I have a VPS I already pay for that I use for OpenBazaar, what goes into being a witness? I have been on Steemit long enough to know the term but still not fully sure what this does, but more are needed?
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https://steemit.com/witness-category/@privex/so-you-want-to-be-a-witness-clearing-up-some-misconceptions
A Witness at this time requires about 12GB of RAM. Not that bad.
The hard part is getting votes and making your witness matter. You have to campaign, prove your worth, and convince large users (or a ton of small user) to vote for you as a witness to break even and start making money. Until then, it is all out of pocket.
You have to keep a server running 24/7 and constantly updated with the latest, stable version of Steemd.
If your network connection fails and you miss a couple blocks you witness will automatically disable and you have to manually re-enable it.
It is a lot of work
Ah, so it pays? I did not know this before, I was looking to just volunteer if necessary if I had the extra ability to do so on my VPS, if it is an investment thing, I will definitely be looking into this, thank you for the reply.
Yes, the witnesses are rewarded 1 SP for each block they generate, it's like mining.
.9 SP :) And top 20 gets about .18 SP. (btw the payout is constantly decreasing)
0.948 SP to be precise 🤓
.9 SP payment per block witnessed outside of the Top 20.
At 52 I was witnessing about 16 blocks a day. I just hit 50 yesterday and it looks like im on course to witness about 18-19 blocks today.
When you are position 75-100 you see very few blocks. When I first started, it took me 4-5 days to see 1 block. The speed it takes for you to reach ROI is dependent or your ability to get the votes taht matter.
I recently wrote a post about voting for witnesses, you might want to check it out, I briefly explain what witnesses are and how to vote for them. You can also check my witness application, it contains the specifications of my node.