If you haven't seen the Hardfork process in action or if you were too new to understand at the time it was happening.
The way it works is when new code is presented the top 19 or 20 are considered the consensus witnesses. They decide whether or not to run the new code. When 17 Witnesses are running the code the blockchain considers that the "right" code. The others will upgrade. The point of influence is the top 20.
If you feel strongly about items in the code drop you can ask your consensus witnesses to make a clear statement for or against each change and whether or not they will adopt it. These discussions are usually done in Witness Channels, but as a voting stakeholder in Steem you have the right to ask.
If you want to have influence in how Steem moves forward review your witness votes and consider asking your witnesses for their position on up and coming changes. Make sure your witnesses reflect your point of view.
Also, it is a security measure that the witnesses feel comfortable that the code is good and will not break anything if launched, but I have seen many of them say, that they either trust SteemIt Inc or feel like they should be able to. Ultimately though it is the job of the Witnesses to keep our investment safe and our blockchain moving.
It is not my goal to sway anyone for or against changes that are being discussed, but I would like to see the community use whatever influence we have to participate in these decisions.
Usually, before a Hardfork is actually scheduled the code is released and there is a discussion, but by then the effort to code has already been spent. So, check out the SteemIt Blog and Witness discussions to find out what is coming down the pike and what it could mean to you.
This is why stake matters although alone none of us can control the witnesses besides maybe Freedom, the rest of us can gang up enough to make a difference. The more stake you have the more influence you have at the time of a highly debated HF.
Someone is going to jump in here and say that Freedom cannot be overpowered in the vote and although there is truth in that, it is not totally accurate.
Play the game like a Whale and use your stake to the extent of its influence.
Excellent point, I was more or less thinking about this exact issue, and it's good that more people should be thinking about it. Gather momentum to remove witnesses whose positions towards the fork are not in alignment with you. Otherwise, it means your movement does not have stake support.
Yeah, I used to think stake weighted voting meant they thought they gathered consensus of the stakeholders.
Somewhere around HF 17 I realized it was totally on the top witnesses.
And those top witnesses, just do whatever steemit inc. wants.
pay per view
Mostly yes. However Aggroed recently proved someone CAN make it to a top spot if they have enough influence.
Fake News.
Haha, thin skin?
I can't speak for every TOP witness, but the majority is not doing whatever Steemit Inc wants. Believe it or not. But I won't let lies stand.
I'm sure even if you disagree that doesn't make it a lie, but rather a difference in perspective.
Go ahead and show off your skills here though, that seems like a great idea.
Here is number 14 in action for you. Instead of explaining what he does consider, he flags a small account. :) lol
Freedom cannot be overpowered in the vote.
!dramatoken
You have
DRAMA!To view or trade
DRAMAgo to steem-engine.com.I thought Aggroed said he lost Freedom's vote and remained in the top 20?
Perhaps. I haven't looked at the numbers. It's too bad there's such bad PR around SP these days.
I don't know much about the setup, but I've seen the term witness vote proxy thrown around and I just assumed it meant something along the lines of following the witness votes of a certain account.
If in fact that is how it works, it might make sense to start something akin to political parties here.
Create an account that stands for x,y, and z and communicate that clearly and ask people to let them be their witness voting proxy. That way the little fish could start to make a difference.
On the Witness Page after the list of names you can set a proxy, I know at one time Inertia had a lot of people following his vote via proxy.
So, yeah, if a ground banded together and voted together they would have a lot of power.
Ahh, thanks for the info, it would be great if you could create a partial proxy, like let someone use x amounts of your witness votes and you control the rest.
Course, you already know, but I've removed all* of my witness votes while waiting for HF21 to decide what witnesses should get my vote. So far, it seems I may be voting for a lot of non-top 20 witnesses if it shapes up like it is currently.
It's hard to tell right now, a lot of positioning taking place.
I have removed all my witnesses, I will watch them as an eagle on the new proposals, to see if they are a fit for my vote.
I agree with the incentive you're setting here. Small stake holders and smaller individuals should be able to have their voices heard. However, there is so much influence in the upper ranks among the witnesses and among the people who have become well known for whatever reason that i feel it is virtually impossible for even the middle of the road Dolphins to have a voice.
I’ve been writing on this platform for a long time and just lately I'm trying to realize that a lot of the depression I've been suffering doesn't necessarily have to do it the price…. but with the way things are being handled. You can't tell the top tier how to handle things either because they've decided that they are top tier and therefore untouchable. And they are right.
So I pulled out half my stake and and put it in the EOS which promptly rose up to $8.00. While we are still sitting at $0.41. I guess we'll see what happens.
Yeah the distribution makes it a challenge for sure.
This is a great idea!
A good mass clear-out could help shake things up!
It's hard, man. Takes a lot of due diligence for me to even have an opinion on these hardforks -- then I have to lobby my witnesses, for whom I am a mere micro-vote -- and all that to be one of many voices on an estoric steem issue?
I support the idea of self-governance but it's unrealistic for me as a working young dude to invest the time & energy. I wish I had a better way
Witness votes by proxy is something that Inertia reminded me of today. You assign someone your witness votes based on who they vote for.
Not sure who is acting as a proxy right now, but it is a great idea for small accounts to gather some weight to their votes.
Yeah i should get that set up real soon
Yeah i should get that set up real soon
I'm only worth like 10 MVests, but I should review my votes.
I've only used 2/3 of them so far.
Totally should check them out.
After HF 20, I just hope they are making good use of the test environments they have created before deploying the new code! This will be an opportunity for witnesses to demonstrate their governance and due process.
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I think I should redo my witnesses... thanks for the lesson/perspective. Really helps to understand much about way forward. Are there people you can suggest as 'deserving' witnesses?
I should look at my votes too (from my other account). One thing I didn't like back when I assigned my votes was that it was realy hard to find info about the witnesses, or so I felt. It is also that theres 'dicilious amount of drama surrounding alot of them, like flag wars over abuse, some anarchist utopy whining, and bunch of no bodies slandering them.
Edit. Check my channel.
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