Users of the Python Steem library should upgrade to 0.18.93 as soon as possible. This version comes with new fixes, one of which prevents undefined behavior when all steemd nodes fail. It will now throw a SteemdNoResponse exception after exhausting automated failover and all of 200 retries (10 node failovers, 20 retries per node).
I have been receiving a fair amount of complaints about SteemData state falling behind.
There are two ways to remedy this issue:
1.) Write a high performance http -> websocket proxy [1], as well as perform internal
state reconstruction to avoid querying steemd.
2.) Deploy a dedicated, self-healing steemd cluster.
Needless to say, both solutions are time and resource intensive, and unfortunately, I am not
abundant in either right now.
Big thanks to 
Full rpc [2] steemd nodes are a challenge to run. Currently, they require expensive servers with 128GB of RAM, and regular baby-sitting. To my knowledge, there are no open solutions for managing steemd clusters .
As rpc nodes became harder and more expensive to run, community powered nodes disappeared.
Aside from 
If we'd like the Steem ecosystem to support third party apps and developers, we need better infrastructure.
We need to create a node cluster that is:
There many talented people in our community, and I hope we can tackle this challenge.
[1] Steemit is already working on one, jussi
[2] Nodes with all plugins/api's enabled, serving at high throughput.
[3] Based on my experience with extended usage of their nodes for SteemData and Witness Tools.
