Witnesses — The Maintainers and Guardians of the YOYOW Network

Preface

The producers of bitcoins are called “miners”. Their job is to use Bitcoin mining machines to conduct hash computing and try to find the correct random number. The first miner to find that random number gets the right to record transactions on that block and receives block rewards and transaction fees within that block. Essentially, the miners mine to compete for the ledger-keeping right and the rewards. During this process, the Bitcoin distributed ledger (blockchain) gets updated and maintained. The YOYOW network also needs someone to record the transaction information (block producing) for the ledger to be updated continuously. These ledger-keepers have another name in YOYOW — — “witnesses”.

What is a witness?

A witness, as the name suggests, witnesses and records the transaction information for the entire network. A witness receives token rewards from the system when producing blocks. What makes witnesses different from miners is that, first of all, they are selected through voting and staking, and take turns to produce blocks in a set order. This means for every block in the block producing process, the witness is already set, and the reward is pretty much set as well. Secondly, the entry threshold for Bitcoin miners is quite low, so theoretically anyone can participate in mining. However under the hashing power competition, the threshold for producing blocks is high. Since in reality the YOYOW network has only a small number of witnesses, and each witness needs to compete for the roles within the community, therefore the threshold for becoming a witness is relatively higher and for block producing is considerably lower.

YOYOW’s Mixed Consensus

So, how to become a witness? To answer this question we must first understand the consensus mechanism. The consensus mechanism decides how ledger-keeping rights are received. Bitcoin uses Proof of Work (POW) mechanism, which means the person who proves a most amount of work done gets to record transactions. This process is called “mining”, and all the participating nodes are called “miners”. EOS uses Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) with Byzantine Fault Tolerance. DPoS does not require waste of hash power resources for competing for ledger-keeping. Instead, it elects 21 Block Producers to take on the role of ledger keeper by giving token holders the voting rights, to ensure a smooth operation of the entire network. Therefore candidates need to campaign in the community and gain enough trust and votes from the EOS token holders to become Block Producers. So, what kind of consensus mechanism does YOYOW use? The answer is Proof of Stake + Delegated Proof of Stake (PoS + DPoS), which means you can become a witness (have ledger-keeping rights) either by vote or staking. YOYOW’s consensus mechanism is more advantageous comparing to BTS or EOS. By bringing in PoS, it reduces the problem of low degree of decentralization that is prevalent in Graphene projects, while ensuring the transaction speed of blockchain network. At the same time, it is more environmental friendly than the traditional Proof of Work consensus projects. Last but not least, it eliminated the potential risk of 51% attack.

You Can Become a Witness Too

During the actual operation of the YOYOW system, 21 witnesses (11+3+7) are pre-selected through the two types of election to produce blocks. The selected witnesses take turns to produce blocks, 3 seconds per block, and 63 seconds per round. When all 21 witnesses finish producing, that round of block producing ends, and the next round of election begins automatically. Next, let’s talk in detail about the two ways of becoming a witness.

Like EOS, the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism decides that we can become YOYOW witnesses through community voting elections. Similar to the democratic parliamentary system, YOYOW token holders are the “citizens” of this world, and the elected witnesses are the “MPs” (members of the parliament). Idealistically, the MPs represent the interest of all citizens, working together to promote the development of YOYOW ecosystem. 11 top witnesses and 3 standby witnesses can be elected by the token holders. Based on the voting results, the top 11 candidates are selected as top witnesses. All other candidates after the top 11 will take turns to produce blocks based on their received votes plus voting weight. Three candidates are selected per round, currently set to be from number 12 to 14.

If you are very passionate and wish to become a witness but the voting election threshold is too high for you, then there is no better way other than become a miner witness by staking YOYO. This is a benefit from YOYOW’s other consensus mechanism, the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. The Proof of Stake means that the witness nodes need to stake a certain amount of tokens on the blockchain like a deposit. The size of the stake decides the chance of being selected to create the next block and get rewarded. Basically, any account in the YOYOW system can stake a certain amount of YOYO and take turns to become a miner witness, based on staking rank, and weighted based on “valid staking amount”. Currently, it costs 1000 YOYO to register to become a witness in the YOYOW network, and the minimum staking amount is 10000 YOYO, therefore you need to have at least 11000 YOYO to become a witness. For instance: If there are only three candidates staking tokens, A, B and C, with A staking 6 tokens, B staking 3 tokens, and C staking 1 token, then for the next 100 blocks, A should be scheduled to produce 60 blocks, 30 for B, and 10 for C. Seven miner witnesses are selected for every round.

Rewards and Punishments for YOYOW Witnesses

Of course, witnesses that produce blocks in the YOYOW network will receive income rewards accordingly. Currently, the YOYOW committee has decided that each top witness receives 0.3 YOYO per block, each standby witness receives 0.3 YOYO per block, and each miner witness receives 0.5 YOYO per block. Based on the current market price of 0.30 Yuan, a top witness’s daily income is around 150 Yuan.

To prevent witnesses from cheating, if a witness produces two blocks at the same block height, it will be treated as attempting to create a fork and to implement double spending. If the network detects such situation or gets reported such action, once evidence is documented, the witness will be forced offline and part of the staked deposit will be deducted for penalty.

Conclusion

As producers in YOYOW network, the witnesses are responsible for maintaining and protecting the entire system. Without the witnesses, there will be no YOYOW network. If you have confidence in YOYOW, why not join the team of witnesses in the YOYOW network together with the people sharing the same goal to build a better YOYOW.

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