I was procrastinating this post for a few days/weeks for one simple reason... I don't like to brag... Yes, I do #MyHiveGoals posts once per week, but not for bragging, but more to motivate others to do something similar... As it works and it's helpful... But today, I have to brag, or better said, write about what I'm doing on HIVE, what is my focus, and what my vision, a purpose of doing all this... So, this is like an introduction post, but 4.5 years later... :)
Why am I doing this now when a lot of you already know about me? Well, 2 weeks ago, along with 
Created in Canva.com
Running a node requires some technical skills (not a high level to deploy a node itself, but a higher level to contribute to the blockchain code), I found myself responsible for that part in our small Liotes team... As I was running a hosting business in the past and I had some "heavy traffic" users, I had to deal with setting up dedicated servers for my clients... I started with a small hosting reseller package with Dreamhost (I think that was the name back in 2001-2002), to reach the point when I had my 3 dedicated machines for shared hosting and 7-8 other machines, which I was administrating for clients... In those days, I got my first lessons about SSH, installing scripts on Linux machines, and learning about different Linux distributions and their usage...
One decade after I began hosting, crypto came into my life... Back in 2013, I bought my first Bitcoin at Bitstamp, or to be more exact, I bought it from a friend, paying with cash, and he sent it to my Bitstamp deposit address (don't ask 🤦)... As that was my first encounter with such a volatile asset, I panicked and sold my BTC with a loss a few months later... :another palmface emoji:
my first Bitcoin
After my strong decision that I will never come back to crypto, that happened in 2017 when I began with Ethereum mining, investing a few hundred of euros to buy 2-3 GPUs for mining... After a year, the number of GPUs grew to 24, all bought from the profits... Compounding GPUs.. 🙂 I didn't stop on, just mining, and I dived deeper into cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology...
In the next 2-3 years, I have attended a couple of Blockchain conferences that were held in Spain, In some of them I was a "returning" visitor, and I was fascinated by the potential of these things... I remember well about topics that were discussed in 2017 for which there was no implementation in those days, but today, I can recognize some of those ideas coming to the surface!
In early 2019, I found this blockchain and I fell in love with the idea and the community here... I found a great community, made some great connections, and met my friends who are still around... I have attended 1 HiveFest (Amsterdam 2022), both VR HiveFests, and HiveBeecon this year, and probably dozens of small Hive Meetups all over Europe (I hope soon, all over the world 🙂)...
Coming to the chain as an ordinary Splinterlands gamer, I'm currently running a
Along with the hosting business, I was running my Computer Shop(s) for 7-8 years with steady growth over the years... Began with literally an empty shop with 100 empty CDs and a PC components catalog, to running 3 shops in 3 different cities, full of PC equipment, adding also other electronic products like TVs, and mobile phones as our sales products...
The same idea of slow, steady, and healthy growth was implemented in our
One of the most important things that I like to follow in life is to give my best in everything that I do. Quality was always over quantity in all the businesses that I was running... With my PC shops where the number of clients was growing because of the quality service that they received, through the hosting business where high-earning websites were seeking a reliable service as every second that their website was down, they would lose money... Those people realized that with cheap hosting you get cheap service, and provide a better service, with very low downtime, they knew where to go...
Uptime monitoring for one of my shared hosting machines
If you check the stats from the screenshot above, you will notice the uptime in 2023 of 99.9987%! That number includes maintenance time too! Of course, having tools to check and monitor uptime, and sending an SMS/email when there is an issue helps a lot... But, being available to react and fix the issue ASAP is what differentiates businesses and the people who are running them... I remember a couple of cases of fixing server issues on a train, through a small screen of a mobile phone (from times when phones didn't have a big screen 🙂)...
We are implementing the same philosophy to Liotes and everything that we are doing on Hive... Responsibility for the tokens that we have created, and the same approach toward the sub-projects that we are running...
I'm not sure if I have to write about this at all... If you are following #MyHiveGoals that you can find on my blog, you will notice my dedication and consistency in building my stake, and my voice on the platform... For over 2 years, I've been doing 1K Hive power-up on #HivePUD, and this year, I went one step forward... I have powered up some HIVE every single day of the year! You can check all this on my HiveBuzz website profile page...
This one is huge and probably one of the things that I care about the most... Because of that and the nature of this blockchain, everything is transparent... The same as you can check my Hivebuzz stats, you can check all the rest about anyone on the chain... Many people are not aware of that and sometimes you can catch people saying one thing, but doing something completely different (you can see on the chain)... The best compliment that I got was when someone said "You are not just doing a talk, you are doing the walk too"... That leads us to the next big one...
To be a good Hive Witness, you should lead by example... If you are talking about the importance of Hive Power and you are having 4-5K HP for 4-5 years spent on the chain, then you are selling something that you don't believe in... I can't spread the word of the importance of your OWN HivePower, and the importance of supporting others with your stake, and delegate ALL my HivePower to someone else in the same time... I can't delegate all my HP to a big whale account and promote decentralization of the platform, or complain about the bad distribution of tokens...
From the very beginning of my blockchain journey, from the conferences that I attended, the idea of decentralization was probably the strongest one... IMO, that's the purpose of cryptocurrencies, and if we are not nurturing that, we are doing it wrong... We become part of the problem and not the solution... And believe me, we need solutions for this craziness that happens outside crypto... yes, you read it well, OUTSIDE the crypto... While the crypto world looks like a mess, we are having a much bigger mess in the traditional finances...
Somehow it was a logical way to continue my Hive journey... After 2 years, I started a project on HIVE, and now, after 4 years, it's time to step forward and contribute to this great chain on a "higher" level... What I found as a problem here is the gap between app developers and "ordinary" Hivians, the gap between those on top and those in the middle/bottom... As being an Orca on HIVE is a kind of being in the middle, it is my duty to be the connection between those two worlds... There is no good app if there are no people to use it and support it... HIVE whales wouldn't be where they are if no new Hivians were creating and building.... and vice versa... There would be no HIVE at all if we didn't have people who were pushing forward, leading the way...
In certain moments this gap is getting bigger and we all have to remind ourselves about our different "tasks" on the chain, about the existence of the other part, the other side... By raising questions, solving problems, spreading ideas, creating bonds, connections, collaborations... As we show by Liotes' example (and our personal accounts) what is possible, I think that we can contribute to different discussions about the way HIVE should go and how it can grow...
I could probably run a lot more about all this, but I'm afraid that nobody will have the patience to read it... 🙂 So, if you have additional questions you can ask them in the comment section...
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Nice to meet you,
ph
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