain work well. I might see what sort of hardware I may have access to in an effort to get something like this going. It looks like the hardware requirements aren't too aggressive or needy. There are lots of servers out there that have been decommissioned that might only need a decent hard drive to fit the bill. I would need to improve my internet service at home, but that is an easy thing to do. There is a constant promotion going on about switching to FiOS where they give you nearly a gig upstream/downstream as an average offering. I will keep following this idea and price it out in my hobby time. All of this steemit stuff is already occupying a good amount of my time already a minnow aspiring to be more while trying to survive the cryptomining woes of decreasing currency prices.
Yeah, exactly. We really have to push hard for those votes because probably 80% or more of the community doesn't even know what a witness does lol. So it's important to keep that conversation going.
And no, the requirements are still rather simple. I suspect that in the coming months our RAM requirement will jump to 128G but some people are still even running on 32G. Definitely start with 64G at a minimum, but 128 is even better and will last you longer. And definitely go with SSD (300GB minimum).
And lol, I know EXACTLY what you mean! I spend most of my days and nights here already, so I figured why not sync up to the blockchain. My brain already has LOL. But that's good man. Let me know if you need anything at all. Or if you decide to get setup I'd definitely recommend joining the witness channel on steem.chat in case you have any questions or need any help.
Thanks again for the support and tips. I will have to see what sort of servers I have at my disposal doing nothing. I am thinking that I might only need to get the SSD. I already use one in my laptop and my mining rig. It is definitely the way to go. I am going to start scraping together what I have and compare it to the price of a hosting solution. These are really great tips.