Dear Steem shareholders, Steemians, and Witnesses,

After spending most of last year with developing tools and libraries for Steem, I (@xeroc) have finally setup my company [ChainSquad GmbH](http://chainsquad.com) in Germany and am happy to also **apply for a witness slot on STEEM**.

Being part of @dantheman's endeavors throughout the last 3 years (even before official launch of BitShares), I have collected extensive knowledge of the technology and ran witnesses in BitShares 1.
The reasons for applying as witness for STEEM so late have been account keeping concerns (a necessary evil when running a GmbH) as well as my experiences made during the early days of Graphene when the software stack wasn't as stable as it is today.

### Expertise
Some of my (@xeroc) qualifications:

* Developer of 

  * python-graphene
  * python-btshares (unreleased)
  * python-steem
  * piston
  * streemian.com
  * count-less web and python tools for Steem and BitShares
  * stakemachine

* Founder of
  * ChainSquad GmbH
  * BitShares Europe
  * BitShares Testnet

Consultant for
  * BitShares (also as member of the on-chain committee)
  * Steem
  * PeerPlays
  * Muse
  * Bunkerchain Labs Inc.
  * Cryptonomex Inc.

### How to vote for this witness

* Using the cli-wallet:

    vote_for_witness YOU chainsquad.com true true

* Using piston:

    piston approvewitness chainsquad.com

* [Using Steemit.com](http://steemit.com/~witnesses) (at the bottom)

  ![](https://i.imgsafe.org/34ff97365a.png)

### Setup

The witness account is deployed on a **dedicated server** (not a VPS) built in a Netherlands data center. These specs can of course can scale with STEEM adoption as quickly as needed. It is maintained by @xeroc while the live and backup machines are operated by @riverhead.

We not only have been following good standard practices from the beginning but also greatly helped develop the standards to safely and reliably upgrade witness nodes on a live network.

### Follow

Be sure follow updates from @chainsquad!