Greetings everyone, ever felt like steemit has a political undertone to itself?
Well this post tries to address that fact.

source of image

Hello witnesses today's about yall!

To those who dont know, simply put, a witness is someone similar to a bitcoin miner. They are the guardians or monitors of the steem blockchain .

Note that steemit.com is a website which runs on the steem blockchain. Since steem is trying to be decentralized, it simply means that versions of the steem software are running at the same time on different computers, and this is where witnesses come in.

To quote @sykochica,

• the Steem blockchain makes 21 blocks in 63 second rounds (avg 1 every 3 seconds) with each top 19 witness in the witness list, being each assigned 1 block to produce, 1 produced by a miner, and 1 by a back-up witness.
  source

Whats a block? want other explanations? Go read that post, because this post is about something much deeper.

The witnesses and their campaigns

Top witnesses like reolandp and gtg have no need to campaign or otherwise solicitate for votes, seeing as they already at the top of the witness foodchain, but other witnesses, specifically those below the 20 mark actively ask for votes, intiate projects for the seemily good of steemit, and just generally be nice to everyone in order to get that vote.

But why?

Well some may be doing it for the good of the steem blockchain, but I do know how humans behave, the human nature to make money at all cost, and only when we look at it do we actually see the reassons why so many witnesses solicitate for votes.

• Witnesses get paid 1 Steem Power (1370 SP per day) for each block they produce, so the top 19 get paid equally, since they each produce 1 block per 63 second cycle, with backups and miners being paid when they do get assigned a block. The amount of blocks assigned to backups are proportional to their witness vote share.
  same source as above

Through research, going to posts months old, I found out that witnesses get paid for each block they successfully mine.

This in essence is what creates the political undertone of steemit.

Now like I say, some may be doing it for the good of the steem blockchain, but If I had a supped up computer, and unlimited power supply, I would want to be a witness too. Just throw in some campaign promises, create something thats beneficial to the community(so people can see me as a good lover of steem and not for the monetary value attached with being a witness), help out newbies and minnows(yes minnows carry the highest percentage of votes because we are the majority), and start following a ton of people.

essentially the steps a politician would take

The parallelism between the two concepts extends as far as forming political parties or alliances, getting support from other witnesses and possibly even brokering deals behind the curtains!

Different factions/ political parties.

Looking at the way steemit requires witnesses to come in, it is no wonder that different factions, alliances if you will, between witnesses have risen up.

@Pfunk and his crew of admins such as @abit etc,

@aggroed and his minnowsupport crew ,( @teamsteem, @neoxian, @theprophet, @someguy123, @thecryptodrive)

other factions exists, as well as standalones who do their works their way such as @xeldal @bitcoiner etc

Who should you vote for?

Im not going to tell you which witness to vote for, but Iam going to tell you criterias in which i used in voting for witnesses.

Vote for a witness that brings productivity and support to users on steemit.

I for one want the witness handling my block and transactions to be one which is sincere, and ready to work for the steemit community. Someone who has earned the trust of the community, and someone who; if they pulls their support on the project they initiate, can lead to his/her downfall as a witness. Someone like @aggroed or @bitcoiner (they both have sites related to steemit thats helping out the community)

Vote for a witness that's securing you on steemit

Pfunk and acidyo does this quite well, I know in the past I may have come in hard of him, but after studying his posts, I can appreciate the work he does. A recent incident involving a scammer poising as @micheal-b was recently busted thanks to the timely work of pfunk, and acidyo. Thats what I look out for
scam busted

Vote for those who support good content

This is essentially where the rest of my votes come in, @xeldal @curie @joseph etc are some witnesses that I've found support good content.

I think the maximum amount of votes one can give is 20, not sure, but I wish to use my votes on people who are beneficial to the blockchain, and you should too.

[edit] just found our @adamm is also a witness, promo-uk for the win! going to vote him now

I'm not telling you to follow these guys, am not soliciting for votes, I'm just giving reasons why I chose to vote for these people.

To SEE the top 100 Witnesses go here
To CAST your votes go here and click the upvote arrow by their name
If you cant find the witness to vote for, use the search bar, put up their username, and then vote.

You can also see Witness Updates in the category thread

The sinister or genuine plot

Now depending on how you view situations,(or how the political scene is in your country) you may view the be quick to judge that all the witnesses are doing is so they can make major cash from mining blocks, or you could argue that the witnesses are the pinnacle of human honesty and integrity, working not for the money but for the good of all steemit.

Whatever your view is on and about witnesses, we can all agree on one thing, that witnesses hold the value of indeed the whole steem blockchain standing.

THANKS

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Do you have contrary views on the subject? or you feel I said something wrong? Wanna give a suggestion or ask a question? come in on the comments and lets interact.