Just a few days ago, I had my one year anniversary on Steem.

As a celebration, I'm taking a retrospective look into my 1st year on Steem, what I'm planning for my 2nd year and especially what my goals are, as a Steem Witness, Steempreneur and Stakeholder.

Additionally, there is a contest at the end of this post. Contest entries will be rewarded with upvotes and in extraordinary cases with liquid Steem and of course, the 10x1% will still be given out for resteems but the contest is cancelled-

However, 100% of the payouts of this post (-10% resteems) will be given out in another way, more on that in another post.

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Post Overview

This post is a bit longer and while every part is important, you might want to read something specific - so here is an overview:

• Part 1: 2017 - 2018
  • Goal #1: 100,000+ Stempower
    • 15,000 Steempower Delegated to Helpie
  • Goal #2: Top 50 Witness
  • Goal #3: Become experienced with developing on Steem
  • Goal #4: Spread positive energy and knowledge on Steem
  • And now?

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• Part 2: 2018 - 2019
  • Witness 2.0
  • Witness Servers
  • Wolf the Builder
  • More Delegations
    • 5000 Steempower for @steem-ua
  • What's next?

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• Part 3: Contest
  • Contest: Topic - Who is @therealwolf?
  • Contest: What mediums can you use?
  • Contest: Rewards
  • Contest: Guidelines

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Part 1: 2017 - 2018

This last year was by far one of the most amazing but also stressful years in my life.

At the end of December '17, I made one of the most important and risky decisions.

I decided to quit my day job and instead focus completely on Steem. Relying on what my amazing girlfriend, @artbunny, and I had in our savings.

My primary goal, which is still true to this day, was to build a financial independence for my family and myself.

For this, I've worked day and night (I know it sounds cheesy, but that's the truth) to build my own business/startup on the blockchain, to become an experienced and trustworthy witness and all around helpful Steemian.

And while I haven't cashed out any of my revenues (< 1%), I think I can proudly say that I've achieved the goals I've set for myself for my 1st year on STEEM.

• 100,000+ Stempower ✔
• TOP 50 Witness ✔
• Become experienced with developing on Steem ✔
• Spread positive energy and knowledge on Steem ✔

Now, I'm not writing this to brag about my achievements, but to give you an insight into what I've done the last year and more importantly why I've done this.

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Goal #1: 100,000+ Stempower

The most important goal for me in this first year was to achieve influence in form of Steempower so that I can shape the platform I'm so heavily invested in. (and I don't mean stake here)

I started out on Steem as a complete plankton and I had no influence whatsoever, which was not a great place to be in.

But don't get me wrong, everyone's voice is important no matter how small the wallet-size might be, but if you want to support projects, communities or even Steemians on Steem e.g. by having a say how rewards are being distributed, then Steempower is extremely important. (Utopian, Dlive, Dtube etc. wouldn't be there, where they are today, without the amazing delegations from stakeholders)

Or even to start your own projects - it helps a tremendous amount having at least a good amount of Steempower to bootstrap it.

Now, since my ultimate Steempower goal is not yet achieved, I'm holding most of my Steempower myself - without delegating it away, so it can grow. And before you might think I'm egoistic, keep in mind that if I don't have anything, I can't give anything.

And if I wouldn't have prioritised earning Steempower, then I couldn't have done this...

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15,000 Steempower Delegated to Helpie

While doing my first ever livestream on Steem, I surprised the Helpie community with a delegation of 15,000 Steempower.

If you want, you can watch the recording of the livestream - the delegation announcement is near the end, at 2:02:55.

Helpie is a community with a lot of amazing and valuable Steemians, which has been under the radar for far too long.

And it's very important for Helpie to have a solid amount of Steempower that can be used to curate its members.

Which brings me back to my point:

By achieving my Steempower goal, I am able to support great initiatives like Helpie.

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Goal #2: Top 50 Witness

One of the most logical decisions I've made the last year was it to become a Witness.

For me, being so invested in this platform, the decision to secure the network, work for the platform and earn some STEEM along the way was crystal clear.

While the most important Witnesses are the TOP 20/21, as the rest are Backup-Witnesses, becoming even a TOP 50 Witness is not an easy task. It requires a lot of stakeholders voting for you.

But after roughly 2 months, with a bit of luck, I earned many votes including one very big stakeholder, which catapulted me into the TOP 50.

And ever since I became a Witness, my knowledge and experience have been increased exponentially.

From handling server crashes & missed blocks, setting up servers over and over again, staying up until late in the night due to Steem exploits, waking up in the morning and updating the servers for an emergency update, developing Witness-Tools like failover-scripts, price feeds and remote-controls; I feel like a completely different Witness after these months.

And my ranking reflects that - currently standing at rank #32.

But more on that later in the 2018 - 2019 section.

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Goal #3: Become experienced with developing on Steem

Besides building and developing my startup Smartsteem.com, that connects investors, stakeholders & Steemians with other Steemians wanting to promote their content, which taught me a lot about developing on Steem; I've also put my heart, soul and sweat into open-source projects.

• Steem Chat-Wallet: A light wallet for Steem with a chat interface that makes it super easy & secure to send transfers.

• Witness Essentials: Essential tools & scripts for Steem Witnesses. (Watcher, Failover, Notifications, Remote Control, Pricefeed)

• Utopian.io Signup: Signup (frontend & backend) for Utopian.io to create new accounts.

Being active in such a diverse number of projects and even being rewarded for the work I'm doing, is exactly the reason why I'm so fascinated about Steem.

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Goal #4: Spread positive energy and knowledge on Steem

Behind this Avatar and account, there is a human and as we're all humans, we all have our strength and weaknesses.

And this is especially visible and even feelable at times like these. The price of Steem is down, many have been waiting months for SMTs & HF20 and all of that has reflected itself in the activity on Steem.

One of my biggest personal goals was it to spread positive energy and knowledge on Steem. Explaining difficult topics in an easy way and also up-lifting people.

Whether this is about the coming Hardfork 20: Simply Explained: HF20.

Or about thinking long term and not being affected by the price of Steem: The Power of Positivity: Thinking Longterm

Or about Steem & Steemit related knowledge: 504 Gateway Error on Steemit.com? Use Steemitstage.com!.

For me, this is also an important task of a Witness - at least the kind I'm thriving to become. Sharing knowledge and empowering other users with positivity.

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And now?

As I wrote in the beginning, this last year was very stressful, but amazing nonetheless.

Most importantly, I've learned a lot and I'm very sure that the coming year will be as much or maybe even more knowledgeable.

And actually, the new year has already started for me.

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Part 2: 2018 - 2019

I personally believe in doing things first and then talking about it, instead of promising something which might not see the reality.

That's why I decided to write about my goals after I achieved them.

Nevertheless, expressing one's own intentions is obviously important.

Now, the goals I have for this year are very similar to the last year, only the priority is a bit different.

The top priority for this year goes towards my Witness.

And I've already made sure to do exactly that.

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Witness 2.0

As I became more experienced as a Witness, I realised where my weaknesses were.

The most important task for every Witness is to make sure that the witness nodes are secure and decentralised. If a majority of Witnesses are not doing that, the whole blockchain is in danger.

What do I mean with that specifically?

Using only one provider is dangerous.

Last year, my primary provider was @privex who are doing an amazing service, but relying on one provider, even if the servers are in different data centers in different countries - it's still dangerous.

Now, I have no intentions of not using privacy, but diversification is key here.

That's why I've rented a brand new server from a different provider in a different country. I will not disclose the provider or country, however, it is an EU country and AFAIK, nobody else has a server there, yet.

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Witness Servers

Here is my updated Witness infrastructure - starting with the new server.

Primary Server

• Steem: v0.19.12
• Processor: E5v4
• RAM: 128GB DDR4
• Disk: 2x240GB SSD
• Connection: 3 GB/s

Backup Server

• Steem: v0.19.12
• Processor: i7
• RAM: 64GB DDR3
• Disk: 2x240GB SSD
• Connection: 1 GB/s

Seed Node (New)

• Steem: v0.19.12
• seed.smartsteem.com:2001
• Processor: i7
• RAM: 64GB DDR3
• Disk: 2x240GB SSD
• Connection: 1 GB/s

On top of that, I have another server which is dedicated for watching my Witness, switching between servers / disabling the Witness in case of technical problems and missed blocks. I'm also able to remote control my Witness via telegram.

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Wolf the Builder

Additionally, I've also build steemd manually on the new 128GB server, as I truly see it as an important skill every Witness should have.

For example: just recently, Steem got a lot of new versions and relying solely on tools like Steem-in-a-box or other docker-scripts is not an option.

Don't get me wrong, you can even build steemd manually while using docker-scripts and docker makes everything a lot simpler to handle, but the skill to build everything from scratch should still be there.

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More Delegations

I've also decided to delegate 5000 Steempower towards @steem-ua (https://steem-ua.com/) to support incredible useful algorithm and development efforts.

Being able to support initiatives like @steem-ua is exactly the reason why I'm working so hard on accumulating Steempower.

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What's next?

While my Witness activities have my top priority, the rest of my priorities aren't far down. I will continue to work hard on Smartsteem, improving it to further enhance the Steem ecosystem.

But in general, the goal for this year will be to have a more balanced life. Which also includes expanding the social aspect of @therealwolf.

There are many more live streams & AMAs planned. And I'm obviously going to continue posting - while always working on improving the quality of my posts.

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Sooo, that's it. Are you excited? I definitely am.

Honestly, thank you so much for following my crazy and amazing journey on Steem.

I wish all of you the very best,

@therealwolf

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Making Steem Greater

Projects developed by @therealwolf for Steem

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Smartsteem.com	Steem Chat-Wallet
Witness Essentials	Utopian.io Signup

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More about me

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#1 Ask Me Anything livestream with 15 questions
"11 Things I Learned From the AMA" written by @hungryhustle

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Do you share my vision for Steem?

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You can vote for me as Witness through this link https://steemit.com/~witnesses.

Or you can simply use steemconnect to vote for me or to set me as a proxy.

A big and sincere Thank you to all of those who support my efforts!