Steem Secret #6: Witnesses Votes Give The Most!
Votes on posts pay once. Votes for witness pay indefinitely up to 0.18 Steem every 63 seconds equal to over $300 A DAY in Steem Power for the top 20 witnesses! View the list of witnesses at https://steemd.com/witnesses and adjust witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses. When we would like to vote for a witness outside the top 50 such as jerrybanfield, type the account name in the box at the bottom of https://steemit.com/~witnesses and hit vote just once! If you click the blue upvote button beside any vote outside the top 50, that vote will then be removed! Refreshing the page is an easy way to verify the votes are there for any non top 50 witnesses! The voting box looks like this!
What is the easiest way to handle Steem witness voting?
The easiest way to vote for witnesses is to set a proxy. If we would rather never think about the word witness again, we can set someone we trust to make all of our 30 witness votes for us. I choose each of my witness votes carefully based on what the witness is giving to the community and/or how the witness has personally collaborated with me. If you would rather not think about witness voting again but still would like your vote to count, make me your proxy because then all witness voting is done automatically for you through my votes?
Are the top 20 Steem witnesses really earning $300+ a day?
YES! With the current price of Steem at around $1.20 and the current earnings for each witness equal to about 250 Steem Power a day, that is $300+ A DAY earned by EVERY top 20 witness. Here is a video explaining more which I will soon make into a full post with pictures showing the inside of the Steem witness system! Note that I used the word mining in the video to maximize traffic on YouTube while we call the system here Delegated Proof of Stake or just Steem witnesses to describe those participating in the process of creating the blockchain.
How many users vote for witnesses?
- With 312,805 accounts today according to https://steemdata.com/stats, only one witness @good-karma has more than 1% of existing users voting for him as a witness. No other witness has even 1% of total users voting which makes participation in the witness process even worse than voting for president in the US!
- Less than 8% of all users even make 1 vote for witness as explained a post by a fellow witness @lukestokes at https://steemit.com/witness-category/@lukestokes/how-many-steemians-are-not-voting-for-a-witness-i-found-the-answer. In summary, over 100,000 active users have never made even one witness vote. As you can see, we as witnesses are working to change that with continuing education about how important it is to vote for witnesses.
- Followers of @jerrybanfield have the lowest percentage of witness participation of any witness with 11,000+ followers making a total of 362 witness votes equal to about 3% of followers also voting for witness. Thank you very much to each voter on the list at https://steemdb.com/@jerrybanfield/witness that has taken the time to make a witness vote or proxy!
- Followers of @teamsteem and @jerrybanfield by total voting shares have the lowest participation among the top 100 witnesses with @teamsteem having almost enough follower voting power to be in the top 20 at 48.392 GV while the actual votes are 15.772 GV meaning less than a third of total voting power from followers is leading to witness votes. @jerrybanfield stats are close to the same with 32.676 GV owned by those following and a total of 10.831 GV in actual votes which is because of the generosity of a few whales following that took the time to vote!
Why are witness votes so critical to the future of Steem?
- With paying Steem Power to witnesses every day to build the blockchain, witnesses in the top 30 are earning enough to continuously have a greater influence in our community through author rewards and curation. When we vote those up we trust to give the most back, we are planting seeds to receive back the most in rewards ourselves.
- The top 20 witnesses make the decisions on which versions of Steem to run meaning that updates requested by Steemit Inc can be rejected if enough top 20 witnesses agree. When we vote witnesses up we trust to make decisions that benefit us, we are certain to have our interests represented going forward.
- Users often hate changing witness votes meaning once the vote is cast, it often takes a significant event to prompt a change. While it is good to have patience and tolerance with the life situations of each witness and not remove votes every missed block, not updating our witness votes on a regular basis can allow witnesses to keep earning even with little or no service to our community while those that are newer or less popular can invest a lot of effort without receiving much in return. Review witness status at https://steemd.com/witnesses by noticing the version, price feed, number of misses, and whether the witness name is crossed out or not. Notice the witnesses towards the bottom are active and still have offline witnesses above them including several offline for most of 2017. Before writing this post, I was also voting for two offline witnesses and just reached out of them yesterday after removing my votes to ask if they would be updating!
- Witnesses are our front line of defense against attack and are critical for our growth. Unsecured and inattentive witness servers make it easy disrupt our blockchain. While our choices for the top 20 witnesses are the most critical, the top 50 spots are essential to have witnesses most ready to serve in the top 20 at a moment's notice in case of emergency.
In summary, most of us put a lot of thought into our upvotes on posts carefully selecting the percentage and taking pride in the authors we upvote and recommending posts to our friends. According to the data, we often ignore making our most powerful upvotes in the form of support for witnesses. In my first month, I did not make any votes for witness either and hope this post is useful today for us to be aware of where our greatest voting power is available in the form of our witness votes!
Would you join us today in voting for witnesses at https://steemit.com/~witnesses and refresh the page for any upvotes for those outside of the top 50 to verify they went through correctly because when we participate in the witness voting process, we feel empowered in our community here on Steem?
OR
Love,
Jerry Banfield
I just did it! I voted u my proxy..i have great faith in your votes.. Keep up the innovative ideas!!
Alex I love the articles you write especially https://steemit.com/writing/@eco-alex/the-remarkable-diary-of-an-earthship-eco-builder-2-the-dream-was-born-why-earthship-s-are-amazing-the-need-to-be-self-sufficient and am honored you chose to set me as your witness proxy! I am planning to delegate Steem Power to you to use for the eco train. Am I correct in understanding I need to delegate directly to you and you will make the votes?
Jerry that is amazing news for the whole ecoTrain! You were always my desire for our V.VIP 'seat' and I am totally honored, and very happy indeed, to hear that you will be entrusting me to help us make great authors shine, and promote and encourage people to start writing great new content for Steemit. That and much more!
I was literally just about to start writing a post on what the ecoTrain is exactly. Quite a few people have been asking this lately as it is not obvious exactly what we are doing.. I think now is definitely the time to explain it so you can really see what we are all doing.
So, yes you are right that you will delegate your Steem Power to me eco-alex for to help upvote those posts that ecoTrain make. One thing i'd like to mention is that we only upvote our posts when we like them, and not just because they are on the ecoTrain. i spent a lot of time searching out great people who were not yet even on Steemit to start the ecoTrain up 2 months ago. Quality high value posts are our motto.. The general theme of the ecoTrain is posts about
"Things that can help make the world a better place"
This covers a huge range or topics, so the ecoTrain is not just about one thing or another.
I've just written a post on what is the ecoTrain so please check this out. It explains it quite well and I think after reading you will understand better what we are doing.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@eco-alex/ecowhat-here-s-what-this-ecotrain-thing-is-all-about
If you would like to email me about this I'm of course happy to chat on
steemit.eco.train@gmail.com
Many hearty thanks for your delegation!
@eco-alex
This is innovation in action. What even more amazing happenings are we going to see up ahead now? I can't wait to find out ...
Alex thank you for helping me understand how to move forward! I will be doing a tutorial and making the delegations soon for the eco train and a few others!
Veryy happy to support each other!
Look forward to seeing your delegation post!
Id like to invite you to write a post with ecoTrain. Once a week we collaborate with a question that we answer. The question this week is...
"What is the greatest gift youve ever given?"
Several of us ALL write from our own perspectives and then i cross link them all and we have great diversity of opinions that way. I love the spirit of giving and know how good it feels and how great things turn out when u do. Im sure u must have a story or two to share.
To further add value to this we also are awarding 10sbd to any followers who post their answer! Thereby we are encouraging new writers to try it out!
Were all posting on Monday so plenty of time to write...
Are you up for it!?
Thanks Jerry, I'm a passenger on the ecotrain and appreciate your interest in our goal of flooding the world with positive posts. :-)
Voted you for witness as well. Btw, you put me in upvotable without upvoting me :-)
Good post explaining some detail about witness' role. I've a few questions here:
Why do we have to go to the ~witness and then type your username for voting? Couldn't it be possible that you or any witness can provide us some direct link where we just need to click for the vote? Is it difficult to develop such a facility ...to make voting process easier for users?
Why do posting key is not enough for voting to witnesses and we need active key for this action?
Can you reveal your analysis of the witness you recommend right now (or on a regular basis) instead of asking for proxy rights to you?
I've seen such posts earlier too where new Steemians are disparaged as if they have done something wrong by not voting to any witnesses. How are they expected to vote any witness without even knowing what they are doing? Even one month is not sufficient to know 100 or more witnesses and selecting 30 best ones out of them.
What's wrong if no witness is voted? Instead of voting a wrong one, won't it be better to not to vote at all?
Where can I find a comparative chart or analysis for what each witness is doing or had done since becoming a witness?
Is there any channel or a time slot, where all witness canvass for votes and answer any queries we may have got for them?
@xyzashu love your questions and am happy to answer!
The best place to reach many witnesses on steemit is in the comments on witness updates. A few witnesses are hard to locate in the community which might also make figuring out why to vote for them challenging!
Thank you for asking these questions and giving me this opportunity to respond!
WOW @jerrybanfield, I wasn't expecting such a comprehensive reply from you. It made a lot of things crystal clear to me now. Your answer to point 5 prompted me to vote for you, which I just did. But I checked up and noticed that I've already voted up to 6 other witnesses. So as explained by you in no.4, I assume if I give you a proxy, my other 6 votes would also be judged according to your preferences and you may change those too. So I'm very much looking forward to your actions on your answers in point 3 & 6, as soon as it can be taken at your end 😊
Many thanks for pointing to the several ways to interact and know more about witnesses in point 7.
I'm glad to read all your answers. Wanted to ask a few more at the time of questioning but had to leave at that time for some other work. But now, I think you have given me enough pointers so that I can make some efforts to find those on my own. Many many thanks to you for all you do! 💓
Would you mind if I give you a small tip! post ed here?
@xyzashu thank you very much for your reply here letting me know how you read what I shared and for the tip also! I am going to start using @tipu soon too!
Hi @jerrybanfield! You have just received 0.101 SBD tip from @xyzashu!
Check out the newest post from @xyzashu: 50 Word Story Contest Week #24 - "Being Human " and follow if you like the content :)@tipU quick guide | earn interest in @tipU profit
These answers are really clear and make me study more.
Set you as proxy I feel like i'm in good hands. Thanks for your support of ecotrain!
Tim thank you very much for trusting me to make all of your votes for witness by setting me as a proxy 5 minutes ago!
Honesty and transparency are very important to me. You demonstrate both of these. They come through in you videos and your written articles.
I have been following you for some time now, even prior to your joining SteemIt. Therefore; I voted for you as a witness.
I am now going to ask you to be my proxy. I just set it up, so hope it works out!
Respectfully,
@sargento
@sargento thank you very much for trusting me as your proxy and showing the screenshot in your comment!
You are more than welcome! Have a great week!
I just set you as a proxy. :) May my witness votes be in good hands. :)
Paolo thank you very much for setting me as your proxy!
You're welcome! I knew I made the right decision of doing so. :)
Perfect! Done!
Thanks for taking the trouble off my hands! You haven't let me down yet @jerrybanfield
Cheers!
Me also, I have only been active on Steemit for a short time but I see Jerry working the hardest to promote the site and also to help others while doing so. I can support and develop a lot of trust for someone like that.
I know @deaconlee !!
If I have a question I just go to his profile and look for the video with the answer cause there always is one.
I'm actually watching him on DTube right now haha
Josh thank you very much for setting me as a proxy 15 minutes ago and trusting me to handle all of your witness upvotes!
I've already cast my vote on you Jerry ,can I still make you as my proxy?
Sure we can set anyone as a proxy even if we have voted at https://steemit.com/~witnesses by putting in the name of the account we want to proxy for us at the bottom of the page under proxy!
Lee thank you very much for setting me as your proxy!
yeah niceeee post i'm voting for jerrryyyyy :) i set you as my proxy
![](https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://steemitimages.com/DQmdF7MAXqbF7bTsWLD79UL9FRfLX7RzG87egUvcUkJFJBR/2017-08-21_231546.png)
@victorialuxx thank you very much for resteeming this post and setting me as your proxy!
you are welcome @jerrybanfield you do great job for steemit community so you deserve votingg for witness :)
I'm quite new to steemit so trying to get my head around it all, I set you as my proxy @jerrybanfield anyway. Thank you for the informative videos.
Skyhooks thank you very much for setting me as your proxy!
Hi Jerry, Voted you as witness. Aim to be top 20 here before you run for President. That way the Steem Community can help you further ;)
@ladydiana thank you very much for voting for me as a witness 6 hours ago and your suggestion to work on the witness more before the presidential campaign :)
@jerrybanfield You are so much invested in steem, I trust you and will set you as my proxy!
Daniel thank you very much for trusting me to be your proxy!