We may see them called miners, validators, block producers in different networks. We call them witnesses. They are the protectors of the network who make the network gears spin, blockchain blocks filled, accounts secure, and simply make sure things work uninterrupted. The roles block producers play and what they do different from blockchain to blockchain, from one protocol to another. Hive utilized Delegated Proof of Stake. While stakes are what gives accounts influence in governance, these influences are delegated away to witnesses to make important blockchain decisions by voting for them. Witnesses are ranked based on how much of staked votes they receive. Higher they are in witness ranks, more block producer rewards they receive, and higher is their influence in the blockchain. Top twenty witnesses are considered consensus witnesses and they produce blocks all the time, and the twenty first turn is rotated among backup witnesses. But you already knew all this.
Witnesses play a crucial role in making the decentralization possible. Decentralization in itself is the most important feature or state or goal for any blockchain network. It makes sure the blockchain indeed does deliver what it promises. One of the most important promises is the complete ownership of accounts/wallets. This can't happen without decentralization. Hive knows this better than anybody, that centralization is possible in blockchain networks and if achieved can pose a threat to any and all accounts/wallets and the all the property that is associated with these accounts/wallets. Complete ownership of wallets is not possible without decentralization. Witnesses make this decentralization possible. Of course other participants play big role as well. Hive is among the most decentralized networks. Since decentralization is not a state, the networks gets more decentralized as it grows, and get even stronger.
Anybody can become a witness. That is the beauty of open networks. Everybody is not only welcome to participate in the network as witnesses, but also encouraged to do so. More witnesses, more interest in running witness notes is better for Hive. We may hear that there are some prerequisites to become a Hive witnesses, there is some technical knowledge needed, etc. Some knowledge is needed to do anything worth spending time on. That doesn't mean witnesses need some college degrees, or completing some courses or bootcamps. With some interest, dedicating some time, investing a little bit of money anybody can run a witness node. It is probably to do so on Hive, because there are plenty of skillful participants and witnesses who wouldn't mind sharing their knowledge and pointing to the right resources. There is even a service by Privex that makes starting a witness node easy.
That said I have never ran a witness node. I always wanted to and I sure I would be able to gain all the knowledge and skills needed in no time. But since it is a task that should be taken seriously and may need some dedication of time, I haven't been able to do so yet. Priorities. However, I have talked with many witnesses and it is great to see the dedication they bring to the network. One day I may joined the ranks of witnesses. But that is not today, and probably not this year. In addition to serving the chain as witnesses, these individuals or groups also contribute to the network in many other ways. Many are developers, some are builders and investors, others are curious minds who are experimenting with new technology.
Decentralization is not easy. It requires participation. There are many ways to participate in the Hive network. One of them is participating in governance. Simplest forms of governance participation is voting for witnesses. The stakes determine the influence of the votes. But each vote counts. Even smaller stake votes benefit the witnesses. If not by stake influence, but by the number of individuals supporting the witness, which too can serve as a social influence. For example if I have higher stakes and deciding who to vote for, one of my criteria might be to vote for witnesses who have received more individual support. Of course since every participant and voter is different their priorities are different, and their criteria for voting are also different. It is a good practice to revisit the witness votes from time to time and review and recast them. For this reason I removed all of my witness votes yesterday, and will dedicate some time next week to recast them.
Hive witnesses run the witness nodes and contribute to the chain in various ways because they love the technology. Some of them are obsessed with it. Many of them are high capable and could be dedicating their skills, time, and energy elsewhere. But they choose to be here. That is win for the network. We need more dedicated individuals, groups, and entities who believe in the benefits of decentralized systems and solutions they offer. At Hive we are innovating and reimagining the web. Witnesses are the pioneers who continue to push these efforts forward. They understand the technology, they understand the potential, and they are among the most knowledgable about it. Most witnesses are approachable and wouldn't mind answering questions, and sharing information.
Every Hive backup witnesses goal is to reach the ranks of top 20 witnesses. From time to time you may see some say that is not their goal. It is not true. I have seen that, heard that. Once they are in the top, old humble talks of not really caring to be a top witness disappears. Why would you not want to be a top witnesses? If you are there you probably deserve it. This should just motivate them to grow and contribute more whichever way they find fit. I call top 20, million dollar witnesses. Rewards for top witnesses are decent. Just a little under 10k HP. USD value of this would depend on Hive's price. When Hive reaches $10 and above these witnesses will be making million dollars a year. It may seem wishful thinking now, but is definitely a possibility. This price would make Hive a $5 billion dollar network, which is not a lot considering what Hive offers. There is a lot of room to grow. Hive is definitely a billion dollar network. Market seems to disagree at this time. But sooner or later it will have to realize that as well.
While many witnesses, including the ones in top 20 ranks have been doing this for years, the witness ranks change all the time. Some witnesses drop out of top 20, some join the top 20. Backup witnesses do have opportunities to grow and step in to higher ranks when other witnesses get distracted with something else, or pursue other endeavors. Unlike proof of work networks, Hive doesn't require super expensive hardware to run witness nodes. Sure they're still a need for high quality hardware to make sure everything runs properly and without surprises and interruption. I am sure there are many options to choose from. It all depends how much one is willing to invest. Usually new witnesses start with some cheaper options, and as they move up the ranks start upgrading their hardware. Top witnesses and backup witnesses closer to the top run multiple nodes to make sure there are back up nodes when primary fails or stops.
In addition to witness nodes, witnesses also runs other nodes. Public nodes, seed nodes, etc can be run by anybody. There is no need to be a witness to run other nodes that benefit Hive. But since there are no rewards for running anything other than witness nodes, witnesses end up being the ones who run them too.
The most important role witnesses play is approving and running the Hive software. When there are new hard-fork candidates, witnesses need to test, review, and decide wether to approve or disapprove them. Consensus needs to be reached for the hard-fork candidate to be adopted as the latest update to the software. Some witnesses also involved in developing these hard-fork candidates. Hive, since its birth went through multiple hard-forks and made great progress as a technology. Core developers continue exploring new ideas and improvement to the network. Hive witnesses are also actively involved in these conversations, debates, and putting in the hard work, although not all witnesses participate in developing the core code.
Voting is participation, and participation is important for decentralization. Get to know your witnesses and vote. Not voting is also an option. We are always busy with so many things in life and may not be able to make educated voting decision. Another option is a passive participation. We can choose to delegate our voting power to a proxy account. Some participants are always actively engaged in the network, and participate in governance. If there is anybody we can trust would vote inline with what we think is beneficial for Hive, we can simply designate them as a proxy for our votes. This will increase the influence of their vote and it will be as if we copied their voting pattern. However, I think it is better for everybody to cast their votes on their one. There are many options in Hive.
Participate! Vote for your witnesses! or don't.
Witnesses are more analogous to mining pools than miners. Miners in Bitcoin and most PoW chains do not produce blocks, they delegate their hashpower to other nodes which do, ie. pools. The equivalent of a miner in DPoS is the voting stakeholder, in both cases they are effectively voting for someone else to actually produce blocks on their behalf (mining pool operators, witnesses).
That makes sense. It is still difficult to compare the two, because of significant protocol differences. Both do play big roles in their respective networks.
It's now very plained to me about how Hive Witness really works , I initially thought witness here on Hive are mainly about those group or team of developer or programmer (s) who do work together to maintain both back and Hive frontend for ease and scaling usage of the network. It just quite touching and educative to learned that , even an investors and those who like possibly experimenting new introducing technology and project are also part. Moreso another aspect is that of voting for our witness , there are truly lots here on Hive .
Thank so much for such an educative and informing post.
It's great to seem more informative posts about witnesses and governance on hive as a whole!
I have to agree with "Running a node" I always wanted to aswell, still planning on if the time is right.
Although I think you'll need some background to set up a server and all that. It's tricky sometimes and I'm too scared to jump into something like that without any knowledge at all.
Thanks for the explanation
That's why we must always have witnesses to oversee everything going on in the platform
I always wonder why we have to vote 30 witness on hive while only top 20 matters....
The only reason for the 30 witness limit is computational performance considerations. Ideally we could have an infinite number of witness votes, but that would be a way accounts could DDOS the network.
Backup witnesses do matter. They can be expected to pick up when one of the top witnesses drops out or stops working. They produce few blocks in normal circumstances but are important in non-normal circumstances.
Optimal would be 3 or less witness votes. To actually make smaller stakes politically powerful.
The purpose of the network consensus mechanism is to be able to run in a way that is resistant to censorship and minimize the risks of attacks from either a minority or majority of participants. Network consensus is not about the ideal political representation. An approval based system (ie. one with more votes per stakeholder) is more resistant to potential disruption from malicious stakeholders than one based on a minimal number of votes.
There's no such thing as a malicious stakeholders in an anti fragile system, you're off with your logic.
If you wake up with 51% of all Hive Power tomorrow.
Right now:
There is nothing anyone can do to prevent you from deciding all the Top20 witnesses alone. People will have to cope with it or fork away, the chain is captured.
If you had only 3 votes:
You could vote in 3 Witnesses and life goes on like nothing happend because that is only 15% of the decision and production power.
I feel mildly insulted that I have to explain that here, because we both know it and you're probably just gas lighting me.
Let me guess, if somebody where to buy a big stake he'd make the price pump and it would take 30 days for the voting power to activate. Yes, I know. That is not what I'm talking about.
Witnesses have these jobs:
A 51% attack is not the only way to disrupt the network. It is the most damaging and widely understood attack, but not the only one that a witness or multiple witnesses can do. Other attacks could be, for example, to produce empty blocks thus damaging network performance, or to produce bloated, complex blocks thus increasing the cost of running a node for other witnesses.
Fewer votes per stakeholder reduces the threshold for a malicious actor or a group of malicious actors to be able to elect a minority of malicious witnesses, who could engage in attacks like mentioned above.
There is no malicious stakeholder in an anti-fragile system. And you don't need a 51% attack you just need an effective amount of stake, which is currently rather ~5-10%. How many of the Top20 witnesses are not voted for by Blocktrades: Zero.
At fist I thought you're joking, but it seems you don't. So let me put this straight. "Don't attack the network" has to be excluded from this list logically, because it's too vague. Those attacks, if cost effective, are mostly attacks on Apps directly or SPOCs in the nodes.
As soon as you fight back against what you call "malicious actor", you have made two mistakes already:
Maybe tune into Community Token Talk from time to time. Dan is the best person to explain things like this. He's a decentralization wizard.
I don't even get the logic behind this, the system needs to penetrable and anti-fragile to not get captured from the inside.
We have some wonderful witnesses here on chain for sure, but let me tell you, even if I mostly do, not everyone does agree with them.
I think 10 would be a good number.
I vote for witnesses and I honestly think it's better for everyone to participate in those witness or proposals on Hive. It's not the best but it all adds up and I think everyone has a say in the witnesses or what gets funded. It's way better than other platforms for sure and I believe it's the best decentralized network.
That was one of the first things I did after posting a few blog article: voting for 30 Witnesses. The HiveBuzz badge was an additional motivation. 👍🏻
As it need devoting time, I wonder whether witnesses on HIVE takes it as a primary job.
Many months ago I heard that some of them are doing it at a financial loss. So certainly not all of them are taking this as a job.
While it may need time, most of it is automated. So, you don't really spend all day staring at the screen.
Just need to monitor that things are going ok and have alert systems in place when things go wrong.
Since, may people already spend time at the computer with their other projects or work, this might be easier for some than others.
no doubt witnesses play a vital role in blockchain and they ensure our security and smooth user experiences. They deserve appreciation and we can appreciate them by voting for them, i have already voting for my favorites.
👏👏👏
Thank you for this interesting post. Voting and partecipating is absolutely important ❤
Witnesses are very important for decentralization. And the rank of these witnesses is determined based on how many staked votes they have received. Really awesome informative and instructive post. thank you
This is very informative. Before now I thought to beelcpme a witness, one has to be a genius.
Thank you for this explanation. By this the task of a witness isn't something to play with. It is not like write a post for publication. Because in writing post one can choose to relax for a number of days while the witness node must be run consistently and committedly.
Hive is a super community. Every member owns something. Playing your part and ensuring all else is accountable is invaluable. Hive is for all at the same time your own.
I need to look more into this whole witness voting and node function it it very interesting. I somewhat understand the purpose of them but I've never dove into learning about it. I will say I am glad I started(and have only used) with HIVE and its platform for crypto. Just the thought of learning multiple platforms and opening multiple wallets was very overwhelming for me. Eventually I will get to other platforms but I still have a lot of learning to do for this one.
I think that avenue where anyone can be a witness in Decentralization should still be adjusted to set some strict criteria for witnesses
A witness too,
I use this so many times when talking about my witness hahaha XD WITNESS MEEE xD love it!
Witness MEEEEE
So good
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due to some substantial vote stacking, this is your current potential pending rewards
There is nothing wrong with your content, but perhaps you can drop your frequency just a tad bit. I will adjust the rewards slightly.
I like your stuff geekgirl, as you know very well. Hope you are doing fine.