After **364 days** of hard work, @utopian-io is excited to announce to have reached the 19th position in the Steem witnesses rank. Thanks to your support and witness votes, we are in a position to continue contributing to the Steem ecosystem.

![update](https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://i.imgur.com/9dgC0M6.jpg)

### Utopian & HF20

While @utopian-io was jumping in and out the top 20 during the Hard Fork, we were paying more attention to the actual upgrade, following discussions with the other witnesses and challenging us making sure to be among the first ones applying the patches as they happened. 

In addition to our involvement and engagement in the upgrade process, the Utopian Open Source Radio Show this week hosted a number of prominent witnesses who were kind enough to join the conversation to help clarify the state of things on the blockchain. Our thanks to @themarkymark, @pharesim, @lukestokes, @reggaemuffin and @therealwolf for their insights! The full show recording will be published in the following days.

### Utopian Witness Setup & Full Node

Currently, Utopian has both main and backup witnesses running Steem 0.20.3 on 64GB DDR3 RAM dedicated machines.

The Utopian witness servers are managed by @helo, who also runs his own witness server, and is charged with maintaining and updating the witness server, and responding to emergencies or issues when needed. In coordination with Gregory , our CTO, and the whole development team in Utopian, the witness servers are professionally maintained to provide maximal uptime and reliability.

As Utopian stabilises its position in the top 20 witnesses, we are looking to setup a public full node and we are already in the process of gathering all the requirements.

### What Utopian is doing for the Steem Ecosystem

Utopian has been empowering Open Source on the Steem blockchain, by utilizing its voting power to score and incentivise contributions to awesome projects and applications, many of which are based on the Steem blockchain. 

One of our key roles on the blockchain has been to serve as a bridge between many open source developers and the Steem blockchain. We’ve done this not only by offering incentives, but also by making sure to guide newcomers through the journey, and providing them with the tools and exposure to help their open source projects thrive.

With the Steem blockchain being the birthplace of Utopian, it only makes sense that our support of open source projects is focused first and foremost on projects on the Steem blockchain. Many of the tools, applications and Steem initiatives you know (and use) are able to grow and thrive through the support of Utopian.

Among the initiatives and projects supported by Utopian:

- ***Quasar Framework*** https://steemit.com/@quasarframework. The stellar Node + Vue framework with over 7000 stars on Github.
- ***Byteball*** https://steemit.com/@byteball.org. A cryptocurrency platform for mass world adoption.
- ***EFTG by the Blockchain Competence Centre of the European Commission***. A system that offers a single view of the information currently stored at different Member States' infrastructures built with the Steem blockchain.
- ***Beem*** by @holger80. The python library to easily interact with the Steem blockchain, now used by hundreds of developers and widely accepted as the standard.
-  ***SteemPress*** https://steemit.com/@steempress-io. SteemPress brings Steem to WordPress. Now at over 1M delegated voting power.
- ***D.tube*** https://steemit.com/@dtube. The most relevant decentralised platform for hosting and streaming video.
- ***eSteem*** https://steemit.com/@esteemapp. Mobile and Desktop app for the Steem blockchain.
- ***SteemSTEM*** https://steemit.com/@steemstem .  The STEM community on the Steem blockchain. Utopian is proud to help such an ingenious initiative.
- ***SteemPlus*** https://steemit.com/@steem-plus. The browser extension which enriches the Steem frontends with necessary functionalities.
- ***ActiFit*** https://steemit.com/@actifit.  A mobile application that rewards you with both STEEM & AFIT tokens for your fitness activities.
- ***Hede.io*** https://steemit.com/@hede-io. The knowledge sharing dictionary to replace Wikipedia on Steem.
- ***SteemHunt*** https://steemit.com/@steemhunt. The Steem application that rewards you for digging awesome products.
- ***Peer.query*** https://steemit.com/@peerquery. Peer to peer collaboration powered by Steem.

KnackSteem,  SndBox, Busy.org, 1UP, SteemMakers, SteemConnect, Archipelago, Steeditor, SwapSteem, Steemia, MineColonies, Steemqa, Steemnova, Hapramp(1Ramp)... and many more through the past year.

We believe that by being a Steem witness in a prominent position, we can continue to grow our ability to further support these and other new projects born on the Steem blockchain every day.

### Power in Numbers

The [Utopian Discord server](https://discord.gg/azdmM3v) is currently a central meeting place for hundreds of contributors, collaborating and conversing daily, striving and working to create innovative Steem projects. With a professional core community of over 40 members, specializing in development, content, community management, translations and more, we’re quickly becoming the main force driving the open source development community to the Steem blockchain.

### What is Utopian Up to Next?

The development team at Utopian is labouring tirelessly to prepare the new Utopian frontend, Utopian.io v2, for launch. Though development is taking longer than anticipated, we assure you that this is only because we’re constantly working to bring a more complete, sustainable and scalable solution for the growth of our community. 

Currently, the base code for Utopian v2 is available on https://github.com/utopian-io/v2.utopian.io. The platform is being built using Vuejs and the Quasar Framework, and we will soon be allowing contributions to the repository, along with some tempting bounties for our awesome community of developers.

With the new Utopian.io we hope to revolutionize the open source collaboration ecosystem and economy, ultimately coming closer to the Utopian global vision - empowering open source.

It is our hope you will choose to join us on this journey, and support our activity on the Steem blockchain by casting one of your witness votes for [utopian-io](https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=utopian-io&approve=1) and [helo](https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=helo&approve=1).

**A special thanks to all our Moderators, Community Managers, the DaVinci team, SteemSTEM and to all our supporters in this challenging and unique journey.**


***The Utopian Community***