Travelling @ 1,200 blocks per hour towards the 20 Millionth Block - Prize Time!!

cryptocurator (65)in #witness-category • 6 years ago

The Witnesses are building the blocks @1,200 per hour and within the next week one witness will be the proud builder of the 20 Millionth Block!

STEEMIT is the nice shiny interface we are all interacting on but what is going on under the surface!

Under the surface! .... Steemit is built on the STEEM Blockchain which exists as a result of a small number of people operating witness servers and building the blocks. These key people are the witnesses. They are building the blocks at approximately 1,200 Head Blocks Per Hour.

Please find below some sections:

The Role of the Witnesses
A shoutout to the Witnesses
Witness Voting
The Top 20 Witnesses
& Other Links to Witness Resources.

Competition Teaser

But first……in celebration of the forthcoming 20 Millionth Block – I’m organising a unique Sweepstake…. Please watch this space for a great opportunity to win a fair share of SBD.

It will be a simple and transparent process with all the important information to follow on Wednesdays Blog. The essence of the “competition” is simply to guess the name of the witness who builds the 20th Million Block. Entries will apply in response to tomorrow’s blog post only.

Teaser Images:

I might be a mere dusty minnow – but I felt this type of sweepstake could catch the imagination ---- the more we upvote and resteem tomorrow’s post the greater the prize fund pot available!!

WITNESS INFORMATION

THE ROLE OF WITNESSES ON THE STEEM BLOCK CHAIN

Witnesses validate signatures and timestamp all transactions by including them in a block. A block is a group of transactions (posts, votes, transfers,) that update the database. A witness is paid for every block they produce and if they fail to produce a block on their rotation they are not paid, and, could be voted out.

Each round of block production begins with the shuffling of 21 witnesses: the top 20 witnesses (voted for by Steemit users), 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 SteemD]

KUDOS TO THE WITNESSES

The witnesses have built over 19.8m blocks so it has to be worth a shout out for the dedicated work done by the witnesses, not limited to the following:

Outstanding Technical Knowledge
Expensive Server Kit
Dedication in man hours
Community Standing

WITNESS VOTING

The following link is where Steemit users vote for witnesses: and each user can cast up to 30 votes:
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Each of the witness has a link on the right hand side which is a useful resource where you might determine if they meet your approval for a vote.

TOP 20 WITNESSES

Here is the Top 20 Witnesses as at 13 February2017
The rank is based upon their approval rating:

Shoutout to the Top 20 – see if they hear my “Hello” with this little dusty minnow voice @jesta @roelandp @gtg @timcliff @good-karma @curie @blocktrades @ausbitbank @someguy123 @lukestokes.mhth @aggroed @pharesim @clayop @smooth.witness @anyx @xeldal @thecryptodrive @furion @pfunk @netuoso

Thanks guys- is this something you would support?