Fellow Witnesses Community,
It was a real pleasure supporting this community for about a year. Just got back from vacation (Without Internet and cell phone) few days ago.
Unfortunately, I have decided to opt-out of witness work and shut down my nodes.
The rationale is behind the costs of running a full witness node on enterprise grade equipment for months. Instead of support for running zero missed block nodes paid out of pocket, what I got - is an offer to pay in Fiat for a vote from whale (I am not going to disclose the name).
Although the amount was ridiculous, it points towards totally unhealthy state of the network, I decided not to support.
Not only it become impossible to earn (obviously not my motive at all), more dangerous, it become impossible to support the network without being part of the clans.
I would like to thank to all the supporters from #gridcoin communicty, especially @Vortac, and @sc-steemit who give their vote for free at the very beginning of my node. Unfortunately, paid votes is something that obviously took place, directly ruining the steemit economy. I found it dangerous, and definitely not going to support it.
Even further dangerous, I found my authorship article down-voted by plagiarism bot, just due to a fact it has been published on my personal website and few journals (Under own name). Down-voting without prior check is something that further ruins and discourage professional work / leaving very little chance to attract professional community.
Please take this as a positive criticism, and understand the rationale that by no means, I am going to pay to someone, in order to get the ability to support the network. That's something not only absurd but a direct attack on the network health.
Please allocate your votes given to me to someone else - and pick wisely. My best suggestion is to skip giving votes to witnesses who exchange them in between themselves. This would be the easiest way to prevent monopoly, leading to paid votes. Try giving them to these who are at the bottom of the list.
As for votes from myself to others, although not much important with current SP, I proxied them to @vortac
Until better days, my signing key is
STM1111111111111111111111111111111114T1Anm