What are witnesses, what they do and why you need to support them.

^Source

Since becoming a witness, it has come to my attention that as I try to gain votes and rise in rank, many people I speak to do not understand the role of Steem witnesses. I shall attempt to explain their tasks and responsibilities, their importance to the network, what makes a good witness, also why and how you should support them.

Gimme the low down, what DO they DO?

 
In the simplest terms, every transaction and interaction you make on the blockchain, be it from Steemit, Busy or any number of condensers (front ends) built on top of the Steem blockchain, has to be witnessed and processed by a set of people who create blocks, employing a consensus mechanism called a delegated proof of stake (DPOS). Witnesses run servers to a necessary specification for this task and are also required to produce a price feed, pooling price data from exchanges to ensure the correct value of Steem and Steem Dollars in the internal market. Put simply, without witnesses, Steem would not work.

Ok, sounds important enough. Anything else?

 
So far there have been nineteen hardforks, proposed software changes to the way Steem works. The witnesses play a crucial role in this by choosing to upgrade to the new software, or not. A hard fork happens when 67% of the top witnesses are all running the new version of Steem. The job of a witness is not to create any changes to the code, but whether to accept them or not. They can make pull requests but there is no guarantee these will be implemented.

Who can become a witness?

 
Anybody keen to support Steem and the blockchain is welcome to become a witness, provided they have the technical ability to run a reliable server to the required specification. There are many guides on creating and maintaining a witness, two of my favourites are by @someguy123 and @drakos.

Once set up, a witness puts out a post introducing their witness campaign, what they stand for and what they intend to bring to the community. See mine here. It's true that some of the top witnesses are devs and have the technical expertise to use the blockchain data to create various offshoots such as Steemworld.org, Steem Supply, Steem Bot Tracker etc. Others, like myself, I like to call 'community witnesses'. What I lack in dev skills I hope I make up for in building and maintaining communities to help other Steemians.

So, like, I should vote? How?

 
Everyone gets a total of 30 witness votes. On Steemit, go to the right of your avatar and click the 3 horizontal lines to the right.

A sidebar will reveal a list of choices. Look down the list for 'Vote For Witnesses'.

Clicking that will bring you to https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Upon opening the page you will be presented with a list of the top 50 witnesses.

If your choice for witness is not in the top 50, scroll below the list to this section where you manually enter their username (without a @), and click 'Vote'

You will be asked for your active key - not your posting key - to confirm your votes. If you can't find it, go to your wallet, click on 'permissions' and see your active key.

Remember, you have 30 votes, but don't use them willy nilly. I suggest checking @drakos's site here for important information regarding the top 400 witnesses.

Ok, what am I looking for?

 
If you look at my name in that list, you will see that my rank is 107. However, because there are 14 disabled witnesses above me, my effective rank is 93. If a witness is disabled for a long period of time, they are not doing their job.

Take a look at missed blocks. Sometimes it is unavoidable if a server goes down and a backup doesn't take over. Some of the top witnesses you may notice have a large number of missed blocks, but bear in mind the top 20 witnesses get a block around every minute, whereas someone as low as myself gets one every 12 or 13 hours - so within the same time frame they could potentially miss many more than I would, for example. If a witness server is disabled for any considerable length of time they are missing blocks, which has an ill effect on the network.

Next, check Feed Age. This is the price feed we pool from the exchanges. It needs to be kept current. Mine updates every 12 hours. If the price feed is not kept up to date, the witness is not fulfilling their duty.

What if I don't want the trouble of going through these lists in order to vote for witnesses?

 
I get it, charts and graphs aren't for everyone. Perhaps you just don't know all these mysterious witness folk. Return to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and scroll right to the bottom until you see this.

Using this, you can give your 30 witness votes to somebody else you trust to make hopefully the right decision as to who to vote for. Your voting power in effect gets added to theirs, making their witness votes that little bit stronger. This is how witnesses rise in rank. The number and power of votes determine their position.

What? Ranks? Why?

 
A block is produced every 3 seconds. As I alluded to earlier, the top 20 witnesses produce a block each every 63 seconds. Blocks are produced in 21 block rounds - 21 x 3 = 63 seconds. During each round the first 20 blocks go to the top 20 witnesses. The 21st goes to a back up witness outside the top 20, based on their rank. Their rank depends on how many mVests they have voted to them. As a rough guide 500 vests = around 1 SP. Therefore more votes and more vests = a higher ranking and higher chance of getting picked to produce a block.

So what do witnesses get out of it?

 
Apart from the satisfaction they are supporting this beautiful system we have in place? For every block they witness, they receive 1 Steem Power. For example, I currently witness a block roughly once every 13 hours. At this rate, over the course of 7 days I will witness 12 blocks (thereabouts). For that I will receive 12 Steem Power directly in my wallet. Over the course of a month this becomes 51 Steem Power at my lowly rank. In stark contrast, somebody like @aggroed at rank 7 will get a block every 63 seconds. The top 20 get about 0.1 SP a block. Over the course of a day this translates to 1 day = 24 hours/day × 60 minutes/hour × 60 seconds/minute = 86400 seconds/day / 63 seconds = 250 SP. Of course, he uses the majority of this to support @minnowsupport and delegates most of his power out.

So, to sum up.

 
Yes, it is important you vote for reliable witnesses. Use the tools I have shown you and check out the work they put out through posts. See if what they bring to the table appeals to you. If you don't feel like going through the trouble, proxy your votes to someone you trust - like me for example ^.^ Support those guys and gals that support you, make your Steem experience a good one and who's ideals you agree with and support.

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Like what I do? Vote for my witness https://steemit.com/~witnesses - scroll below top the 50 witnesses and enter my name in the text box, then click vote. Thanks for your support.

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