Witness Votes - Your Choice - Your Chain - Use it!
Witness Votes are important
Why? I think many of us here, old and new ones still do not value the importance of our witness folks! Given the #Newsteem approach I think it is also time to review the witness votes. Everyone has different views here. To me a witness should be a driving force to maintain the blockchain and ideally create new ideas / approaches to enhance the attraction of the chain towards either:
- New users
- New investors
- Make the chain a better placer
The last point is a tricky one given a lot different opinions on what is better do exist! Some great guys develop DApps e.g. Games on the Chain or useful tools that enhance your private lifestyle. Others try to make the community better by pushing educational rules of behaviour. That especially reflects or is valid for the content creating part here aka social media platform. This is the most difficult and controversial area right now!
We all want to make Steem Great!
Correct? I think we all want this blockchain to succeed, we all want the price of our lovely little Steem to increase, many want that the steem-engine (Scot) tribes will establish and increase their dedicated value too.
But how?
This is the important question - at the moment I see tons of great applications with room for more. I see a lot potential for more investors and businesses to join and I would love to have more witnesses to drive the potential of the chain to the outside world! I believe the value of written content ont he social media platform formerly known as "steem(it)" is less important than anything else here. But still this is seen as the major USP of the Steem blockchain, why is that?
Content rewarding - always the most discussed thing - do we need it?
There never will be a fair evaluation and distribution because humans have different taste what they consider valuable. Within the #Newsteem approach after the last Hard Fork I see a lot improvement, trending gets better - but I also see a lot of shit! I personally have a major isse with people that formerly run profitable bid bots that now turn to the entire opposite and flagging the hell out of everyone using bid bots. While I see a good thing into reducing the influence of these voting bots we all should be aware that marketing can not be banned - without that we NEVER attract global brands. And within our community we never will grow if we are not open to new ideas - the witness vote is one of your important ones here. If you are afraid of being attacked by removing witness votes there is still the proxy option - the witness vote is your chance to change the chain into what you think should be valuable. So use that option!
About Witnesses from a technical point of view (taken via Steemit site) and how to addjust your witness votes
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 $1,200 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.
Source of Witness description: https://steemd.com/witnesses
Photo surce: Pixabay under free licence
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌
oh - danke @shaka - das ist nett!
This was an important post. Thank you. I had forgotten about the witness vote. So now I have removed all of mine and will re-evaluate.
Are you kidding, or are you afraid of offending certain thugs by using such a politic phrasing? NOBODY here has a right to "push" anything on, or forcibly "educate" anybody, however well intended. That's called COERCION and needs to be nipped in the bud. The thugs who are doing this are FASCISTS because they think they are our betters with a right to bully us around!
Everybody is entitled to their opinion, but there is nothing tricky about it: A majority of thousands finds it more profitable to buy and sell votes and will happily do so. A tiny minority (albeit a rich one) numbering in the teens frowns upon this and would like to bully the rest of us into changing our behavior.
Interestingly enough, some of those holier than thou thugs have gotten at least some of their wealth by selling their fat votes wholesale, or by circle jerking each other. Hands up: Who wants to have an "educational lesson" crammed down their throat by such upstanding, moral pillars of the community? C'mon now, sheeple, they mean well and they have the VP to prove it...
Look: If anybody wants real change, there should be binding rules, those rules should be voted on democratically, and they should be enforced thereafter. The system is set up so we can vote for witnesses. That's a start. Why not modify the system in such a way that we can vote on contentious issues as well? That's a hard fork I could back without reservation! How about it, techies?
I second that.
Thanks for the hints and thoughtful opinion. Much appreciated! Democracy on the chain is what I highly doubt - I think stake based voting has its right to exist if the guys with more Power handle it with responsibility. Obviously that is not always happening. I have no problem if some people act in circles with some friends they like. I even do not have a problem if witness drives their bid bots - what I have a problem is when circle jerking bid bot owners earn tons of cash and NOW demonize what they did before and act like Jesus Christ Superstar.
I think one thing that people have to get their head around is that voting for 30 witnesses just because you have 30 votes is bullshit. If you know you really want to support 10 witnesses, vote for 10. Filling up the other 20 slots with half-hearted "yeah I guess that one is less worse then the rest"- votes is useless, as it takes the advantage away from your 10 real representatives.
yeah, some good points @sco
How does a witness produce a block? Does a witness required to know a programming language? Thanks. Your article is very informative.
not really, but tech skills are helpful, they just need to run a witness server. Tons of tutorials on Steem(it) how to do that, you plan one?
yeah that is a nice comment, mostly I agree with you !
...and yeah I removed a witness vote from one who downvoted a comment payment what is coming to my comment.
This is more than silly what happend here in the last few weeks all the big SP guys playing the old game I´m stronger than you so go out of my way or you will burn your fingers.
A witness has to stand out from that mess and not stand in the middle with some downvote trails he or his projects own.
So I recommend one to choose wisely your witnesses and screen them before ;)
with sunny greetings from the andalusian
Don T
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