Call for steem seed nodes!
Things look bad, really bad.
After reviewing steem seed nodes list, which many of us use in their config.ini, I found that 12 nodes were not working at all. That is 36% of all the nodes on the list.
Hard fork 16 and its economic changes cut the rewards for active witnesses to a significant extent, but the role of a witness was never meant to be a free money making machine.
"To Protect and to Serve", right?
As a witness, I am running a public seed node at: gtg.steem.house:2001.
Also I am running a few other steemd instances for my own needs, which as a side effect, serve the p2p role for the steem network.
That is currently one of the 21 publicly listed AND available seed nodes.
We need a lot more than that.
I am ok with witnesses running their useful services such as web tools, APIs, or exchanges, which requires them to allocate a lot more resources (full nodes). What about others?
With current prices, a runner up witness who generates 6-7 blocks a day for a month is able to cover his hardware expenses related to both the witness node and the seed node. Currently, ~2% of network approval is needed for that, which is equivalent to being within top 60.
So why do we have only 20 nodes on the list?
I hope that some nodes were temporarily unavailable because they were being upgraded to v0.16.1
Soon I am going to replace seednodes.txt with an updated list of working nodes. If you want to add or update your node, please leave a comment or make a pull request to my forked branch (for later, single, consolidated pull request to the steemit repository)
Please, add your node only if you have a fast (preferably at least 100Mbps upstream), low latency network connection.
I am going to update the list periodically.
Maybe blockchain should pay for people to maintain seed nodes?
It is how it works. Block producers are rewarded. It is expected that they provide also seed nodes.
Exactly right and there is no excuse for top 19 witnesses not to have at least one working seed node. Please check the list posted by liondani and vote accordingly.
Thank you for that post.
I currently 4 blocks day.
Could it not be made a requirement to run a seed node in order to be a witness in the first place?
It was stated as a requirement when the blockchain was launched and people were first coming forward to be witnesses. Now you can't literally force people to do anything, it is up to voters.
So anyone can just be voted into witness-hood without any hardware?
You at least need a node to sign blocks or you won't get any rewards (regardless of votes), but that's separate from a public seed node.
I think it applies only to witness nodes, which are selected through an election. In election only a few elites win. I really can't trust that they would not be contacted by some governments dealers asking them for IP logging of bloggers in exchange of some money
Hello.
I am quite new to stemmit and not a programer. I am crypto currency fan and Larimer vision's fan. Member of the Bitcoin foundation since 2012 and occasionally bitcoin miner. I am studying steem in order to better understand eos. I woul like to run a node at steempool.net (Germany) but unable to set the steemd config.ini probably because I am not a witness. May I still help?
Thank you for your willingness to help but since you are not a witness, it would be unfair to make you have expenses instead of those who already get their block producing rewards.
Fortunately situation with nodes improved since the time when I wrote that post (it's quite old).
Of course, you don't need to be a witness to run your own Steem node. It's actually a great idea to get some better knowledge about this platform.
For your own needs you can follow same instructions that are for exchanges (using your account name). It's a consensus node that runs account history plugin for a single account (your own in your case).
I think I will cover such configuration in my next episode of Steem Pressure.
Good luck.
Thank you for your keen and clear answer. Anyway even being an absolute fan of Larimer's general goals for humanity and definitely considering him one if not the major "blockchain thinker", of present times, on the way to provide a blockchain technology able to be the future of the internet itself. My old believes as a bitcoin miner get my into hard times in truly understanding the value of DPOS. It is good that the miners (the witnesses) don't compete between themselves, but to become a witness is the big challenge. I would deem interesting that the voters for the witnesses get a reward for their vote, a little bit like the bitcoin miners who join a pool and get a share of whatever block a miner of the pool has the luck to produce, . i.e. I am trying to figure out the would-be functioning of a Steem mining pool
Oh, you are wrong.
They do and that's great.
There's a lot of blood, sweat and tears on the blockchain.
Everybody wants to be better than others which in this case is serving the platform the best they can.
Otherwise, the minimum that they have to do would be as simple as generating blocks i.e. running single machine with some software on it. Monkeys can do that.
Also, it's not really a mining. Most of STEEM goes to non-witnesses, i.e. authors, curators, shareholders. Smallest piece of cake is shared between the witnesses.
It's not the witnesses who are important on this platform. It's YOU. Those who have Steem Power and vote.
If a witness doesn't do what you expect (within your subjective opinion about being best for the platform) you take away your vote and such witness is fired.
We hare now Jun 2018 and we see that's exactly the inverse happening on EOS. Hopefully. The witness don't compete (no blood, no tears) in this Blockchain. Thank you to the EOS Constitution, Arbitration and ECAF. EOS is the first blockchain with governance with legislation (the voters) and execution (the BPs). Thank you for this 21 BPs + reserve that are smart people and doing all to serving the plaform the best they can.
If - as you say - they don't compete then how can you say, that current top 21 BPs are smart? :-D
That's your point of view.
Because if you follow the EMLG and closely, you will see that is not necessary to compete to be smart :-D The BPs are not compete , they collaborate, that's a big difference !
EOS is really the first blockchain with a heart. EOS can mean also "Everyone's Open Society". EOS.IO software will retain 21 but a BP has interest to be in good contact with another BP for the network sustain, for the community satisfaction. That's that ... also ... DPOS
Of course, what do I know about DPoS, right?
Competition among witnesses is healthy. Lack of competition is not.
Competition doesn't mean lack of cooperation with other witnesses, especially when it comes to such vital things like maintaining network stability.
See in real time which seednodes are online...
https://status.steemnodes.com/
PS Witness wackou created it
This is a cool list. A nice feature would be a "vote for witness" link next to each node.
My seed node at steem.global:2001 is operational. Hopefully more continue to run for witness and start up seed nodes as well.
it should be nearly mandatory that a witness runs a seed node in my opinion. We're here acting as server jockeys for the network and it's not terribly difficult nor expensive to set up a seed node.
Is yours in seednodes.txt? If not, please send a PR.
Looks like it is on line 24 on the seednodes.txt seen here:
https://github.com/steemit/steem/blob/master/doc/seednodes.txt
Is there a reason for it currently not being obligatory?
Here is mine:
176.31.126.187:2001
I saw your node on @wackou's list and already added it to my branch.
Thank you.
I upvote and resteem this important post.
http://seeds.quisquis.de/steem.html has a list of seed nodes worth checking. cyrano.witness made it a while back and I think it still updates automatically.
True, that is pretty useful tool. Please note, however, that those are not only seed nodes, but also other p2p participants, looks like a lot, but for example 13 of them are those I run (or I was running temporarily).
I could start up an AWS instance, does anyone have recommendations as to what EC2 server type to use?
An 8GB instance with SSD should be more than enough. An
m3.large(~$100 USD monthly on-demand, or $69 USD/mo with a 1 year commit (-29%)) should be ideal with its 32GB instance store. (You may have to issue some additional commands in addition to those below to make sure the local SSD instance store is formatted and mounted on/var/lib/docker.)Simply run the following on a fresh Ubuntu 16.04:
With these exact commands you should have a steem p2p node up and running. Don't forget to open the ports in your security group.
To watch it synchronize, run:
sudo docker logs -f steemdAt that price what is the motivation to run one of these? Kind of lost here, have it setup and running just seems like a zero sum game.
Ouch, yeah, looks like that had higher requirements than I thought.
It would be cool if a node could be run on a Raspberry Pi. XD
I agree, but even the beefiest rPIs have only 1GB of ram AFAIR. Also, there are sadly still some x86-isms in the code. I've actually tried building (works) and running (doesn't work) steemd on a Pi 3 Model B (in theory it should work with a low memory build and lots of swapping).
Thank you for your willingness but as I replied already to @ervin-lemark: since you are not a witness, it would be unfair to make you have expenses instead of those who already get their block producing rewards for being a witnesses.
So same advice here: please review your votes for witnesses. Ask your candidates if they are running seed node or any other service to support Steem network (API? Exchange? Steem powered website?). Vote for those who do.
Just witnesses running seed nodes is not enough seed nodes. Everyone who can, should.
I am replaying the blockchain now on this one 89.36.26.82:2001.
Also, ignore the dumb question in chat, I figured it out.
Do not worry. There is no such thing as a dumb question.
Thank you.
I am ready to setup node (I have one very powerfull dedicated server, which is mostly not used), but I would appreciate your help :)
Awesome! :-)
While I cannot set it up for you because of the chronic lack of time, I can assist you if you have any questions.
Catch me on steemit.chat