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It's been a year since I fired up my Witness server on the BLURT blockchain. It's been an eventful journey, full of discoveries, encounters and, above all, blocks, lots of blocks!

Rewind to a year ago, block 20,285,328 was the first one I carved my Witness signature on. Fast forward to today, the tally has skyrocketed to 30,542,402. That's over 10 million blocks and one whole year - a perfect time to reflect and commemorate.

In this period, my trusty server only missed 11 blocks out of roughly 430,000. If you're crunching the numbers, that's a staggering 99.997619% efficiency rate! We've weathered through three hardforks, navigated a system bug and survived a blockchain halt. These were tough times, but they brought the BLURT community closer, helping me forge connections with my fellow witnesses.

Over the past year, I've had the great pleasure of seeing my Witness climb to 10th place in the ranking of Blurt blockchain witnesses, thanks to the 116 Blurtians who put their trust in me through their governance vote.

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Witness Server: The Backbone of the Blockchain

A Witness on the Blurt blockchain, also known as a block producer, serves as a vital pillar in maintaining the robustness, reliability, and fairness of the network. This role encompasses several responsibilities which are crucial to the thriving ecosystem of Blurt.

1. Block Production: The primary duty of a Witness involves engaging in a continuous dialogue with other Witness servers. This dialogue results in the recording of new blocks on the Blurt blockchain. Each block is like a ledger page, encapsulating an array of transactions. These transactions can vary widely, including but not limited to upvotes on posts, new post publications, comments, and Blurt transfers between wallets.

2. Setting Network Parameters: Another essential aspect of being a Witness is setting parameters that dictate the various costs associated with using the Blurt blockchain. These parameters might define account creation fees, fixed transaction costs, and variable costs, among other things. Each Witness proposes their desired values for these parameters, and if the majority of Witnesses agree on the same values, they are implemented across the network.

3. Stewardship of the Blockchain: Above all, a Witness acts as the custodian of the blockchain's stability and proper functioning. They ensure the integrity of funds within the network by accepting or rejecting system updates or hardforks, a responsibility not taken lightly.

The power to choose who serves as a Witness lies in the hands of the Blurt community. Each Blurt holder has the right to vote for the Witnesses they believe will best steward the network. The total amount of Blurts owned by a Witness's voters determines their ranking. Higher ranking translates to more influence over the blockchain's operations, giving more weight to their decisions and proposals.

The Witness role, therefore, is not only about maintaining the technical health of the blockchain but also about advocating for and implementing the democratic will of the Blurt community.

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A Year of Building, Learning, and Growing

Beyond the blocks and bytes, my journey with BLURT has been much more expansive. My initial involvement with Blurt was primarily as an author, sharing my expat life in Thailand, my travels, and my passions. Deciding to be a Witness on the Blurt blockchain implied investing in it, which is why over the months, I acquired 1.6 million BLURT (including just over 100,000 again this month), primarily from Probit since it's the only exchange recognized by CoinGecko and CoinMarketCap.

But as a developer and Witness, I knew I could do more for this blockchain, prompting me to take on a few challenges.

BeBlurt

When I first arrived on Steemit in March 2018, I immediately had the desire to create a frontend for this blockchain. As an author, I felt that the tools offered by Steemit or Busy were missing many features. However, at the time, I couldn't find the time to start. Then came eSteem and Steempeak.

When I arrived on the Blurt blockchain, I found myself in a similar situation and felt the same desire. The difference was that this time, I had the opportunity to put my project into action. Hence, BeBlurt was born nine months ago.

BeBlurt is still young, only nine months old, and many features are still to be added (since it is developed from scratch). But as it continues to evolve, BeBlurt is increasingly resembling the idea I had for it. A place for authors, readers, but also for curation groups, community owners, witnesses, etc. A place where there are not only posts, but also lots of information, whether through dashboards (to track your progress), governance information (proposals, witnesses), and tools (delegation, Discord bot, etc.).

With the recent addition of Communities, I believe BeBlurt is ready for the next phase, which is onboarding.

dBlurt

What better way to learn the workings of a blockchain than to dive into its heart by developing a Typescript client that allows developers to connect their applications to the Blurt blockchain? So, 6 months ago I released my first version of dBlurt which is an open-source (BSD-3 license) based on Johan Nordberg's dSteem client for the Steem blockchain. I have adapted and developed it to integrate everything Blurt has to offer, including the entire Nexus community connectivity.

With BeBlurt, I reach all Blurtians. With my Blurt blockchain client, dBlurt, I reach developers and enable them to easily connect their applications to the Blurt blockchain. That's the initial idea.

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dBlurt repo

dBlurt is available on

gitlab: https://gitlab.com/beblurt/dblurt
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@beblurt/dblurt

and a documentation generated using TypeDoc is available at https://dblurt.beblurt.com/

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Today, dBlurt is at version 0.9.26 (yes, I don't always post to announce updates haha), with the latest iteration integrating Nexus interfaces (Blurt blockchain's community module).

Creating this module really helped me to have a clear vision of the workings of the Blurt blockchain and has been an excellent learning method.

Blurt Nodes Checker

Over the past year, I also developed the Blurt Nodes Checker module, which allows developers to integrate a preventive system to check the status of different RPC nodes, creating an automatic switch of RPC node in case of failure. This library is also open-source (license GPL-3.0).

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Blurt Nodes Checker repo

Blurt Nodes Checker is available on

gitlab: https://gitlab.com/beblurt/blurt-nodes-checker
npm: https://www.npmjs.com/package/@beblurt/blurt-nodes-checker

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BeBlurt RPC Node

Why stop when we're on a roll? Hence, six months ago, I launched an RPC Node, both to fill a void (no RPC offered Nexus, the community module of the Blurt blockchain, which I needed for developing BeBlurt) and due to the low number of RPC servers in service.

Running an RPC node is the most expensive type of blockchain server due to the high specs required (in terms of CPU, RAM, and disk space).

To date, the BeBlurt RPC node is still the only one to integrate Nexus and should soon be joined by the official Blurt RPC. As for the others (especially those that are still working, if they exist), I have no idea whether they will be updated to include Nexus.

A Year Full of Learning and Growth

The learning curve this past year has been steep, but incredibly rewarding. From navigating the technical intricacies of running a Witness server, an RPC Node, developing BeBlurt to connecting with community members - the journey has been enriching in ways beyond measure.

All this also gave me the tools I needed to produce my monthly Blurt blockchain analysis post. Allowing me to take the pulse of the Blurt blockchain on a regular basis.

Of course, a year ago the price of BLURT was higher, and there were more people, but I'm still convinced of the potential of this blockchain and have no regrets whatsoever about the investment I made.

This past year can be considered as a set-up, a preparation, the goodwill of BeBlurt in order to be able to start onboarding campaigns in good conditions.

What's next?

As I've previously mentioned, the next step is implementing an account creation system with a referral link feature. This means that a user who creates an account originating from another account's marketing activity will have the latter added as the referrer of the new account. This will allow the referrer to receive a portion of the publication earnings from the newly created account for a certain period of time, just like a company's sales representative would.

I aim to offer this system to any frontend of the Blurt blockchain, not just for BeBlurt exclusively. Also, I don't want to use the json_metadata variable from the client account, which is likely to be deleted by a non-compatible frontend, so the only remaining solution is to use Nexus (through custom_json operations) to achieve this.

This calls for the creation of a testing environment, commonly referred to as a TESTNET on the blockchain. This allows for transactions to be performed on a test blockchain without impacting the production one, which is much less stressful and more in line with best practices.

I am currently in the process of setting up a TESTNET, another new thing that should help me go one step further in my understanding of this blockchain, which will be opened to other developers wishing to test their ongoing developments, depending on the demand.

For your information, BeBlurt already manages a referral system either via short links, where the referrer is encapsulated in the link, or by appending ?r=@myaccount at the end of any BeBlurt URL. The system to be implemented on BeBlurt will also allow any Blurtian to purchase (while paying blockchain fees) account creation coupons to distribute in their marketing operations. These coupons will incorporate their account as the referring account. I hope this will facilitate impressive onboarding campaigns in the future.

Conlusion

In conclusion, I'd like to thank one person without whom all this would probably have been very complicated. It's @saboin.

To help you better understand the role of @saboin, the man behind the scenes, on Blurt allow me to make an analogy: a Blurtian is like a person who watches the snow fall outside his window on a winter's evening. He doesn't realize that if he's not cold, it's thanks to the heating engineer, if he can see clearly, it's thanks to the electrician, if he's sheltered, it's thanks to the bricklayer, and so on...

And @saboin is all that! The person who makes it possible for you to see the photos in the posts, the person who makes it possible for you to access the blockchain, and much more, no matter which frontend you use.

So don't hesitate to take the time to give him support through a vote to his witness https://beblurt.com/@saboin/witness or here https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=saboin

And why not take a few extra minutes to browse the various Blurt Witnesses profiles here: https://beblurt.com/witnesses

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_{Original background photo of this post by Sagar Patil on Unsplash}

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Thank you for your continued support through a vote on my witness or a Delegation to the BeBlurt Delegation program. Together, let's continue to thrive within the Blurt blockchain ecosystem.

@nalexadre 10th Witness (Blocks producer) on Blurt

_{Join or Create a Blurt Community}

_{BeBlurt (Blurt frontend): https://beblurt.com}

_{on IOS/Android: https://beblurt.com/s/aMGBrg}

 

_{BeBlurt Delegation program: manual curation + 85% reward back}

_{https://beblurt.com/mydelegation/@beblurt}

 

_{Witness: https://beblurt.com/@nalexadre/witness}

_{Proposals: https://beblurt.com/proposals}

_{Twitter: https://twitter.com/be_blurt}

_{Discord: https://discord.beblurt.com}