What is a Witness and what do they do?

_{Image Source: thecoolredhead.wordpress.com}

Most of you know by now that my friends @sirwries, @felander and I have started our own witness @swisswitness, but many of you, my loyal followers, have not voted for us yet. This is why I am writing this post, first of all I want you to know what witnesses do and why they are an important and intricate part of the STEEM community and then I hope that in the end I can also convince you to make 2 clicks and vote for us as 85 people have done already before you.

What is a witness?

Generally speaking, a witness is someone who observes something happening and can verify that this occurrence has actually happened. Most of us all know the American TV shows and movies where witnesses are used as evidence for or against the accused, but all the witness has done is that he or she has observed something happening and can give a report of this occurrence.

_{Wedding Witnesses, maybe a bit young, but you get the point. Image Source: eileenrileycelebrant.com.au}

Although this is the best example that we know about, it is not the only occasion where witnesses are being used. Here are some examples of occasions where witnesses are being used as well:

• In most countries when you want to get married you also need to provide witnesses, the amount depends on local legislation
• In history, when there are many people confirming a fact, we generally talk about eye-witness accounts.
• When you have to do a practical exam/test, you need to convince teachers or jurors/judges that you have the required skills. In this instance those people are official/qualified’ witness and they know what to look out for and how to grade you expertly

What does a witness do on the STEEM Blockchain?

_{Anyone can be a witness. Image Source: workingworld.com}

On the STEEM Blockchain a witness does exactly that, they are there to observe that the blocks that the chain is producing are accurate and that no one has been tampering with them. If someone wanted to tamper with the STEEM Blockchain they would have to convince all witnesses simultaneously that their sabotage is genuine, which is almost an impossible task, due to the randomness of a Blockchain. This consensus amongst all witness is called Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS).

A Steem-Witness has a few more tasks besides confirming that a block is genuine:

• The top 19 witnesses create blocks and depending on a specific ’Proof of Work algorithm’ a random 20^th witness as well. Currently @swisswitness is getting a block approximately every 11 hours
• Witnesses maintain an accurate price feed of USD vs STEEM tokens
• They set the minimum STEEM Power deposit rate
• Witnesses set the APR% for the SBD interest rate

All this is taking place whilst we are just writing our posts, making comments and going on with our lives. Some things happen automatically, however other items take many and lengthy discussions amongst the witnesses until a consensus is reached (or not).

Why do we need your votes?

In short, you decide whether you think that a witness is doing a good job! By giving us your support you agree with the work that we are doing and you put your trust in us. Hopefully you also think that the projects we are working on are worthwhile and a real positive benefit for the community in general.

At this moment we have a few projects going on that should convince you to vote for us:

• We are running a competition to design a logo for our witness and you can win 25 SBD’s, there are still more than 2 days left to participate: here are the rules and how you can participate
• We want to help a community, we are currently searching for an appropriate initiative to support, here are the details
• We are planning several initiatives in the future, read about them in our intro post

Today we have also ordered a backup server, this will ensure that should anything happen to our initial server, that this one will automatically take over validating blocks for us. This server should be delivered in the next days, so if everything goes well we’ll have it up and running by the end of next week.

The next step is then to set up a seed-node. If my interpretation is correct, these nodes are required for the creation of new accounts on the Blockchain, so essential for the growth of the community.

Now Vote for me as your witness!!!

Vote for us as your witness in 2 clicks, click on this link and click on 'continue':
https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=swisswitness&approve=1

If you don't care about witnesses, please allow me to use your vote and you will automatically vote for the witnesses that I vote for. To set a proxy, click on this link and 'confirm':
https://steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-proxy?proxy=wolfje&approve=1

Thank you!

🐺je