Jims-steempowered-witness proposal for the Peerplays network & Witness monitoring script with Telegram notifications

in peerplays •  7 years ago 

Dear Peerplays Stakeholders,

I would like to take this opportunity to introduce my Peerplays witness for your consideration.

Witness Name: jims-steempowered-witness

Who am i:

I am Jim from Australia, you might know me as Gchicken (Bitsharestalk and Mumble), Jim888(Telegram) or Steempower (Steemit).

I am a regular in the weekly mumble sessions, telegram and provide a weekly report 'Bitshares State of the Network' (BSotN) via the Steem platform i have also previously done some work in the early days assisting in distribution of Brownies.PTS and the development of a distribution tool to speed up the process, most recently i have created the Beyond Bitcoin guestbook.

I was also involved in the recent Bitshares test-net Stress-test where i contributed 1 witness node and 5 transaction generating nodes and was happy to be the signer who achieved the largest TPS in the test being 9985 TX in a single block / 3328.33 TPS - Block# 6878287.

I have been involved with Graphene and pre-Graphene project since 2014 contributing to PTS, VOTE,DNS, BTSX, BTS, MUSE, STEEM and now Peerplays; i even did a little bit of mining for BitAssets/Smartcoins in original multipool located within the bunker hosted by Datasecuritynode (you can check out my miner HERE).

I donated in the initial Peerplays funding round and also the most recent funding round and have been spreading the word ever since. The Australian government has very recently made moves to make online poker and sports betting illegal for operators so i am very excited to see Peerplays grow and evolve.

I work as a system administrator and have done so for the last 15 years. I also spend a lot of my personal time in front of the computer consuming knowledge and tinkering with different systems; these days my time is pretty much entirely dedicated to cryptocurrencies. I also have an interest in trading and programming and am a pretty good chess player; although i could be a little rusty these days.

Witness Hardware:

Block Producing node - Running now / ready to sign
    * Quad Core 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon
    * 32 GB RAM
    * DDOS protection   
    * France

Backup node - Running now
    * Separate hosting provider and country from primary node
    * Quad Core 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon
    * 32 GB RAM
    * DDOS protection
    * Germany       

Seed node - Active within 48 hours of being elected 
    * Quad Core 2.6 GHz Intel Xeon
    * 16GB RAM
    * DDOS protection   

Automated Witness and Seed node monitoring with Hot switching for maximum reliability

I have a monitoring script configured that is currently watching for missed blocks under my witness account and the availability of my seed node. This script is configured to send alerts via Telegram and also to update my signing keys automatically to my secondary node after a missed block is detected.

The Basis and inspiration for this script come from @roelandp's original Bitshares witness monitor script. After tweaking the script to use python-graphenelib which allow it work with Peerplays i have also added some code to update the signing key (This part is in Alpha and should not be used on a production network unless you understand the risks). I have shared the code on GitHub; which you can find HERE please be advised this is still in Alpha and comes as is.

I plan to carry out extensive testing on the script via the testnet and ensure it works in all edge cases.

I have also started on developing a service which will allow active witnesses to subscribe via telegram to receive alerts if their witness is missing blocks.

Commitments:

  • I will ensure good monitoring of my node's resources and automatic detection of a failing node and automated switch to the secondary node to ensure minimal downtime and good service to the network.
  • I will upgrade my nodes to cater for growth of the network and ensure that the nodes are well resources to handle the current and future demands.
  • I will run a private test node and testnet to ensure changes to the core code are implemented in a smooth and reliable fashion.
  • I will be available via all channels and committed to customer service and timely response to enquiries.
  • I will be honoured to serve the community and the Peerplays network.

How to vote for me:

Voting is easy, Please see the steps below or follow the gif at the bottom to support my witness.

Firstly you will need to open your Peerplays wallet and sign in

How to Vote:

  1. Click Vote from the top menu bar
  2. Click the Witness tab
  3. Type 'jims-steempowered-witness' into the select a witness text box
  4. Click Add
  5. Scroll down toward the bottom of the page and click Publish Changes


Scroll down until you see 'Publish Changes'

Animated Gif showing the voting process

Thank you for your consideration.

Jim,

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Voted, Jim! Good luck with your PeerPlays witness journey, hopefully we can move you up to the active witness list shortly!

Thank you Nolan :) appreciate it

I have been following the buzz around peerplay for a while and i must admit i love PPY! Voted for you! Wait did i see 32GB ram! That's overkill dude! My PC runs 8GB but i never get even to use that much.

Thank you very much @erickjongo :) Peerplays has a bright future and i'm looking forward to see it grow into the future!.

32GB seems to be the standard at the moment for witnesses; we need to cater for growth as well. This will be a Global betting revolution and when they come we need to be ready for them :)

You're welcome, looking forward to the day PPY will hit $100 it's now at $17.74 and we're almost entering the top 50! The future is bright for PPY my friend

Approved

Thanks pfunk, mean a lot :)

done,

but there are only 160 PPY in votes currently :(
hope it's just a begining

Cheers @yefet Appreciate it :) That's a nice stash of PPY by anyone standards.

Hopefully when the platforms come out you can get involved and turn those PPY into a massive pile of winnings!

Thank you :)

@steempower I'm new to this. Do you have a link where i can go to vote for you?

Appreciate your offer, but the votes are for people on the peerplays platform. Which is built on the same tech as Steemit and Bitshares but use seperate core tokens.

If your interested in a project that could have massive impact i recommend checking it out at http://peerplays.com/

wish i could get the peerplays core wallet thing to work, i just get a blue gradient screen ;(

Sounds like maybe you have an issue connecting to the web socket. Do you run any firewalls or security apps? (Maybe you could test with them disabled) or you check it on another computer?

yeah i'm afraid i only have my imac right now. just keeps on saying can't connect to blockchain which sucks as i really wanna understand the wallet and your blockchain as i think it could power one of my future projects.

What are Witnesses?
I don't know much since I'm new to steem.

Witnesses are the 'miners' / block producers of the Delegated Proof of Stake networks (Peerplays, Steem, Bitshares, YOYOW).

Witnesses are elected into their position by Stakeholders votes, at a minimum; they are responsible for validating transaction, compiling transactions into blocks, signing them and broadcasting them to the network.

For example this comment is considered a transaction; it will be broadcast to the network and seen by the next 'witness' who will validate the transaction and include it in their 'block', once signed it will be sent to the rest of the network and be seen by the other witnesses.

You can learn more HERE

Thanks a bunch steempower.
I'll look into it more

No worries man, Have fun.

If you get stuck we have a massive community between Steem, Telegram, discord and the forums so feel free to jump in and ask questions.

I want to help those who want to become witnesses please follow the instruction to my post below with your information and I would gladly vote for you https://steemit.com/steemit/@daudimitch/i-help-you-on-your-witness-journey-do-you-want-to-be-a-witness-give-me-your-info

Cheers Daudimitch,

Appreciate the offer, if i decide to run for a Steem witness i may follow you up.

Like your picture btw :)

Thank you and just tag me and I would definitely vote for you to be a witness..... if you know anyone on that journey let me know, I have 28 votes waiting

Thanks Jim. Where in Australia do you live?

Same place as you, we attended a conferance togeather a few weeks ago :) maybe even had a beer togeather ;)

Ah awesome. We should catch up sometime. Maybe at another blockchain meetup. Maybe we could organise something for Peerplays Melbourne. I'm off to Europe in a week but maybe when I'm back in a few months. Are you going to be providing a sports feed/market for AFL and/or A-league games?

ok ill vote you up it cool yes.

A very helpful post..will check out the advise. Thanks for sharing

Cool..
Good news, so interesting.
Thanks for sharing information udpate.
I like it..
Upvote and Resteem.!!

I will vote for you

Just bought into ppy and am looking forward to the fun 🤗

You have great system specs for this, you seem to know what you're doing, and seem genuine. You've got my vote!

All I can say for this is awesome! 🙃

Nice to know you. you are similar like me. I think you need Hp workstation or personal super computer where you can use upto 2 TB Ram. But price more than Latest BMW Car ! Nice post. upvote and follow!

nice posts @steempower thank you for sharing information

Two questions:

  1. I have no technical coding skill, but basic computer knowledge, can I sill be a witness?
  2. Can I use Google Could Platform to run a system as a witness? When I sign up on Google I get $300 bonus that can be used in1 year. I can leverage their processing power and create a witness.

I am ready to invest my time to learn more, thanks in advance

Nice....
Thanks abaut your post....

Hey Jim,

Can you give a quick rundown on what voting for a witness means and how voting in the BitShares DPoS system works? I'm not overly familiar from the bts side of things and others might be in a similar boat.

I'm currently hodling Ark which is similar using DPoS which then forges currency for voters attached to active delegates (top 51), does bts work similar to this?

I have bts in an exchange, migrating it to my wallet for long term hodling and voting a witness is well overdue on my to do list.

Thanks

Good luck with your peerplays witness. i have no doubt it is going to be amazing. as always i have upvoted