Set up a wallet

Note that a desktop wallet is a must for setting up SmartNode, Web Wallet is not enough for this operation. Since I’m running a Win 10 OS, this guide will use Windows environment as background.

Download a desktop wallet from:

https://smartcash.cc/wallets/

At the final stage of installation, user will be asked where is the location the blockchain storage should be located at. Put this directory on SSD if you have one! This will greatly improve the initialization and I will explain it later.

The installation is pretty straight forward. After opening the wallet up for the first time, you will see the Blockchain syncing bar at the bottom left saying 40 weeks behind. The wallet is trying to download the whole blockchain for it to operate normally. And this is going to take forever to complete.

Here is how you can speed up the whole syncing process.

Completely close the wallet.

Proceed to the wallet download page again and download the bootstrap.

Click on it and the bootstrap will start to download with name txindexstrap.zip and 453 MB in size. Do this step as soon as you can because the download speed is quite slow running around 120 KB/s.

Go to the installed directory of SmartCash blockchain, delete the folders blocks and chainstate. Unzip the bootstrap txindexstrap.zip you have just downloaded, copy the blocks and chainstate inside to the installed directory of SmartCash blockchain where you just deleted the folders.

These bootstrap consisting a big portion of the current blockchain and so that you can use it to skip the long and never-ending syncing process executed by the wallet. This is something needed to be improved by the dev team.

Next step is creating a text file named smartcash.conf and add txindex=1 to it. Save and close the file.

Now you may open the wallet again.

Look at the loading page at the bottom, the loading bar is processing the bootstrap file that you just threw inside at the blockchain storage. And the speed was completely decided by the disk type of where the storage is residing.

I’ve made a huge mistake by storing the blockchain storage on my HDD to avoid wasting my precious SDD space. As you can see on the left pic, the Disk usage is at full 100% while the write speed is throttled around 300 KB/s. To give a clearer picture, this loading process took me slightly more than 24 hours to complete on a pretty decent rig.

To not further suffer in the future syncing process, I redo everything but placing the storage on a SDD. The write speed was as high as 9 MB/s and averaging at 4 MB/s as shown in the right picture, took me less than 3 hours to complete the job. Lesson well learnt.

Summary

• Local wallet is necessary to be fully synched before setting up SmartNode.
• Wallet synching can take a very long time.
• Placing blockchain storage at SSD can hugely increase synching speed.

Related post:

SmartCash#1 - My first crypto node setup for a passive income
SmartCash#2 - Acquiring 10,000 SMART

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Most of us must be watched the interview of the big boss @ned presenting our dearly Steem on a famous platform, Bloomberg. That was the first formal appearance in such a mainstream finance news provider, at least as far as I know and being informed as such by the elder steemians.

This is my first time watching the big boss talk to the mass audience who are most probably do not have the command of blockchain understanding. Kind of weird seeing him trying to explain things in a really layman term as I usually read discussion of techie big-shot like him in a very deep level. He handled the conversation well enough anyhow.

The funny thing is, when I watch he speaks in the video I feel some connection with this very guy as I tried to put myself as his target audience.

Oh, this is the guy (and the mighty Dan, of course) who created a platform where I spent lots of my time diving in it for a year like never before. Subconsciously I take him as a very down-to-earth, real and close guy explaining something to me.

• Is it because we both share a deep trust on Steem itself?
• Is it because I have been benefited financiaand spiritually ever since?
• Is it because he was trying to explain some concepts to me while those were already part of my beliefs?
• Is it because I know this guy has a account @ned which anyone can interact with freely, directly and he who owning that account could make possibly anyone’s day by giving them an upvote?

On the contrary

I’ve been a royal employee of Facebook for almost a decade. Yes, when you are generating revenue for a company even by just posting random text or pictures, you are basically working for them. Except that they are not paying you anything, some likes maybe.

This is my former boss, Marky was having his 2 days congressional hearing and medias were reporting it literally everywhere. I watched some of the highlights too but the babyface superstar is so far away from me. Although I know his FB profile is open for any incoming comments and interaction. However, everything seems very distant still.

The chances he will intereact with average joe like me is close to infinity zero. Even if he would, what can I get from him? A thumbs up, I guess.

I have passed the age using the amount of likes to satisfy my vanity. I’m tired of my news feed full with unwanted ads and I’m in need of seeking something new.

My career in FB fades away really quickly after joining Steem. And I have no regret at all.

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This series is to record my SmartNode journey. This is very much high risk experimental act and I’m prepared to lose all the fund invested. Do your own research as this is not a financial advice.

Buy SMART

SMART is very thinly traded now with limited exchanges which can find in this page. HitBTC and CryptoBridge will be the main choices. The former is having higher trading volume overall so I registered a new account and bought the SMART there.

One good thing about HitBTC is the user-friendliness that users do not need to do BS actions like KYC or taking a stupid photo. It is just plugs and plays.

As a SmartNode requires 10,000 SMART, I bought 10,100 SMART with the extra 100 just in case it will be needed for any transaction fee.

The price was around 0.0000119 BTC with a total cost of 0.1202 BTC which is equivalent to 1,137.64 USD as of now. Should be quite a good deal considering it has just dropped 12% today. This coin has been readily declining over a month, not sure what is actually happening behind the scene but I see no big deal-breaker bad news upon my research.

Furthermore, it is truly a pleasure to buy something that you have a high hope on with cheaper price. So I have a better appetite to buy things in red, guess I’m slowing getting away from the FOMO guild, which is good!

Related post:

SmartCash#1 - My first crypto node setup for a passive income

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This is a site with a collection of incoming tokens Airdrop events:

https://www.eosdrops.io/

If you are not holding EOS for short-term, it is strongly encouraged that to hold them at private wallet to take advantage of the airdrop events. You will never know what those tokens will worth in the future so why not grab some when they are literally giving it for free?

However, in order to be eligible for the airdrop the ETH address that holds EOS tokens must be first registered with EOS network. Refer to post below if you are not sure you have done so already:

https://steemit.com/eos/@fr3eze/validate-eth-address-registration-with-eos-before-it-is-too-late

To verify if EOS keypair is valid:

https://steemit.com/eos/@fr3eze/verify-eos-private-key-by-mapping-to-public-key

Holding EOS in exchange is the better idea for greater convenience but I personally feel much better to hold coins in my own pocket. Furthermore, this is not even some rocket-science to do as guidances are everywhere online. Following both guides above and you are certainly good to go, your EOS is going to nowhere other than the moon(hopefully).

这个网站可以一目了然的看到所有即将对 EOS 持有者空降糖果的项目，目前看来起码有六个。所以要不是短线投资的话，最好就是把 EOS 放入自己的 ETH 地址. 要知道交易所是不会把糖果派回给你的。

要注意的是所有 ETH 钱包要向 EOS注册过才会得到领糖果资格。以下两篇文章或许帮助得了你。

如何确定 ETH 地址已经注册 EOS？：https://steemit.com/eos/@fr3eze/validate-eth-address-registration-with-eos-before-it-is-too-late

如何确定 EOS 钥匙是有效的？：https://steemit.com/eos/@fr3eze/verify-eos-private-key-by-mapping-to-public-key

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Why running a node?

Crypto has been a large part of my life since I took the dive one year ago. I was deeply amazed how it could change one’s life completely, especially from the finance aspect. I never stop to looking for ways to increase my holding in BTC, thicken my overall net worth every day. There are already tons of way to earn coins or tokens and if I have to count things that I’ve done throughout the journey, it would be:

• Day trading with altcoins pair
• Join airdrops event
• Creating contents in Steem
• Hold coins for a medium or long-term and sell for profit

I think it is time to try something new. Running a node will be a totally different path in generating income and I regard that as one of the more immersive ways to get involve in a particular project.

Also, my system admin profession could be helpful in setting up nodes and this already sounds exciting to me as I’m already maintaining and setting up servers in the normal day job but to have my own machine that literally printing money? Sounds like a dream.

Why SmartCash?

Learning from the MasterNodes.online and several SmartCash communities, SmartCash has the following advantages:

• SmartCash has over 11k nodes running shows that it has a strong communities support.
• GitHub activity is not ultra active but not too bad either. Here is the listfor their GitHub repo.
• SmartRewards allows the holder to get 15% of the block rewards every 30 days without any withdrawal. Killer features, much like the Power-up system in Steem to encourage faith.
• SmartNode(their naming for node) will get 10% of Block Reward, on top of the SmartRewards.
• SmartNode only requires 10,000 SMART for operation. Pricing at $0.114 now, a node will just cost $1,140 excluding other minor costs.

• SMART just took a dive today and I see it as a good point of entry(I’ve passed the age to buy coins only in green.)

• The team has just announced their new privacy-oriented coin - BitcoinConfidential which will be airdropped to SmartCash owner at 10:1 ratio. Though I’m not impressed by the lame name, still a added bonus for entering now.

• To my surprise the team has an official account on Steem - @smartcash. I love Steem, and that makes me love those who embrace Steem.

Verdict

I will make this a series to record my SmartNode journey. This is very much high risk experimental act and I’m prepared to loss all the fund invested. Do your own research as this is not a financial advice.

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We are in the era of content creating. Content creators never had the opportunity as good as now to monetize their works. Leading by Steem, content publishing platforms backed by crypto and blockchain spring up like mushrooms ranging from the Chinese Yoyow, YOURS to the LBRY and GIFTO, and many more.

Since I already involved in the awesome Steem for about a year and most of my readers are most probably Steem users, I will use Steem as the main example in this writing.

We are all unique and good at something individually

This is the first assumption I have to make and I do believe in it unless you are a 3-year-old who cannot operate a computer properly yet. We have our full-time job to attend to, it would be an academic school if you are a student. If you already doing what you love in the full-time job, congratulation for landing a dream life that many can only dream of.

Often, we are usually good at something we don’t do for a living. If can be the mainstream hobbies like fitness, singing, drawing, dancing to the niche interest like programming, rare collectables, or art of makeup.

Literally, anything one interested in doing could be something others find interesting. And that could be the great source of content creating.

If you are good at nothing, I’m sorry but you need to get out of the boring unproductive life and pick up something for god’s sake.

Artist, graphic designer, painter

Art is what I do most in my spare time since joining Steem one year ago while working as a system admin for a day job, probably it is one of a few presentable skills I have got. Throughout the days of creating entries for art contests, I found a couple of ways to maximize the artwork value at a one-time effort, here is the formula:

I record the drawing process using DIY overhead camera so I can later publish it on dTube(not yet publishing). Since I have the video ready, it would cost me nothing to post it again on YouTube. People would love to watch art-process videos like that.

The finished artwork will be the main material for a formal write-up on Steem describing the making-of process. Better yet, instead of creating something randomly I can source for interesting contests and take part accordingly. By doing so, I can profit from the original post-payout and stand a chance to earn the prize.

Furthermore, my recent collaboration with @cryptogee will greatly enhance my audience stream for the artwork at the same time his stories could be complemented with some precise illustrations. While you can’t just force such opportunity to happen but the possibility is unlimited with Steem amazing communities.

In short, out of a single drawing I will end up with at least two content in different form, and multiply its profitability by participating in contest and collaboration.

Singing, dancing, performing artist.

You can turn anything into a content with the help of Steem platform. Take singing for an instance, you may record the singing process in the studio with a video. Extract the audio and upload it as a song to DSound, and upload the music video of you singing to DTube. Live streaming the singing via DLive could use a great way to build up fanbase quickly as well.

Finally, you may do a write-up regarding the song, contribute it to some singing challenges.

Other talents or interests

Applies the same formula to everything you love doing, without limitation.

Love to cook? Take photos of the process and make an article about the recipe, record the cooking process down and make it a video. If you are giving instructions or guides through the process, extract it out in audio format and you have the material of your new God of Chef podcast series.

Lego lover? No problem. Do a time-lapse video on how you build one model from scratch, write about the process and end product. Additional audio content if you are talkative. Or you may even do a live streaming via DLive.

The possibility is endless if you know which service to use.

Summary

So you got the idea now, it is about how to harvest multiple contents in a single activity. Think about how you can turn the readable content(Steemit) to a watchable video(DTube or DLive), listenable format(DSound), applicable software(Utopian) and many more.

One tip: To maximize the profit out of the hobby, you must be really good at that in order to stand out. Folks have no interest in watching fitness video that teaches how to accomplish 5 pushups.

Happy monetizing your skills!

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