Source
Well 2 weeks ago I did remove some witness votes. Some became inactive others … well others are probably doing great things for the community but I don’t see it, or to be honest I didn’t profit from it.

Yesterday I did get a discord message from a Steemians asking me to reconsider the removal of the vote for the @ocd-witness. This Steemian has done a lot for the community so I did reconsider the removal of my vote.
During the discussion I also explained why I did remove the vote.
The reason was more or less that I never have been visited by one of the @ocd curators. There are 2 probably reasons for this.

• My posting quality just isn’t good enough
• The curators aren’t interested in the topic I write.
  So, in my opinion there was no use to have a witness vote for this project!

Well I got a pretty decent reply, which start to make me think.
The answer had 3 key points in it:

• Lots of curators of the @ocd became inactive, so there are only a few left, which makes it impossible for them to have a broad interest in the complete topics posted on the steem blockchain.
• Lots of people have giving up on curation
• Project really have to advertise themselves to others to know who to vote for as a witness and for the witnesses every vote counts, doesn’t matter how big or small the vote is.

Well these honest answer were enough for me to re-install my witness vote for the @ocd-witness.

Apologies

So my apologies to all curator witness account. The removal of the vote was pure selfish! I have reinstated all the witness votes for the curator project that I do know!
Sometimes we have to see the bigger picture instead of stop looking at the boundaries of our connections! These curator groups did prevent people from the burn chart, and maybe they have never upvoted one of my posts, still the votes distributed by them probably did drip down to me. All account which are active and getting bigger, will cast bigger upvotes or do upvote more people. This way it will have had an influence on my account!

This is also why, that besides steempeak, @ocd will be the sole beneficiary of the day for my main post. 20% of the earning will go to them!
@curie will be a beneficiary somewhere next week!

Most witnesses do have a negative operational cost!

Well depending on the set-up and configuration of the witness node, the cost of running a witness node vary from $50 to a whopping $500 or more.
Meaning that with the lowest configuration a witness needs to earn 200 steem per month to cover the costs. I did read all submitted replies on the Witness Survey.
And more than 95% of them do have a negative operational cost! And most of them do pay the costs from running their witness node out of their own pocket and keep on steem on the steem blockchain!

But we have to make a distinction between the witnesses. In my opinion there are 2 sorts of witnesses.
One type of witness is just here to make a profit from running the witness account and don’t care about the steem platform!
The other type of witness did start a witness node to support the steem blockchain and community. Maybe they wouldn’t have done it, when no extra steem would flow in, but still they did.
On most of these steemians are now running on a negative operational cost! And this is where the danger lies for the complete steem blockchain!

What if lots of these kind of witnesses dropp out and stop operation their witness servers? Will this endanger the steem blockchain? @dragosroua did write a post about this a few weeks ago, this post can be found here?
https://steemit.com/steemit/@dragosroua/a-few-thoughts-about-a-potential-witness-crisis-we-may-hit-at-some-point

A call for action for every steemian!

It is the duty of every steemian, no matter how big or small their SP holdings are, to vote for witnesses.
But the problem is that it is sometimes hard to find to which type of witness a witness belongs and how commited they are to the steem blockchain.
There are several reason to vote for a witness. But these reasons have to your reasons not mine!
It is important to support the witnesses you have faith in that they will keep on supporting the steem blockchain! These committed witnesses are the ones who can prevent one of the scenarios described by @dragosroua!

For me personally I do have a look at the following before voting for a witness!

• Do they care about the steem blockchain or are they just in it for the profit?
• Do they offer added value to the steem blockchain? (Curator projects, tools, dapps, or something like that)
• Are they active on the steem blockchain?

We also have to admit that we maybe focus to much on the growth of our own accounts and do forget the ones which are making this possible. So it would be great to have more people supporting each other with the Beneficiary functionality which some condensers do offer.
In the past week I did gave away each day 25% of the earning of my main post. I know that this isn't much, but if we all should do this we can support people/projects in multiple ways!

As you can see this resulted in the past week into 6.4 steem and 6.4 SP. Yes this slows down the progress of my account but by doing this I hope to encourage others. When setting up my list of people and projects I didn't look at their wallet, I just want to support or thanks people for the past year! By doing this you can help project with finding the funding for their development, support witnesses to help getting to break even and so on!

A call for action of all witnesses

I do know that it is no fun to advertise yourself, which could be seen by many as begging for votes!
Some witnesses do write a weekly or monthly report how their nodes are running, which configurations they did change and stuff like that.
But what I would like is that the witnesses would write at least once a month a post, about what they do think about Steem and the future of steem!
The witness survey (@witnesssurvey)was a good start but they should have written the conclusion of the survey! Please do so!
So this a call to all witnesses in the top 100 to expose yourself! Why are you a witness and how do you see the future of steem. Make this a monthly post!
This will make it a lot easier for us to vote for witnesses in which we trust, to vote for witnesses which are transparent, …

So here is the list of the witnesses in the top 100 which are still active. Please respond to this call of action because it is utmost important! I don’t care if you are powering down or not, there could be valid reason for doing so like paying for the witness node and so on!
But please give us some insight!

@gtg, @aggroed, @timcliff, @good-karma, @roelandp, @blocktrades, @smooth.witness, @ausbitbank, @someguy123, @followbtcnews, @jesta, @lukestokes.mhth, @utopian-io, @curie, @yabapmatt, @clayop, @anyx, @drakos, @thecryptodrive, @cervantes,
@riverhead, @xeldal, @pfunk, @bhuz, @liondani, @pharesim, @therealwolf, @busy.witness, @abit, @themarkymark, @netuoso, @wise-team, @reggaemuffin, @steempress, @stoodkev, @teamsteem, @steemhunt, @blockbrothers, @ihashfury, @furion
@jackmiller, @ocd-witness, @arcange, @aizensou, @patrice, @kevinwong, @firepower, @actifit, @nextgencrypto, @fyrst-witness, @helpie, @adsactly-witness, @delegate.lafona, @steemed, @neoxian, @holger80, @dragosroua, @fulltimegeek, @steemgigs
@liberosist, @ats-witness, @bukio, @guiltyparties, @justyy, @stem.witness, @steemcommunity, @c0ff33a, @partiko, @ayogom, @emrebeyler, @noblewitness, @snackplus, @cryptopassion, @ura-soul, @jerrybanfield, @bobinson, @tasteem
@steemychicken1, @ro-witness, @chitty, @qurator, @mahdiyari, @complexring, @boatymcboatface, @felixxx, @bitrocker2020, @c-squared, @oflyhigh, @charlieshrem, @blockchained, @steem-bounty, @b0y2k, @enginewitty, @krnel, @yuriks2000

An idea!

Maybe it would be great if some of the dapps could create a special new feed in which only the witness post do appear.
If we all do something about the calls for action, we will give more breath to the steem blockchain!
All act now before it is too late! Together we can save some projects from the burn rate!

Cheers,
Peter