Current policy:
===
- Unbiased price feed
- Minimum account creation fee set to `20 STEEM` which is currently worth ~$3. This is going to be revisited after HF18 due to delegated bandwidth feature and its implications. I am going to change it to `0.666 STEEM` for now, i.e. 30x less, as an equivalent of current fee, because of: `5 * min_fee + STEEM_POWER == 150 * min_fee`
- SBD interest rate at 1% (going down to zero, previous 1.5%)

Current, observed parameters:
===
```
Real SBD value: $1.127
STEEM value: $0.160
current_sbd_supply: 1046431.050 SBD
sbd_interest_rate: 200
account_creation_fee: 20.000 STEEM
```
Upcoming Hard Fork 17+18
---
https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/v0.18.1
As I mentioned already in my previous posts and discussed a lot: I supported upcoming changes even at their state described in `v0.17.0` release. HF18 gets all the features from HF17 that majority of witnesses were happy to apply to the platform. In the meantime a lot of issues were found, addressed and fixed. I am glad that consensus was reached and I hope that at the cost of time that passed to get here, we (re)gained something as much important: mutual trust.

Useful resources
---
### Full node with public steem API
My full node with a public steem API is available at `gtg.steem.house:8090`
Over last week it was heavily used (that's what it was made for after all). Even more in the last day and last hours. That's mostly because it was used as a fallback for those who were (are?) still running outdated libs which refused to work correctly with newer nodes. Now there's no other choice. Please upgrade your software accordingly.

Node is still acting as `v0.16.x` but soon (matter of next few hours) it would be switched to `v0.18.1` built with:
```
CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE = Release
LOW_MEMORY_NODE  = OFF
CLEAR_VOTES      = OFF
```
Available APIs:
```
public-api = database_api
public-api = login_api
public-api = account_by_key_api
public-api = network_broadcast_api
public-api = tag_api
public-api = follow_api
public-api = market_history_api
public-api = raw_block_api
```

Please expect some performance degradation during next few hours. Reindexing full node is a pain, especially under such high load from clients.

<center>![diskstats_utilization-day.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmb3XaqdsRrgHkPkT5yqiSV86YGFCz9kCMwRcjjz31KtRo/diskstats_utilization-day.png)</center>

### Always up to date blockchain data for download
I am also serving an always up to date blockchain data:
`https://gtg.steem.house/get/blockchain/`
### Periodically updated, highly compressed blockchain data for download
There is also highly compressed version at `https://gtg.steem.house/get/blockchain.xz` (current as of March 30th, compatible with version `v0.18.1`, i.e. no need to resync, just replay) that might be useful when dealing with upgrades, hard forks, etc. or by those with slow connection. Smaller size (only ~3.7GB) at the cost of missing at most few days of blocks (which would be synced "normal way"), that is because it is created manually each time when needed.
File is compatible with `pixz` which can significantly speed up decompression time on multi-core machines.
### Debian Jessie steem binaries
Oh, there are also `xz` compressed, Debian Jessie binaries for `steemd` (low mem) and `cli_wallet`.



<sub>
If you believe I can be of value to steem, please vote for me ([**gtg**](https://steemit.com/@gtg)) as a witness on [Steemit's Witnesses List](https://steemit.com/~witnesses)
or set ([**gtg**](https://steemit.com/@gtg)) as a proxy that will vote for witnesses for you. 
**Your vote does matter!**
</sub>