RE: Meet Steem's Top 10 Witnesses!
Jerry, very good information. And thanks for transcribing as well, I always hate to watch a video for information, reading is a lot quicker for me.
I need to check who I already voted on as a witness, I may need to add a few from this list.
One question though, since you so explicitly state this in the data.
What are the reasons for powering down by the witnesses? I can believen some need (some) money and cash in, I cannot believe that they're taking all their money and run, but your remark:
@Riverhead is holding 694,000 SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating substantial faith in Steemit long-term.
as well as a similar remark for @roadscape triggers my question.
If I manage to get some money I can spend, I'll setup my own witness as well, it's a good way to contribute to Steem.
@blevley outstanding question thank you for asking this because other readers must certainly be wondering the same thing! Powering down allows payments of Steem Power into Steem once a week which can then be cashed out on an exchange. Witnesses have costs to maintain servers and costs often ascoiated with related projects which often are either not profitable or make a small profit. For example, my witness server, seed node, and backup server are about $450 a month in hosting. It would be reasonable for me to power down enough to at least pay the server costs.
Thus, powering down allows witnesses to change Steem Power rewards received into fiat currency. Ideally we want to keep as much Steem in Steem Power as possible to lower the market supply and raise the demand. One factor I consider in votes is whether witnesses are powering down because if witnesses consistently dump Steem Power earned on exchanges, then we also have a constant supply which is likely to equal lower prices. Witnesses with the most long term faith in Steem are likely to want to hold as much as possible because with a price of $10 coming in the near future, powering down and selling today could lead to missing 90% as opposed to holding. That said, we all need money to pay our bills and sometimes the witnesses that are all in on Steem also depend on the Steem Power rewards to pay the bills on projects which often do not have much of a return. Thus, it can be a delicate balance for witnesses especially in the top to keep the bills paid while also holding as much as possible!
I'm happy with your post, it really inspires me, and I think also others just like me
Thank you very much, it's exactly what I was thinking.
Maybe we should include how much the witnesses are powering down. It now seems an all or nothing situation, while if a witness powers down 10000 SP from 576000, that's nothing, no biggie.
The power down always happens in equal increments over 13 weeks (iirc), so the size is always the same, proportionately.
To echo Jerry's answer above, the truth is running the servers and back-up servers to keep Steem secure is surprisingly expensive...like, potentially $500+ a month expensive.
It's not unexpected that witnesses will need to power down, in some cases regularly, to cover costs. The main reason I included the Steem Power data, other than that it was interesting to me, is that it helps provide a little background information on the focus of each witness. Some have re-invested much of their funds into witness upgrades, or community efforts, while others are betting very big on Steemit long-term.
One should not construe powering down as positive or negative, it simply is. One of the things that immediately became clear while researching the witnesses is that they spend a lot of time and effort witnessing. None of them are witnessing to make a quick buck.
I'm sorry if there was some confusion, I'm not saying that people are making a quick buck.
I have over 30 years IT experience, trust me, I know the cost of running a reliable service.
The reason I specifically asked is because there are a lot of new users that read remarks about founders and witnesses powering down, and don't know what the impact on the system is.
Especially when people start casting doubt about the viability of the system and there is no decent decent response from someone knowledgeable.
You replied earlier
While I understand that it takes 13 weeks for the power-down to complete, my question was more about the total amount that was being powered down.
It tells you something if someone with 500,000 SP powers down 50,000 or if they power down 500,000.
Having said that, everybody can and may power down what they want, they earned it, it's theirs to spend.
I really love Steem(it) and believe in its future. Hell, I'm working towards becoming an iceberg and have all the whales swim around me ;-)
I'm just thinking about the larger community, especially when Steemit really starts growing, we must be very clear in our communication.
Maybe the updated whitepaper describes the effects of power down a bit better, the original paper was a bit vague about power down and its impact.
And thank you for the effort for collecting all this data, I know it's a lot of work.
"I'm not saying that people are making a quick buck."
I didn't mean to imply you did, I just wanted to head off any negative comments at the pass!
"It tells you something if someone with 500,000 SP powers down 50,000 or if they power down 500,000."
Absolutely, but you won't know until they cancel the power down, ie in retrospect.
We're glad you found our efforts worthwhile!