Yoink!

Alright so I probably should have addressed this yesterday in order to stay on top of things, but the timing of it all is truly crazy. I'm actually sick right now (potentially COVID) and my brain has been turned into absolute mush. I should be resting more... my girlfriend tells me sitting at my desk is not resting! Can you believe that?!?

In any case.

Yeah we got some drama on our hands here.

So obviously this is a little unprofessional.

Would be nice to not campaign in this manner.
But also it is understandable.

But too be fair the @hextech node and the three people running it are anything but professional. In fact Rishi might be the most professional one of all, so perhaps it's a somewhat ironic situation to be in.

Taking my ball and going home!

So the fallout from this situation was that Rishi started a near 100% powerdown on @hextech and set the vesting routes 40/40/20, with 20% going to himself to buy us out of the server hardware. He did this without any kind of discussion (because ragequit), but I'm told the math checks out. I'm not sure if it does considering that's only $877, but I'm also not going to contest it. The fact that I don't know the value of our own node ($1300?) is telling enough.

At the same time the value of a Hive node is a lot more than just the base cost of the hardware. Setting one up is a non-trivial task, as I am learning the hard way now. @hextech will probably be disabled for at least two weeks while I try to figure this stuff out, which is another loss of at least $200 just from missing out on two weeks of block rewards.

How did this happen?

Ah well I could give a more in-depth explanation of this conflict, but I'm treading dangerously close to escalating this situation for no reason whatsoever. Rishi and I had a civil chat in DMs and we are labeling this issue "creative differences". He gave me some advice as to how to keep the node running. The conversation was cordial.

If I'm being honest this is potentially the best outcome.

Rishi is out, Sn0n is out, @hextech is mine. You know I've actually been trying to get back into the coding game and this is kind of the perfect kick in the ass for that. No, I do not have a ton of experience with the technicalities of Hive, but I have a little. The difference between me and a lot of the other people here is that other devs and infrastructure providers have corporate jobs; Maybe even a wife and kids. I don't have any of those types of responsibilities or commitments. I can dedicate quite a bit of time to this project, and I plan on doing just that.

privex

Thus far I've rented a very cheap Hive-in-a-box privex node to try and keep @hextech going, but I was a bit floored when I realized it's going to take 2 weeks to sync even with an NVMe drive. Eek! I still haven't even figured out how to start syncing, so that timer hasn't even started yet. Linux always has a way of messing with me, and like I said being sick is not helping my cause.

@disregardfiat
@mrtats
@gtg
@gokurage
@engrave
@acidyo
@actifit
@shmoogleosukami
@aliento
@deathwing
@smooth
@nuthman
@summertooth
@mytechtrail
@pizza.witness
@dalz
@crazyphantombr

Here's a list of accounts that have removed votes from @hextech thus far.

Watching the hextech rank bleed from rank #31 was surprisingly more alarming than I thought it would be.

I would humbly ask that you reconsider and vote for both Rishi and me if you have an extra vote, but also obviously it doesn't matter much in the immediate short term because hextech will surely be disabled for at least 2 weeks going forward. Also because it's a bare minimum privex node and I don't have much experience running my own witness it would make sense for hextech to continue bleeding on the rank-list. But if you'd like to boost my morale, go ahead and throw hextech a vote and I will continue on with the journey with my head held high.

Again, I have not had a 'real' job since 2021

And I never will again if it can be avoided.
Full time crypto for life.

It only makes sense that I would hunker down and take a more active roll within this community. Bull market sentiment has only just begun, and I even turn 40 next month. Such a weird timeline full of milestones. Ultimately my plan was always to get my act together and build a business on Hive. My focus has always been gaming, and now with all these advances to AI and such I think the grind will be much less brutal.

Final thoughts on sharing a witness.

Sharing a node between multiple parties is not a super easy thing to do. Hextech was formerly in a situation where it was like a group project at school where one person does all of the work. Rishi was the one doing all the work.

If we've learned anything from crypto: it's that decentralized governance is difficult to achieve. Multiple users maintaining casual ownership of the same piece of hardware is often going to result in an unstable situation. I suppose I've had the privilege of learning this first hand. Without someone definitively in charge the situation inevitably becomes much more complex. Live and learn.

At the same time it's quite noteworthy that when we first booted up the Hextech witness sharing a node made a lot more sense. The hostile takeover was just wrapping up, Price of the token was often in the 10-15 cent range, and nodes were more expensive back then before getting major efficiency upgrades. Today Hive's bottom price is more than twice as much as it was back then, and nodes are much cheaper, making it much easier to run a node solo. We've made a lot of silent progress over these last few years.

Conclusion

Rishi is a great witness, and you should throw him and upvote during this campaign season. He works side by side with @deathwing pretty often along with several other key players on the platform. He's already gone from 3-digit ranks to #59. Somehow I get the feeling I might be trading ranks with him soon enough :D but of course throw Hextech a vote if you'd like to add some fuel to this fire. Onward and upward!

As for me I will take this as a sign from the gods that it's time to double down on Hive and keep the Hextech node active while putting more effort into several projects that I started but never seemed to finish. The whole Privex situation is temporary until I buy my own hardware (which should be easy considering my share in the powerdown from Hextech is worth well over $2000). Until then: keep grinding.