Meet Our Steem Witness With @arcange. Episode 17

I welcome you to another episode of meet our steem witness @arcange and thanks for the
honor.

How did you first hear about steemit and what made you decide to join?

I have been involved in the cryptosphere with Bitcoin and Ethereum. As a developer, I was very
really enthusiastic with TheDAO project, but unfortunately it was hacked and failed in June 2016. I then heard about Steemit, and wanted to know more about it. I was immediately won
over by the philosophy of the project and by the development opportunities around it. On top of
a technical environment, the social aspect of the platform was very active and very supportive. I have never seen such support among users on another platform.

For steemians who don't​ know much about witnesses, can you give a layman
explanation of what it is that witnesses do?

The main job of the Witnesses is to produce blocks: they take transactions from the users (what
they do on the platform), put them in a block and sign it so it becomes immutable. To do this,
they must run and maintain one or several servers 24x7.
They also validate the work done by Steemit Inc (the company that maintains the code that runs
the blockchain) and can agree or refuse on the proposed hardfork (i.e. the new version of the
code that can change the behaviour of the platform)
They also have a social role (although it is not mandatory). In general, it is expected that they
actively participate and support the life of the platform through social actions or with projects
more technically oriented

What is the biggest challenge you have ever faced since you joined steemit?

My biggest challenge is to regularly publish a witness update. I am an unstoppable worker and I
often procrastinate when it comes to writing about my work. I always find something to do, a
new topic that interests me, or someone to help when it comes to starting to write a post.

As one of the top witness what is your duty?

Of course, the monitoring of your nodes is the first thing we do. Well all fear missing blocks.
More recently, I started a fight against scammers and phishing. I was deeply shocked to see
these crooks take advantage of some users' naiveté to rob them of the little they gained on
Steemit. It took most of my time: monitoring the platform, analyzing the content, warning users,
helping those who got caught… all this in addition to my two major projects, SteemSQL and
SteemitBoard, which also requires a lot of time.

I know that you are always busy with your computer trying to help the community, apart
from that, what are the other things you enjoy doing?

I like immersing myself in nature. Just look around at the wonders of the world and calm down.
I also love traveling and meeting people. To improve such experience with others, I'm crazy
about learning foreign languages. I have already learned 8 of them.

What is the biggest challenge the steemit community must overcome before it goes
widespread?

For me, social networks are a digital transposition of reality. And unfortunately, as in reality,
there are people who have a positive behavior and others who act negatively.
In the minds of the creators (especially @dan) and in that of many pioneers on Steemit like me,
values such as equitable sharing of resources, decentralization with no censorship, mutual help,
… are really important,.
I think it is necessary to consolidate these values, by improving the code of the blockchain,
since on Steemit (as for all blockchains), the code is the law.

What is the financial advice apart what ceiling value do you steem has in terms of
price?

Do not sell! Power up any STEEM you have, keep your Steem Power. Give, and you shall
receive.

Apart from the steemit community, there are still other sites created for steem user, I
don't want to mention them but which one will you prefer and which one will you advice
others to use?

There are so many good Steem related websites and tools out there.
Hard to choose a few one. I love AskSteem when I need a quick
search for a post. steemreports for quick analytics.
utopian.io and dtube are amazing clients. And last but not
least: SteemitBoard ;)

Can you tell the community one unique thing we probably don't know about you?

I’m also a musician and play in a band. I let you guess which instrument I play.

What makes you from different witnesses in the steemit community?

So many things. Each witness has his own personality. Many users engage in a Witness
activity because they think they are going to make some good money. It must be said that the
campaign that @jerrybanfield did on this topic did not really help.
Speaking about me, I think I have an altruistic side that trumps the rest.

I decided to become witness because I wanted to help the network to work.

Then I wanted to help the users to access the data of the blockchain. So I created SteemSQL.
Access was free at first, but unfortunately I was not able to continue in this way given the costs
of the infrastructure.

I also decided to help newcomers. I launched the publication of the hit-parade for
newcomers

I wanted people to have fun on Steemit. So I started SteemitBoard. Each time, keeping in mind
the idea of motivating and supporting the low level users on the platform to help them grow.
It's a long and hard job. It's less effective than cronyism with the whales ... but hey, that's how I
am.

It is a good thing to be a witness and another thing is that being a witness takes a lot of
time, how do you manage your time and keep balance with other things?

I don’t :P

Where do you see the value of Steem in the next 4-5 years along with the platform?

To the moon!

Steemit as continued to grow more user day by day and am sure it will still continue to
grow, now what is the biggest steemit rivals some of the online social media giants?

I would say there is no real rival, because Steemit succeeded to create a real community of
enthusiasts. There are hundreds of developers who are developing new projects every day. I do
not know of any other project where there is such a variety of federated projects around the
same platform that includes the technical, financial and social components. I think only Google
has such a technical openness, but they have failed to create a social platform and they have
no financial appeal for laymen.

What can you say on the recent scam and phishing war going on steem?

Lol, I am in the front line on this. I said a lost in my last post about
it. This war will never end because
scammers creativity is endless. To fight against this, we need collective and coordinated actions
(like I do with @steemcleaners) and prevention: information and education of users. On these
last two points, there is still a lot of work to be done.

If there was a worldwide internet and cellular blackout for a week, what would you do
for those 7 days?

Sleep a bit, have fun with friends and family, enjoy the world.

If you could give advice to new users just starting out on steemit, what would it be?

Success on Steemit requires time and patience! This is a long run and you need to stay
committed!

Focus on the quality of what you do. Do not waste your energy on being jealous of others'
successes, even if it is sometimes the result of something you think is mediocre.

Put money in the second place.
Give and you shall receive: give your time, use your skill to help other.

Once again I would like to give a huge thanks to @arcange for having this conversation with
me

PROMOTING AND INTERVIEWING STEEM WITNESS IS ALL I DO

As steemit users we need to do everything in our power to choose witnesses that will represent the community well. Before voting make sure you do some research on the people you are voting for and be informed. Head over to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and click on some of the witnesses names, get to know them a bit better and do your part to make sure this community thrives.

Now that you have read something about @arcange I strongly recommend you to choose @arcange

as a witness. For now if you want to select it then open it

^{please vote @arcange to be your witness today!}

https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=arcange&approve=1

^{If you appreciate and value what I do, please consider supporting me by Upvoting, Sharing and Reblogging and kindly follow for more content to come !}

Thanks for reading. Till next time

You can check and read my previous interview with
reggaemuffin • exyle• adsactly-witness • felixxx • lukestokes • neoxian • abh12345 • good-karma
•liondani
• aggroed • yuriks2000 • jatinhota themarkymark • enginewitty •b0y2k and you can make sure you follow along with the next episode.

Help a soul today so that the world will be a better place for you and for me.

---

---

I remain my humble self @dhavey

---

---

**VOTE @arcange @b0y2k @enginewitty @themarkymark @jatinhota @yuriks2000 @liondani @aggroed @good-karma @@@steemcommunity

@neoxian @lukestokes.mhth @blockbrothers @adsactly-witness @timcliff @drakos @roelandp @reggaemuffin @felixxx @steemgigs as witness.**

Thanks to @official-hord for the badge

---

You can join @goldenproject whataspp group using the link below: https://chat.whatsapp.com/I28fEttLZCj2yrC2JjFNlz