I'm a top 50 Witness!

I woke up this morning to find I have broken into one of the top 50 witness spots!

This means voting for my witness account @lukestokes.mhth is as simple as visiting https://steemit.com/~witnesses, clicking the arrow next to my account's name, and signing it with your active key.

I'm so excited about this! Last night I posted about the challenge of promoting myself as a witness. I was sitting at position 74:

When I woke up, I saw a number of new votes but was confused as the total number of VESTs didn't match the change I saw in my account. I'm currently at 16,899MV but the total weight of the votes I got was only 363.65MV.

28 minutes ago  Approved    zeppelin        638.316 kV
29 minutes ago  Approved    randomli        754.400 kV
2 hours ago     Approved    shaunmza        2.911 MV
4 hours ago     Approved    gatmi           2.073 kV
5 hours ago     Approved    greenstar       18.807 kV
5 hours ago     Approved    surgewisdom     2.673 kV
6 hours ago     Approved    libert          416.680 kV
6 hours ago     Approved    sevenhillsaway  2.073 kV
6 hours ago     Approved    pumpkin         1.491 MV
8 hours ago     Approved    lydon.sipe      9.088 MV
8 hours ago     Approved    remlaps         2.437 MV
8 hours ago     Approved    fminerten1      31.675 MV
8 hours ago     Approved    kevinwong       253.733 MV
8 hours ago     Approved    happyme         2.830 kV
13 hours ago    Approved    drpuffnstuff    2.694 MV
18 hours ago    Approved    steem-id        57.776 MV
20 hours ago    Approved    flatrider       5.892 kV


                                        363.648744 MV

Strange.

For those who aren't familiar with VESTS, you can can see the distribution here. VESTs are the internal representation of Steem Power and the ratio between Steem Power and VESTS changes over time. It's currently at 482.601 STEEM per MV:

I was told @pumpkin made the difference and it turns out a lot of accounts use @pumpkin as their witness voting proxy, including @freedom, which brought in 14,865M of my new witness vote weight.

I like the idea of freedom supporting my witness campaign. :)

I don't know who @pumpkin or @freedom are, but thank you!

As a top 50 witness, I can now witness more blocks on the blockchain which will hopefully make running my node financially worth the effort to cover server costs and my time.

I understand, this ranking can change at any time, but I'm going to pause a moment right now and celebrate while I can. :)

If you're not familiar with witnesses and what they do, check out the Steemit FAQ (you may have to scroll down after the page loads) or view my recent posts on the topic:

• Vote Luke Stokes for Witness as lukestokes.mhth!
• Steemit is Free, But Your Witness Vote Determines its Future
• Starting From Zero: Gaining Witness Votes

Thank you for your support. I will continue to be an active participant here, working to educate and inspire. I think we need more active witnesses who understand technology but can also explain it to those who don't. That's where I hope to bring real value.

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Luke Stokes is a father, husband, business owner, programmer, voluntaryist, and blockchain enthusiast. He wants to help create a world we all want to live in.

_{I'm a Witness! Please vote for @lukestokes.mhth}