RE: Fulltimegeek Talks About The Responsibilities Of A Steem Witness
From steemd.com
On the Steem blockchain, witnesses serve a role of validating signatures and timestamping transactions by including them in blocks. A block is any group of transactions (posts, votes, transfers, etc) which update the state of the database. Each time a witness produces a block, they are paid for their service. If a witness fails to produce a block, then they are not paid, and may even be voted out.
Witnesses are generally expected to manage a reliable block producing node, implement a failover system, maintain a public seed node, tune blockchain operating parameters, publish correct price feeds, author/discuss improvement proposals, review code changes, and to be active. Some contribute to core repositories such as steemd. Some fund the development of other apps and infrastructure projects. Top-20 witness pay is $7,000 per month (approximately) based on the current feed price.
Every round of block production begins with the shuffling of 21 witnesses: the top 20 witnesses (by vote), plus one randomly-selected standby witness. Each is given a turn to produce a single block at a fixed rate of one block every 3 seconds. If a witness does not produce a block in their time slot, then that time slot is skipped, and the next witness produces the next block.
Thanks for the info!
Ive always been curious as to what it entails to be a witness. Are witnesses selected purely on votes or does geography and infrastructure also play a role?
Thank you again for your great wealth of knowledge that you share with us!
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All VOTES. So a new witness (like my team) have to make it up with reliability, PR and a good record. New D-Apps and services help a lot too, and get your users of the apps to vote for you. Hitting the radio/podcasts is a great way to meet people and find votes, as well. It's a huge PR deal, but you must have the cajones to back it up ;-) My partner has 35 years IT and programming experience, and she was the 5th Witness to have our server up and running on either v20.4 or v20.5, all the rest were in the top 22 witnesses. She is a Top 20 Witness in her capabilities, for sure ;)
yup, that's the one I was talking about