[Witnesses Exposed] What Witnesses Have Done For Us This Week? First Edition
by @cryptoctopus and @clains
This is important and I urge people to participate
I was inspired by fellow community members to create this weekly update on what the witnesses are doing for the Steem Community. Since witnesses are very important positions that are handsomely rewarded financially, I think it is important to keep their feet to the fire and to inform the community of what's going on in the "inside baseball" of the Steem Blockchain.
What Are Witnesses and What They Do
Steem currently has 19 witnesses that validate the transactions of the network (you can see them here) and they get compensated for every block of transaction they validate. It's a very important job and it is litterally the backbone of the steem blockchain (the technology that powers Steemit.com).
A witness node in the top 19 get paid a fixed amount of about 1 blocks a minute or 1371.42 blocks/day assuming no misses. Payments are ~1430 steem per day (paid in VEST aka SP). At $3.50 per steem that's about $4800 per day each.
Needless to say, this position is VERY LUCRATIVE and is very political in nature since it is votes that put you in this position. For people to get this position they need to be voted in. To vote for a witness you can go here: https://steemit.com/~witnesses
What Does a Witness Do:
- Upgrading the software when there is a planned upgrade
- Upgrading in the case of a hardfork (emergencies/hack)
- Provide reliable price feed
The job could require very little work when things run smootly, but if there is an emergency, they may lose some sleep and be on their toes for emergency upgrades.
I may get some backlash from this but in my opinion it's hardly something worth paying $1,752,000 each per year for.
Should We Ask More For This Price?
People who get to earn the equivalent of a CEO of a Fortune 500 should deliver value equivalent to that compensation. If they don't they should be replaced by someone who can. If we get more competition going in this field then we can expect the witness to increase of value of the network.
How about funding the development of an implementation of Quora on Steem? How about a Github that is rewarded for well documented push request? (You get the idea)
This money could be use to increase the shareholder value of all SP holders and not only for personal gains.
Solution
This is what this weekly update on "what witnesses are doing for Steemit" is about. I think it isn't too much to ask witness to start delivering their own weekly update to justify their pay. What I would do is then compile that information within my weekly newsletter. The ones that fail to deliver an update on their project would be exposed. After all, it isn't much to ask right?
What I am expecting
I am expecting the witnesses to respond simply by providing a weekly update on their blog that justifies their position:
- What's they've done this week
- What they are working on
- How it's going to benefit the ecosystem.
If they fail to do so, I shall call them out on it and ask the community to consider voting for someone who is working on delivering more value than they do. More then promises, we need results.
I will be monitoring the #witness-category tag. If any of you want to campaign for this position, I highly suggest you use this tag and I shall cover your proposal in the next newsletter.
If a witness fails to deliver updates again and again yet remains a witness...this will raise a significant issue in terms the centralization of political power.
Format of the Next "Witnesses Exposed"
- A summary and a link to each witness updates
- Links to articles of people who are running for a witness position
- A Call to action for votes
"People who get to earn the equivalent of a CEO of a Fortune 500"
This somewhat relevant because witnesses do more than run a node, they are also part of the governance process of the network by deciding which versions to run, generally providing input to the developer team, and serving as a conduit for representative stakeholder influence over the direction of Steem. In the great debate over the curation rewards (8.2/8.3 debate), witnesses were called upon to decide which version to accept going forward. The developer team frequently requests input and feedback from witnesses on the content of upcoming releases.
Thus you I suggest that one should choose witnesses not only based on whether blocks are signed, price feeds are updated, the money is channeled elsewhere, etc. but also based on the experience, expertise, judgement, vested interest in the success of the system, and character of the witness.
The Steem ecosystem is now approaching $500 million in market cap and while we may not quite need 19 Fortune 500 CEOs worth of qualifications yet, there may well come a time that 19 witnesses of that stature and caliber would be the best thing possible. We certainly do want highly experienced, highly vested, and highly capable witnesses who are best suited to represent the diverse interests in the Steem ecosystem and make excellent decisions about what makes a blockchain successful, not just server jockeys and grant administrators. Those sorts of qualifications do not come cheap, and if there is too much focus on witnesses as pass-throughs for money, then it will turn into a race to the bottom on compensation and the best qualified by the above criteria will certainly drop out.
Whether all of the current 19 full-time witnesses are the ideal people for the job is something that the voters can decide. My personal opinion is that there are too many witnesses who are there primarily or entirely by virtue of their history with the Bitshares community, and I'd like to see at least one or more from the blogging/marketing side, though last point may be a bit of a challenge since the job does also require experience managing security-critical IT infrastructure (either directly or managing other people to do it). That combination may be quite scarce.
Finally one should not dismiss too easily the costs of the actual infrastructure as Steemit continues to scale up. How much do you think Reddit spends on servers, etc.? Well each witness is something like 1/19 of the backbone infrastructure of Steemit and will be eventually be spending something similar. (Already the costs to run a good witness node, along with associated seed nodes, including redundancy and headroom to not fail in the presence of viral growth, are not trivial.) One of the witnesses (sorry I don't recall which) has stated his opinion that each of the 19 witness slots will over time evolve into significant businesses each managing a data center and significant staff. If so then in addition to the above qualifications, witnesses also need to possess the capability to manage all aspects of this sort of rapidly-growing business without major mishaps, mismanagement, and down time. Again, you do not want the best qualified to drop out and leave the network in less capable hands.
Really well put.
Am I the only one who thinks Gilfoyle from Silicon Valley sounds like a perfect fit too?
Nice rewiev.
I like wath i read ;)
Nice reading!
Please check out new service i just released :) Show some support!
https://steemit.com/steemit/@cryptotony/steem-link-first-steemit-short-url-service-with-bunch-of-features
These are very good points. Well said.
Damn smooth perfect name with perfect power:) I know what that has to do with article lmao, just like how you voted your great rebuttal and paid yourself with more than a pat on the back lmao!
It was actually a well thought out and written reply
Oh I agree 100% just was commenting on the power of steem.!
Sad but true!
AMEN to that. That's exactly the kind of things that people who vote needs to know and set their expectation on. We have to balance between stability, accountability, qualification and performance. I am looking forward to your updates.
Thanks for providing more valuable information on what witnesses do and will need to do in the future! Thanks for your answer to my question on Price Feeds too!
Someone from the marketing/ecommerce side makes a lot of sense as long as they can afford to pay someone to assist on the infrastructure/security side.
Similar to SP, SMD tokens cannot be purchased directly on an external exchange. SMD are primarily earned through contributing but can be purchased by converting STEEM tokens to SMD tokens.
Actually Steem Dollars can now purchased on external exchanges !
https://poloniex.com/exchange#btc_sbd
https://bittrex.com/Market/Index?MarketName=BTC-SBD
PS Abbreviation of SBD = Steem Backed Dollars
or just SD = Steem Dollars (not SMD please edit)
Maybe it would be a nice future to give to all accounts the option to VOTE on how much a fair salary for witness should be and in real time apply the rules.... the salary would dynamically change depended from current circumstances (market cap, needed infrastructure,mass adoption,TRUST etc...)
PS @cryptoctopus don't forget that witnesses get paid for more things...
1.they curate (redistribution of power)
2.they flag content
3.They are TRUSTED (no motivation for "bad actors" if they are paid good )
4.They take decisions for hardforks etc.
5.They are influencing the core developers about the project roadmap
6.They pay for IT security and infrastructure (not much now but the numbers will increase exponential)
7.for the risk they have taken to get paid in future !!! (SP) the most good paid witnesses have made updates day and night when STEEM was not even on exchanges...
PS The rise of the marketcap was too sharp and until the last week the liquid steem (1/104) that earned every witness was not so significant compared to now... I am sure if the price stabilizes most witnesses will significant increase the budget that they will use to contribute to steemit further ... the witness pay can change significant both ways... It is too early to judge witnesses on what they have contributed taking into account what they will potentially get paid in the future since they are paid in 2 years steem power... Judge them for the contribution they have done taking into account the weekly POWERED DOWN funds.... I have for example never Powered Down and have not pocketed a single STEEM for my witness work until now!
that's a great comment and much needed insights. Thanks @liondani
Hey @cryptoctopus, support the initiative to have more transparency on witness operations and projects.
Do you know this information that you asking for we already provide via a mechanism that @ned set up - "The Witness Update Log" - anyone (I believe) can access it here
Is the intention to have us provide these update in both areas, or will this take over from the witness update log?
I didn't know this existed either. I do, however, see a comment by @pharesim which makes me thing the Google Spreadsheet approach may not be the best one:
Maybe you (or someone else) could go beyond just monitoring the #witness-category and actually reach out to each one individually? It would be a time consuming job requiring a lot of communication with the witnesses, but I do think it would be really valuable to the community. I'd imagine we could create a pool of funds to reward this person beyond just our upvotes on their weekly post.
Seems like a few didn't bother to update that log for a while now...I don't see what are the incentives for them to do it. I would definitely be a great tool if they used it.
By doing it publicly on steemit with a weekly call for people to reconsider their votes is a better way to "keep their feet to the fire" in my opinion.
Thanks for the link - no idea it existed.
Nice one. Great info
Are we paying them $1.75 million per year, or are we paying them something that was worth $125000 per year a month ago and will be worth somewhere between $0 and $10 million a year from now?
I'm not suggesting that the current pay structure is correct, just pointing out that there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty as to how much they will truly profit in $USD.
The article says "Payments are ~1430 steem per day (paid in VEST aka SP)", so if they are paid in Steem Power, it's correlated with Steem price. And they can't even get the money out because it's SP. So it's not like the price has ensured stability - yet the running costs of a data center are escalating due to use and abuse (DDOS).
Exactly my point. They are Definitely incurring costs but only Probably getting paid.
@recursive I appreciate your vote. I've only been here eight days but I am trying to learn and comment/blog with value in mind.
For that money I would expect them to run another public API node lilke
this.piston.rocks(which I am paying out of my own pockets).That does sound like a ridiculous amount. Especially when there's a lot of talk atm of Minnows leaving due to being unnoticed/no payouts.
What does it take to be a witness? Special knowledge? Mining hardware?
This might be a dumb question but I really have no clue.
read this reply by smooth: https://steemit.com/witness/@cryptoctopus/witnesses-exposed-what-witnesses-has-done-for-us-this-week-first-edition#@smooth/re-cryptoctopus-witnesses-exposed-what-witnesses-has-done-for-us-this-week-first-edition-20160722t023015100z
May I offer some criticism? The article will get upvoted - and I did upvote too - but it didn't deliver on the title. It's more like "stay tuned mothafuckaaaaz" ahahah :P
This is a valid criticism. Here was the dilemma...How do we get an update from those 19 delegates when there is no incentives to? How can I make it so that I don't have to pull the worms out of the nose of every witness for them to deliver me an update?
I think that as a first edition, it fulfilled it's purpose.
Fortunately the quality of this "thread" has improved substantially to justify some of its money by Smooth (as one of the Witnesses) "enriching" the original article with his consequent post.
yes indeed. I do not have the insights that he has since he is a witness himself. My wish is to bring more transparency and inside look to what's going on. His reply was very enlightening.
Yep, a little disappointed that it's a puff piece / hype article.
I also upvoted it though.
Thank you @cryptoctopus and @clains for encouraging community self governance. You have my support.
great post ! nice
Thank you for this information @cryptoctopus