Alright, it's been a minute since I've done any kind of politicin'. I'm inviting and asking you to vote for my Splinterlands validator node.
My skillset helps me build community, grow ecosystems, facilitate trade, and when the time is right add an enormous amount of fomo to fuel growth. There's no one better on Hive to attract people to projects than me and as we're already in the beginning stages of an altcoin season
I'm an inventor and builder. If you're reading this you've likely used multiple tools I helped invent, design, build, maintain, and spread. I will continue to make tools, and help others in this ecosystem build tools, businesses, and communities dedicated to this community.
Also, Trust. If witnesses collude there are terrible things that can happen. I'm a devout libertarian and anarchist and have a moral center that helps keep me as a virtuous man. You don't want top validators colluding. You want them producing blocks, writing code/tools, and spreading the word. I've built a lot of things, will continue to build a lot of things, and I'll continue to do it in a way where your money is safe and there's opportunity for hard workers.
My Name is Blair Jesse Ellyn Reich. I prefer the pseudonym aggroed. I'm a PhD chemist by training. After earning my degree I worked as a chemist for BASF, which at the time was the largest chemical company in the world. I worked at two different facilities. They have a boron facility north of Pittsburgh and as an inorganic chemist I helped there. Then I took a tour in Michigan and worked in their sustainable marketing division. The sustainable marketing was a neat place. They would figure out life cycle costs and benefits of their products and their competitor products and then rank them against eachother. BASF often had higher startup costs, but they could show that the lifecycle costs were much lower. It was my first taste of marketing and advertising.
Unfortunately, my mother got diagnosed with cancer. So, I left that job and moved back home to be of assistance. I taught high school chemistry for two years until she passed. High Schoolers are a handful, so I switched to being a professor of Chemistry. I was 27 when I started that role, and generally I was 2 decades younger than my peers. My office mate was in his 80s.
I did that for a number of years and I had a baby. I had been hand grading assignmnets, but this baby was colicky so I switched to online homework. The experience was pretty great as my students experienced a multi letter grade improvement. I told the company about my success using the product and they hired me as an advocate to tell other professors about it. Turns out I'm a good sales guy. I helped grow the company by tens of thousands of students enrolled annually and that translated into millions of revenue and many millions in company value. The company I worked for was sold to a mega publisher and they ended up firing all the key people that helped build the business. I did a few other smaller things in the ed tech publishing space, but then I met Matt (yabapmatt).
Matt and I were still on steem at this point. A popular thing to do was pay for bidbots to get your post more recognition. This still happens a little on Hive, but far less. Matt had written a tool called steembottracker which helped time votes and create a system that made sense. He had a cool tool, but no one was using it. So, he asked me to partner with him. In about a week or two I had all the major bidbots using this tool, and we took a small percentage of the votes. We agreed to meet to talk about the tool in a restaurant outside of Philly. At the end of discussing the bidbot tool a news reel about cryptokitties came on tv, and after that played Matt said "what I really want to do is build a game."
Well, it turns out that one of my hobbies was game design. I made a naughty social card game called "get some." The goal was to get laid 10 times, but if you got pregnant 4 times you lost and had to start over. It didn't involve actual sex... it was just a silly game. It sold $20k worth on kickstater. Nothing major, but I had invented a game, published it, sold it, shipped it, and if there was anything I learned from the process is that I never wanted to ship a physical product again.
That said I built a new game. At the time it was called "Chib Rex." My inspiration was my two young daughters lightly tussling wiht eachother, and I had a little imaginative spurt that it would be awesome if they could rip a button off a dress, throw it on the ground, and a giant monster would pop up to fight for them instead of them fighting eachother. Summoners and monsters were born.
I hired freelancers to make art, I had a system of rules around various kinds of attack, and when I was done it sat on a shelf until Matt said "What I really want to do is make a game."
You probably know the rest of this. We built the game, sold alpha, quit our jobs to work on this full time, and have been building this game and community ever since.
Founder of the minnowsupport project
Founder of MSP-waves
Witness on Steem
One of the witnesses that participated in the Steem/Hive Hardfork
Former CEO of Splinterlands
One of the original inventors of Splinterlands
One of the original inventors of SPS and DEC
One of the original inventors of land
One of the original inventors Soulkeep
One of the original inventors of Keychain
Founder and managing director of Hive-Engine
This is where you all trade your SPS, DEC, and Other tokens!
Founder and CEO of Invennium
Built two platforms (arcadecolony.com and genesisleaguesports.com)
Built multiple games on top of those platforms (GLG, Moon Karts, Enable All, Stakehouse Den)
Helping to bring new games to the platform (Hyperrail Blaster and more)
I own one of the most valuable collections
I am one of the top node holders
I am one of the top SPS holders
I am one of the top land holders
I am a large stakeholder in liquidity pools
I operate a large account on Hive and provide community votes
I took reaz up on the offer to host the Validator node. I could operate this myself, but it's easier to hire him to do it. He's a developer I've worked with for half a decade and I'm comfortable working with him. Through his service I'm running both a standard witness node and also providing the full API.
As a stakeholder I will vote with my stake to propel the best people in the ecosystem to represent us, build tools, operate nodes, and grow this community. I currently plan to only vote for nodes that offer full API service. It's critical that the top validators offer this, and even fantastic contributors who don't have it will be overlooked by my multiple votes.
I'm looking for people that can code tools, grow communities, interact peacefully, express dissent professionally, and who at a bare minimum can operate a node and keep it up to date.
I will help grow this community. I will help build and maintain tools central to the community. I will help and enable others to immigrate into Praetoria, build tools and businesses, and find ways to participate in our economy.
