My testnet witness (witness.zapata) and API node (wss://testnet.dex.trading) have been updated.

enable-standby-votes-tracking (see #987) has been added to the configurations and configured as recommended (false for witness, true for api).

Docker image (bitshares/bitshares-core:testnet) is working correctly and gracefull shutdown fix (#1077 #1115) have been succesfully tested.

Hello,

dear Bitshares community, I want to propose my services as a Bitshares Witness.

Please vote for zapata42-witness.

Who am I?

I am a developer with 13 years of experience in finance sector, based in Paris (France). I have worked for BNP Paribas Corporate Investment Banking in the equity derivatives business for the past 10 years in projects as varied as price publication, position keeping or request for quotes, and as a developer, technical lead or architect. Java is my main programming language but I have good knowledge of Python, Javascript, and Ruby. See below for my full resume.

I came to know Bitshares about one year ago, and since then I closely followed it as I was impressed by the technology, the balanced economical model and the distributed governance. I started to contribute on my spare time as I could:

• multiples (5+) Bitshares ecosystem presentations (2h each) to numerous colleagues and middle/top management (~100);
• participation to Hackathons: see ETF on Blockchain topic.
• contributions to tools like HERTZ implementation (from @customminer)  in alt's script (discussion, PR), xeroc pricefeed review (and stock trackers implementation), monitoring script improvement, developer api documentation spike
• running testnet witness since 12/05/2018

Now I want to be more involved in Bitshares, and as I am not a C++ nor a React programmer (yet?), I feel like witness role currently suit me best to help the community. You will found below my current setup, and what I plan to do once voted in.


My current setup:

    Hardware: 3 x VPS 4 cores CPU at 2.4ghz, 24GB RAM, 100GB SSD hard drive, 250Mpbs internet bandwith, Location: France.
    (I consider this a minimum, see below for my target plan)
   
    I run 2 witness mainnet nodes (account zapata42-witness) and 2 witness testnet node (witness-zapata).
    They are monitored through an improved version of @clockwork's telegram monitoring bot that handle automatic key switch and price feed monitoring.

    The price feed is ready, I already publish @nasdaq assets (see AMAZONCOM) and I use a stabilized version of @xeroc's pricefeed.

    Additionnaly I host some services:
        Mainnet API:         https://api.dex.trading  (max-ops-per-account = 100)
        Mainnet Seed:       seed.dex.trading:1776
        Testnet API:          https://testnet.dex.trading
        Wallet:                  https://wallet.dex.trading or https://bitshares.dex.trading (patched version that use my referral link as default)

    Services are served through multiple proxies (currently NGINX) that do rate limiting and SSL termination.
    For SSL certificate is issued by Let's encrypt and renewal is automated.
    Everything run on a private multi datacenter Kubernetes cluster (so fully Dockerized and resilient) and monitored through Prometheus/Grafana.
    The setup is automated and ready to scale, see my plan below.

My plan:

If I get voted as an active witness my focus will be on:

• Providing a stable block producer
• Providing a stable, accurate and auditable price feed of most Market Pegged Assets
• Grow Bitshares infrastructure, community and software ecosystem

This means:

• Upgrade the infrastructure. With the current witness pay (~30 witness / bts=0.2$ / 1bts per block) I aim to add:
                      6 x Dedicated 4c/8t 3Ghz CPU, 64go RAM, 1To SSD hard drive, 250Mpbs internet bandwith, Locations: france, germany, uk, canada, singapore, australia
• Continuous improvements of the setup like: geo optimizations for latency (GeoDNS + regional vlan), premium wildcard SSL certificate, premium api acess, ...
• Additional to classic API nodes, I will install and serve community tools like: Open-Explorer, Python API Backend, Elastic Search database with a data visualization tool like Kibana/Graphana, Bitshares HUG, and any future interesting project of the community;
• Active participation (code contributions, code/issue/bsip review, testing) to community initiatives (core, ui, tools, documentation) as a developer;
• Participate to meetups and hackathons to promote Bitshares;
• Regularly run third party professional penetration testing on the setup;
• if BTS price allow me to do it, hire other people to help me.

So why voting for zapata42-witness ?

• Experienced software developer with professional experience in developing and running financial highly critical software;
• Professional experience in price contribution in a main financial company;
• Proven will and capacity to contribute on Bitshares related projects;
• Full setup (witness, pricefeed + api) in place, and wide range of services in target;
• Active investment in Bitshares ecosystem (infrastructure & time) planned;
• Knowledgeable in blockchain internals;
• Relations in French fintech and financial institutions;
• Fresh blood.

Contact:
  Telegram: @Zapata_42
  LinkedIn profile

* Edit 20180901: Update seed port.

account zapata42-witness is added to the whitelist for publication of feeds by smart asset AMAZONCOM
As soon as you manage to publish the feeds for smart asset AMAZONCOM, I will add you to the white list of all smart assets
Please try...

I have the price of the stock in dollars and multiply it by the exchange rate bts/usd.
I take the course of bts from the purse of the bitshares. Those. from a usd / bts pair on the bitshares exchange.

I have started the publication for AMAZONCOM.

Sorry for the delay I found another issue in bitshares-pricefeed.

I think the spread is due to the different USD:BTS price we use.
I use the current bitUSD DEX feed (= bitUSD settlement price), you seems to use the DEX BTS/bitUSD orderbook. Currently there is a big spread between the two.
I feel like the bitUSD current feed it's more appropriate.
Your opinion is welcome.

Quote from: zapata42 on May 31, 2018, 12:22:15 pm

Updated a few days ago, ready for the fork.
Sorry if I misses some blocks, I tested a (sucessfull) update from my phone, and I dont run multiple instances.

Thanks. Are you a mainnet witness? If yes, what's your witness name / ID?

I'm not (yet?) candidate on the mainnet.

Any news?

For your information, the CEO talk about his expectations on this week epicenter.tv podcast: https://epicenter.tv/episode/235/

It seems they want to build something really similar to Bitshares (DAC included).
For them performances and liquidity are the highest priority.
They also say they will promote DEX in general, and try to bring liquidity.

By the way, anyone who want to be voted please leave a message.

My test witness "witness.zapata"  has been upgraded sucessfully to "test-2.0.180510" using Docker image.
I run also a test API node with the same version: testnet.dex.trading

Can you vote me in?

What are your thoughts about the permission: disable force settling?

You should allow force settling, this will give the opportunity to an ETF share owner to exit and get the colllateral even if there is no sellers.
If there high liquidity and market makers, force settling should not be usefull, but better to keep it as a safety net.

For the reliability of the ETF I want that the witnesses publish the price feed. When my script is finished i have to publish it somewhere to make it public. But how do i know that a witness is gonna publish the price feed? Furthermore, what are the costs for the fact that the witness publish the price feed?

Yes you need to publish a reference implementation. Witness will use it or update their own.

You have an example with HERTZ: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=24161.0

You can have a look to another similar situation: https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=26068.0

Reaching witness and having them publish your feed can take some time. This forum is the best place to reach them (search for their witness threads and/or send them a MP).

About the cost, the witness might do it for free, as it might get them some additional votes to be active (and get the pay from the Bitshares DAC itself).
If there is not enougth competition between witness on votes, you might have to pay additionally to get more incentive, (or pay for someone to  update their pricefeed script).
In any case a feedback to the BTS shareholders on how the process went is appreciated, so we can update our votes accordingly.