The Witness Files - Issue 12 with @chitty

I had the pleasure of having a chat with @chitty for today’s issue of The Witness Files. He is involved with the @steemfund initiative and a supporter of @steemsports.

If you are new to The Witness Files, it is a series of interviews I did with some of our top witnesses, to get an insight into who they are and what they do.

You can find the previous issues of the Witness Files below: Issue 1 with @complexring, Issue 2 with @riverhead, Issue 3 with @picokernel, Issue 4 with @jesta Issue 5 with @roelandp, Issue 6 with @pharesim, Issue 7 with @klye, Issue 8 with @clayop Issue 9 with @good-karma, Issue 10 with @roadscape, Issue 11 with @fyrstikken

Welcome to today’s issue of The Witness Files with @chitty

Thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

Thank you for taking the time to do this interview and allow people to know me a little bit more.

Tell me a bit about yourself. Who is @chitty?

I am another Crypto aficionado who felt in love with steem and its technology.

Wen youre not on Steemit, what do you enjoy doing?

On my day to day I am a business consultant for a construction firm, I also work on a few Bitcoin related projects and I try to keep in touch with key players of the industry in Argentina, there is some really cool stuff coming out of the Bitcoin Embassy here.

I also like to travel as much as I can and play basketball or soccer in my free time.

How did you first find out about Steemit, and when did you first become a witness?

I found out about steemit on bitsharestalk forum, I was already amazed by the possibilities bitshares brought to the table so it was an instant crush with steemit.

Before July the 4th there was a big dispute regarding the structure of payouts, most decisions were being made by big holders that were top 19 witnesses and I thought this was not fair, so I decided to become a witness and express a different point of view, the point of view of the small holder and not the investor, I think I was around the first “minnow” witnesses out there.

In your mind, what makes a top witness?

Apart from being able to run a node, which nowadays is not hard considering some witnesses pay others to do the tech stuff, I think a top witness should:

Listen to the community regarding future changes.
Vote, always read posts and vote! I do not agree with witnesses who abstain from voting to “make the platform more balanced”, what they are doing really is letting fewer whales control the payouts.
Contribute on projects that promote the use of Steemit and other competing websites.

But the most important factor here is having steemit best interest at heart, we see a lot of witnesses who receive a lot of daily steem but are constantly powering down and bashing the platform and its founders at every opportunity they get. With the new hardfork these witnesses can powerdown their entire stake in 13 weeks, so it would be interesting to see how the witness list will be re-arranged once changes are implemented.

What are your thoughts about the upcoming changes to the inflation rate of Steem and other related changes that will be implemented soon? Before speaking to you I wrote my thoughts on every change that will be implemented on the fork, people can take a look at it here. But in general I think the changes are positive, it will give people who are not content a way out and also improve the current distribution of steem.

You are involved with the @steemfund project. Tell us about that and how is the project going?

SteemFund is a project that I think has a lot of potential, the idea is to fund small projects with our votes, currently we have carried out 3 campaigns and have been able to raise a little over 100 SBD. We also have the support of some witnesses like @theprophet0 who has been making donations that go to the campaigns.

With the current price of steem it is hard to fund a full campaign, even if you get 200 votes the payout won’t be much. So for now SteemFund has been contributing and helping projects with whatever money they can raise, a good example of this is the Silver Pendant project of @ricardoguthrie, who was able to create and promote his jewelry with the help of SteemFund.

Are there any other Steem-related projects you are currently involved in?

I try to keep up to date with all the projects and I vote and support projects like Cervantes, Curie and the Robin Hood Whale.

One project I do sponsor directly is @steemsports, I think it was and still is a game changer for steemit and currently it is the best form of SP distribution out there. So I have to applaud the efforts of @thecryptodrive and @theprophet0 creating such innovative product which could easily compete with much hyped projects like Augur.

If you could change any one single thing on Steemit at this moment, what would it be and why?

I would change the payout distribution, but I am glad this will already be changed on December the 6th.

How do you see the Steem ecosystem evolving over the next year or two? And what new features and projects would you like to see implemented?

I would like to see Steem evolve and be much bigger than just Steemit, just like Bitcoin has thousands of projects around it, Steem can have other social networks been built on top of it, international money transfers being made using SBD and maybe the most important service we need right now will be brought by @charlieshrem with the creation of a FIAT-STEEM bridge.