One of the things that happens when you get deep into projects is unintentional radio silence. Here's a quick witness update, since it's been a while since we checked in.

For those of you who spend time in Steem.Chat, you'll know I'm in there pretty much all day, every day. Since taking over the day to day maintenance and responsibility for running chat, it seems like I'm in there even more (which I didn't even know was possible), learning about how to make it better and interacting with other steemians, witnesses, and community leaders. When I'm communicating with so many of you directly and nose to the grindstone on projects, it can be tough for me and Crim to get posts out as often as we'd like. Just know that if you're even wondering what's going on when there's not a fresh and fancy post to read, we're both always ready to update you in Steem.Chat and Discord. Here's a big list of all the crazy stuff that is going on right now for us in the time that we've become a top 20 witness project.

On the Steem.Chat front: Costs, Developments, and Thoughts

• Costs are running around $900usd a month. This is a bit higher than expected, but the improvements to the servers and to the overall chat experience is so worth it and they are ongoing along with feature consideration
• We're now running the @steem.chat Steemit account, which we're hoping to do the bulk of the main updates about Steem.Chat from. This is both to make them easier to find, and also to generate a little bit of liquid rewards to share among our awesome volunteer moderation team there. The job may not pay 'for real', but it means a lot to Crim and I to be able to give them a little bit more recognition and fun funds
• We are currently working on full integration of SteemConnect. This means that if you want to use it, there will be another level of transparency and accountability, to cut back on scams and spam, which is obviously a huge and important issue to tackle right now
  
  

Servers, servers everywhere:

• UPGRADES ARE DONE ACROSS THE BOARD.
• Witness nodes and backups are all running at 64GB to give maximum room for stability.
• The Full Public RPC node we manage and split costs with the Minnow Support project is running at 512GB and holding strong. It's getting really pounded as there are fewer and fewer public nodes that are affordable enough for witnesses to run, but it's holding up like a champ. I can't stress enough how much I'd like to see others team up and bring more full public RPC nodes online.
• The new seed node at seed.followbtcnews.com:2001 is up and running at 64GB
• A BIG chunk of our block rewards go into servers. Having stability, redundancy, and then also even more redundancy, reliability, and up-to-the-minute info is not cheap and is worth every penny.
  
  

Okay, okay, but get to the good stuff... what are you WORKING on?

• We have medium-to-large-to-holy-crap-huge projects currently in the works. (One of each, in fact, but the deep details are under wraps for now.) We're hoping to launch the next one in the coming weeks as we begin testing it now. To get everything we need and dream of doing completed, Crim and I work with a team of devs to bring it all to life because we just can't do it all ourselves. This is another huge chunk of our witness profits, which right now has been pretty tough. We are happy to spend the money, but right now the development blitz we're on is definitely made possible by being in the top 20, and we have all of you to thank for that, sincerely. We look forward to at least getting one of these done very soon so we can afford to buy a few cups of coffee.
  
  

Anything else? What about you guys?

• I just managed to have my first short "staycation" weekend in a long time, and was able to visit with some of my family who I've not been able to hang out with in half a decade. (You better believe I got them on Steemit.) This has meant a lot to me, given how much I've been working on STEEM initiatives. I basically live on the chain, these days.
• @crimsonclad just finished up a whirlwind tour to Florida and then through Montreal, to meet up with and talk STEEM with other witnesses and steemians in and around the community. She's back home now, fully immersed in working with our devs on getting some of our big projects out into the world, and back managing several Discord STEEM communities. Some drinks were definitely had, so whether it was for the blockchain or not, I'm classifying the trip as a well deserved break. (NOW BACK TO WORK.)
  
  

Let us know if this answers all your questions about our witness updates. @followbtcnews is in the top 20 because of you and your votes, and we really appreciate it. It is a lot of hard work, and it means more than we can express to see that it resonates with the community we're working for.

Thanks again. Come find us any time,
Jeff (and Crim)

I'm Jeff, and I'm @followbtcnews.
I'm a top 20 witness, along with my project partner @crimsonclad. Feel free to reach out to us on Steem.chat or Discord any time! If we haven't earned your vote yet, please take some time to look at our tools and our work. We hope you decide to place a witness vote for followbtcnews by clicking here