Today when I clicked on steemit.chat, a page opened instead of message box which shocked me completely. And I think most of steem users would have already visited this page. Now, I am worried where to promote my post. The content that I read:
Where is steemit.chat?
If you are reading this then @riverhead, and by extension steemit.chat, has been fired.
What?
The Steem blockchain is run by paid witnesses. As many know witness positions are highly coveted as pay at current prices is around $200,000 - $500,000+ per year versus around $50k - $90k for the 21st position and dropping sharply after that. There is a HUGE difference between the top 20 and backup witnesses. As @klye mentioned the other day, "These are the rockstars of witnesses".
One should be able to look at each name in the top twenty and understand what value they bring to the ecosystem versus those outside of it.
Witness List
Most in the top twenty bring a lot of value to the system other than just signing blocks and running a price feed. My (@riverhead) contribution was running this chat service. That has worked out well for about a year or so now but as time passes folks in the top 20 get complacent, and large stakeholders lose interest in keeping track of who does what for the ecosystem.
In my humble opinion this chat service provided a lot of value to the community and worthy of a witness postion. Those with the voting power to shape the witness list disagreed which brings you to this page instead of whatever community you’ve built over the last year or so on steemit.chat.
Don't Panic!
I have found a willing and able team, lead by @followbtcnews, to take it over. That should happen by the end of the week but it's entirely up to him. He'll have the full data set so things will likely just pick up where they left off but on better hardware if that's the direction he wants to go.
In the meantime we can all take the next couple of days to reflect on what it means to vote for witnesses that bring value to the ecosystem.
Have a look at your top twenty witnesses, who votes for them, and try to figure out why. For example @jesta is a strong witness and you can see who supports him here.
I wish @followbtcnews all the best and I hope you show him the same kindness and support you’ve given me while providing this service to the community.
See you space cowboy...
Riverhead
After reading the full page, I understood that the channel is shut down run by @riverhead. If you read the full content, you will know why this happened. There is a user named @followbtcnews may take over steemit.chat, but it is still not decided. We will know it at the end of this week whether @followbtcnews will agree to run it or not. Till then discord channel is only option to share your post.