The witnesses are free to do what they want. And, I'm free to vote how I want. It's up to each witness to decide if the degree to which they care 'bout muh 'pinyun or my vote. It boils down to two things:
- economy of scale
- division of attention
Economies of scale apply when expertise in the other blockchain help Steem out in some way. That's common for operational technical skills because the skills are quite transferrable and the time demands are not flat on either side.
Division of attention is something I'm more concerned about for community witnesses where I want them focussed on growth in steem communities. To some extent, this also applies to third-party devs too. If you're doing something else, then you're not doing Steem. If your witness platform is steem community then I'd expect the witness to show the resourcing they're putting into Steem itself and how steem stands to benefit from any economies of scale if they also resource another blockchain. An individual witness is going to have a tough time in this regard - though an organisation-based-witness (or witness team) is better placed. So, I'll be voting accordingly.
For those wondering; I'm not evaluating new witnesses at this time. However, if your witness runs a public API node and I don't vote for you, then please let me know - I have a few votes going for public API nodes.
It makes me smile this is one of the things you are focusing on. I keep on saying, even though it feels like I'm talking to a wall at times, that all top 20 witnesses should run one IMO. It sends the right message, the right precedent to anyone attempting to up the ranks, and its precisely what we need to scale our blockchain.
Ideally, that'd be great if the top-20 did run an API node. I haven't yet considered unvoting top20 witnesses that don't run an API node, I'd rather incentivise more to start.
The overheads of running an API node are much too high and it'd be great to have some dev effort in that direction before applying more "stick" to top witnesses that don't run API nodes.
Oh, that would not be a reason for me to unvote a top 20 witness, specially because the contributions can't be measured in only one dimension. However, I share your preferred approach, incentives over deterrents.
Regarding the overheads, the newest updates kind of take care of this. No longer will a ridiculous amount of ram be necessary to run a node, which would allow 32GB servers to do just fine.
These news are huge, or to be more with the times YUGE. So, I would love to see more of them embrace it once it launches. I will sure make some noise about it.
division of attention
You know as well as anyone what kind of time the "good" witnesses have to dedicate here. It's impossible to do two, primarily competing, things and delivery anything with efficacy.
Continue to appreciate your insight, periodic mentoring and opinion checking and your witness vote. I will in turn continue to stay as focused as possible on things that serve our common interests in humanity at large, to protect and enhance the future of this platform for your investment's sake and to preserve the sanctity of loyalty and allegiance to the delivery and service of the reasons you chose to invest a vote in our team and our ideals.
I do find it a shame some of the witnesses don't understand that kind of loyalty and service delivery, but I suspect they will learn some hard lessons about voter loyalty in the coming days as well.
Love your work @sircork. Pleased to support it, incl. @youarehope, where I can.