[New Tool] - Witness Schedule - Live Visualization
In Steem, most of the blocks are produced by chosen witnesses rather than miners, in a system called DPOS. More detail can found on the bitshares.org article Delegated Proof-of-Stake Consensus written about it.
Live Visualization
I had created a tool to show the production of blocks as it happens, along with many other interesting things. Here's what it looks like:
Details
There are three lists in boxes that show various information.
Also, at the top of each list shows when the data in them is last refreshed.
Witness Schedule
This box shows the current round's schedule.
As you can see, every round consists of 21 3-second blocks. This includes the top 19 witnesses, a miner witness, and a backup witness.
Every row has the rank of the witness, what kind of witness they are, the name of the witness, and the block number of the block that the witness produced as it happens.
When a new block is added to the blockchain, the corresponding line is highlighted in green. Past blocks are then grayed out.
At the bottom is the next_shuffle_block_num. This is when the current list will be shuffled. The current_virtual_time is used to aid in choosing the next witness.
Top 100 Witnesses
This is a list of the top 100 witnesses by rank. There is an option to show 200 if desired, but 100 is good for most cases.
This list is sorted ascendingly by virtual_scheduled_time. The closer a witness is to the current_virtual_time, the sooner they will be scheduled for the next round.
The top 19 witnesses are shown in silver as they will always be scheduled and shuffled in the next round.
Disabled witnesses with the deactivated signing key of STM1111111111111111111111111111111114T1Anm are filtered out and not shown.
When there is a new witness schedule list at the end of the round, you will see that the next backup witness is picked from the top of this list. There is a chance that there is a witness outside of this top 100 list that is before the top of this list, but you'll only see that happen rarely.
Miner Queue
This shows the list of miners that are queued up to be included in a future schedule.
These miners have already broadcasted a proof-of-work, or POW, to the blockchain that demonstrate that they have done the necessary work. When that happens, they get inserted into the bottom of the queue.
When there is a new witness schedule, the one from the top of the list is included in the next round.
As rabbit and supercomputing accounts have dominated this list, if there are accounts with names that don't start with rabbit or supercomputing, they will be shown in orange. Occasionally, it happens.
Link
Just go to my personal site at bitcoiner.me and click on the link button at the top that says Witness Schedule Live Visualization.
Or you can go directly to bitcoiner.me/schedule.
With this tool, you can now see the blockchain in action and the witnesses at work!
***
Hello @bitcoiner,
It gives us pleasure to inform you that this post have been upvoted by Project Better.
The Mission of Project Better is to reward posts have many votes from Minnows but earn pennies.
Your payout is $0.082 before we vote on your post.
Learn more about the Project Better here!
We hope to see you continuing to post some great stuff on Steemit!
Good luck!
~BETTER~
Thanks for the this! Very honored
This tool is mesmerizing... I find myself just sitting there staring at it until I realize. Wait a minute, I can't sit there forever lol.
But it shows you have a very keen knowledge of the network. If the founders of the steem chain ever want to get a roundtable discussion going with a few select people, I hope you're one of the ones they invite to that private session.
I'm really saddened to see rabbit and supercomputing hog the network. It would be nice if they would take a day off occassionally.
Thanks for the kind words! I'm just learning myself as the rest of us are. I agree that the tool is very mesmerizing! It's very cool to see the witnesses just go up in the list and the blocks being produced! Finally, my public seed node is getting used more now, haha!
Yes, those miners really do hog up the miner list, but ever since the mining fix was released, I've been able to start mining again and get a few blocks so far!
Thanks for upvoting my joke today. Upvoted and following.
This was very interesting and educational! Thank you for sharing :)
Thanks!
This is really cool @bitcoiner.
I've been doing my research on the witnesses and figuring where my votes will go. Seeing their activity (or misses) may help determine that!
Glad you like it!
It's great to know you're taking the time to figure out which witnesses to support! This is ideally something everyone should do. As an aside, I would recommend looking into @timcliff's work.. he is a very active member and contributes in so many ways.. really deserves support!
I'll definitely look into @timcliff - I already follow his blog :)
This may sound strange, but one of the things I've been keeping an eye for is how the witnesses react when they're bumped off the top 19. If it's sour grapes I'll rescind my vote in a heartbeat. There's just too much potential to do harm if they ever got in a pissing contest, you know? I definitely don't want that! But that's me.
Fantastic!
Well, I think it's understandable to complain just a tiny bit, but if it's a full-on fit and hatred towards voters then that's something else. The top witnesses should always be grateful they're up there. I know I would be if I ever even got close.
I can't remember who, but I remember reading a few full-on fits and I just couldn't go there. For what it's worth, you're on my witness list. Your community engagement really sealed the deal in addition to your other work. Just thought you should know that you ARE appreciated. :)
You're right, there have been certain cases of drama and witch-hunting, it just happens I guess. But thanks so much for the support! I always appreciate it all. :)
Did you have more luck with that new update to help mine faster? What do you need to be like rabbit and super computing?
Yes, that update had really helped! I had to patch the code with the fix and rebuild the miner software. Now it's possible to compete, still pretty competitive. Eventually, the fix will be in the next release so miners won't have to manually patch the code.
wow this is neat
Glad you think so! :)