Voting for Witnesses - The Steemchain needs your VOICE. The Steemchain wants to hear you ROAR!
No matter how much Steem Power you have, utilising your 30 votes to help elect witnesses is absolutely critical to the health of the Steemchain and the growing Steem Economy.
The witnesses are the guardians of the Steemchain. They are responsible for building it.....by verifying and issuing blocks (packages of updates to our database) in a timely fashion. They also represent the foundation of the consensus mechanism that secures the network, decides what set of rules we all agree to and manages the changes process that enables Steem to innovate and adapt.
I cannot overstate the importance of their role. They do for us what vast electricity costs and aircraft hangers full of number crunching computers does for Bitcoin. They do it with far great decentralisation, far greater scope for innovation and with astonishingly greater performance.
You may have heard of DPOS, Delegated Proof of Stake. That is the name of the consensus mechanism which is underpined by the role of witness. It was invented by Daniel Larimer in order to achieve the performance and decentralisation required to build a global first and globally competitive decentralised exchang, Bitshares.
We are very lucky. The foundation of Steem gives every single Steemian a voice. But that doesn't matter unless you ROAR! So you haven't got much Steem Power, so what? Steem is becoming more distributed every day and if enough minnows and dolphins ROAR in unision, your voice CAN BE HEARD.
The witnesses are paid for the service they do for the Steemchain, and rightly so! We want these positions of responsibility to be very well paid indeed. A competitive environment for paid witness positions (primarily the top 19) so that there is a constant pressure towards technical excellence, performance, flawless reputations, efficiency and giving as much back to the community as realistically possible.
In the future, should the Steem Economy grow, it is possible that each witness position will be a company with many employees and massive server farms. They are learning the skill set and establishing the reputation today that may ensure their survival in the future. It is a lot to gain and a lot to lose.
Every Steemian is also learning. The majority of us are learning about blockchains, DPOS, witnesses, the attention economy, the gift economy, steem, user issued assets, pegged assets, long frikin passwords and all the rest for the first time. It's a steep learning curve and a lot to take in.
If you do one thing next week, please prioritise voting for your witnesses. Even if you have very little Steem Power, it's good practice for when you have loads. Everyone here is an EARLY ADOPTER. You will be teaching the Steemians of the future. With great Steem Power comes great responsibility......i've said it before and i'll say it again. Steemians MUST understand their responsibilities. We owe it to ourselves, those who are striving to becomes witnesses and those who have those privileged positions today.
Competition for those roles must be as fierce as a lioness protecting her cubs. If you get the chance, please take a look at the simple guide below and at the end, don't forget to ROAR!
Voting for Witnesses Guide
- In the top right-hand corner of your screen, you should see a menu icon made of three horizontal lines, select it. (See image below)
- The menu will appear in your display and about half way down you will see 'Vote for Witnesses,' select it. (See image below)
- A new page will open with a list of the top 50 witnesses. You can select up to 30 of them. Note that the majority of them have links to some further information about them. These posts and documents are a great place to start to get a feel for their technical expertise and other offerings. Read them at your leisure. You will also need your OWNER key/password in order to make or change your witness votes. (See image below)
- It is possible to vote for a witness who is outside of the top 50 positions. You will need their witness Steem account name. (See image below)
- It is possible to delegate your witness votes to a proxy (another Steem account that you trust.) They will have your voting weight added to the witness votes that they have made. Be aware that they could change who they are voting for after you've made that choice. In other words you must still make sure you agree with your proxy's choice over time, regardless of whether or not you still trust them. (See image below)
Good Luck
Happy Steeming
This is a great explanation about who "witnesses" are and their function here. I'm pretty new to the platform and I must admit I have not voted for witnesses and I'm not sure I'm informed enough to make that decision at this point.
I do know a few people on here who I would trust enough to delegate that decision to so it's nice to have that option. I definitely need to decide one way or the other soon though.
I'm very happy you found it helpful. I'm not sure what the witness voting participation figures are but last I heard they were not that good. I appreciate that uninformed voting doesn't help but there are mechanisms like delegation to help with that as you say. It's a responsibility we all need to become accustomed to and we might as well start early!
here's a link https://steemit.com/~witnesses
That's very helpful, thank you very much!
i just got it from somewhere, too
i just got my witness upvotes updated
and re-thinking now ..
keeping them as ease for now
but am thinking of dropping a few ... we'll see
Yeah, the voting participation is pretty low... much of that due to so many newcomers being added these days, and many of them not even knowing what a "witness" is or does.
@lukestokes has started publishing updates on witness voting participation levels... they give a sense of just how few people are actually voting.
I just voted for @lukestokes.mhth as well as four others that I've actually interacted with in my short time here. I just read his post on witness voting participation and only about 3% of steemit users have voted for even a single witness!
I'm really glad I came across this post by @benjojo today as I didn't even realize I was able to cast votes for witnesses. I'm going to be doing some due diligence over the next week and make a point to use all 30 of my votes.
Good work! Luke is one of Steemit's finest-- very active and good handle on both the technical and the social ends.
Thanks for sharing this ...I agree because we all have to take our democratic responsibility serious and vote for witnesses that we trust to do great work here.
upvoted and resteemed because as you point out voting for witnesses is an important function for all steemsters to fulfill and i want all of my followers to participate. question: i haven't used up all of my votes yet, can i delegate the remainder and who should i trust to delegate to?
"Guardians of the Steemchain" Sounds so cool like "Power Rangers" :D
:D
they will need special badges ;)
That is a superb idea. They should commission some of Steemit's incredible artists to create individual coat's of arms with motos!! That would be so cool :)
There are 50 witness that is only listed. I wonder how many people are running to be a witness.
Very good question
This link gives you 100, but note there are a lot of inactive still in the list - which sucks since it doesn't allow others below to be seen. People have to "unvote" for the inactive to clear them out. Some I have votes in for are not even in the 100 list, but they are active contributors to the community.
https://steemd.com/witnesses
Thanks for the answer! I'm actually using the proxy thing for the witness. You guys should post the pros and cons of having a proxy. :)
A very important topic, to be sure. Thx for bringing it up again and for the thorough discussion.
I have been slowly adding to my witness vote tally, but I'm only up to about 10 or so. I don't want to just throw a bunch of votes out to those already on the list just because they are already there. I want to make my very small vote be very intentional. Having said that, I need to follow through and intentionally get the rest of my votes out there. :)
That is a most sensible and responsible approach. Nice one.
That, right there, is super important to remember. Steemit only just a year old... and we have most of our time of growth ahead of us. So to those who feel like their vote is very small, remember that you'll likely be a really "BIG fish," two years from now.
Very useful article-- things like this should be "required reading" for everyone when they have just joined.
Thanks for the detailed explanation, do you know what can be a good criteria to help choosing a witness?
I did vote for 2 or 3 witnesses that I follow but I really don't know what to do with the rest of my votes
A very important reminder for newbies and everyone on Steemit. It is essential to vote for witnesses, I've voted for a few, I should get back to selecting a few more.