Last season on the mag, we had a spectacular run, featuring top authors who fill in different leadership roles in the community. From developers to moderators and people from all walks of life, we had you covered. We featured top authors like
@stellabelle,
@pfunk,
@surfermarly,
@steevc,
@papa-pepper,
@onetree,
@good-karma,
@redhens,
@timcliff,
@mynameisbrian,
@thecryptofiend,
@condra,
@kingscrown,
@kevinwong,
@ausbitbank,
@donkeypong.
@lukestokes, who is a Father, husband, biz owner, programmer, voluntaryist. In his own words, "I want to help create a world we all want to live in."
@lukestokes@lukestokes, we say a big welcome. So tell us why you joined the steemit train?@lukestokes: I've been really excited about cryptocurrency and blockchain technology since early 2013. I see it as an amazing technology to bring freedom to humanity on many levels as we create non-violent consensus and control our own stores of value. I tried for many years to get our FoxyCart users to accept bitcoin through their stores (we integrate with both BitPay and Coinbase), but they just weren't interested because their customers weren't interested. I tried all kinds of things to get people onboarded to cryptocurrency including local meetups. When I saw Steemit, I immediately saw it as an excellent onboarding tool for introducing cryptocurrency to the masses. I'm hooked.@lukestokes: I love my kids, my wife 
@corinnestokes, technology, blogging, good food, camping, movies, audio books, passionate discussions about things that matter, and life in general.@lukestokes: Immoral people who don't mind harming others.@lukestokes: Lately, my biggest time-consuming hobby has been blogging on steemit and learning about new cryptocurrency projects. The latest one I enjoyed diving into was SmartCash and playing with @SmartBot.@lukestokes: #Cryptocurrency@lukestokes: More open communication between stake holders so we can set better expectations. There are a lot of competing interests who all want a piece of the rewards pool and who want to set the vision for the future. Investors, bloggers, entrepreneurs, developers, company owners, and more all have a say in where this is going. If we're not in alignment, we might be pulling in opposite directions.@lukestokes: This is the post I now send to anyone who wants my advice on Steemit: #SteemitIsToMe: Relationships, Reputation, and Rewards and you were a big part of making that post happen, so thank you 
@ehiboss.@lukestokes: 
@anyx is one of the smartest people on the blockchain, from my perspective. I really enjoyed hanging out with him at Steemfest and talking philosophy. 
@roelandp put on an amazing SteemFest conference. I'm still in awe of how he managed all the venues and the food... oh, the food was fantastic.@lukestokes: I love it! I'm approaching 10,000 comments and posts. Seeing people face to face in Lisbon reinforced what I already knew: I'm building real relationships here and they are awesome. :)@lukestokes: Traveling the world a lot more with my family. Hopefully working less on my business and having more free time to explore cryptocurrency projects.@lukestokes: Dang... that's a deep question for a materialistic determinist. I'm not sure I would be confident enough to change anything without knowing all the unintended consequences. Ultimately, I'd want to limit human suffering with any change I make so maybe that would include preventing world wars or bringing back technologies to help move humanity along quicker. It's a tough question. I guess I'd want to be able to simulate my changes and figure out their impacts before making them. Heck, maybe we're living in that simulation right now. :)@lukestokes: When we say "the platform" we should clarify what we mean. Are we talking about users (bloggers) on Steemit? Are we talking about the value of the STEEM token which powers the rewards pool that all Steem related websites pull from? It's a challenging thing to get right because some are just focused on bringing in new users without also thinking about bringing in new investors to increase the value of STEEM to support those new users' demand for rewards (not to mention the development work to support them). Beyond just minnows, I think we can all help the core developers (currently dominated by Steemit employees) by getting involved in things they are involved in, including evaluating the SMT white paper and upcoming change proposals like hard fork 20. I get that not everyone is a programmer or technical person, but we can all contribute something when it comes to the changes that will define what STEEM, Steemit, and similar sites are in the future.@lukestokes: Because that's my real name. I believe in controlling my online identity so I genuinely use my real name online.With the recent spike in the price of the Steem backed dollars, lots of people have been trading the currency for a good price with Steem backed dollars hitting a conversion rate of 30 sbd to 400 US dollars on bittrex.
So far, there has been no issue with the blockchain which has held firm and handled transactions within the blockchain with ease, accuracy and extreme speeds.
Meanwhile the bitcoin blockchain and some other blockchains have been experiencing a delay in transaction speed due to the number of transactions going through the blockchain.
Here is a list of things you can do with your SBD
@lukestokes, give him upvote and a resteem.
@camzy/ 
@samstickkz and 
@elyaque for the animated art and badge
@curie, @ausbitbank, 
@teamsteem, 
@xeldal, 
@steemgigs for witness@ehiboss)
