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Since becoming a witness, it has come to my attention that as I try to gain votes and rise in rank, many people I speak to do not understand the role of Steem witnesses. I shall attempt to explain their tasks and responsibilities, their importance to the network, what makes a good witness, also why and how you should support them.
Gimme the low down, what DO they DO?
In the simplest terms, every transaction and interaction you make on the blockchain, be it from Steemit, Busy or any number of condensers (front ends) built on top of the Steem blockchain, has to be witnessed and processed by a set of people who create blocks, employing a consensus mechanism called a delegated proof of stake (DPOS). Witnesses run servers to a necessary specification for this task and are also required to produce a price feed, pooling price data from exchanges to ensure the correct value of Steem and Steem Dollars in the internal market. Put simply, without witnesses, Steem would not work.
Ok, sounds important enough. Anything else?
So far there have been nineteen hardforks, proposed software changes to the way Steem works. The witnesses play a crucial role in this by choosing to upgrade to the new software, or not. A hard fork happens when 67% of the top witnesses are all running the new version of Steem. The job of a witness is not to create any changes to the code, but whether to accept them or not. They can make pull requests but there is no guarantee these will be implemented.
Who can become a witness?
Anybody keen to support Steem and the blockchain is welcome to become a witness, provided they have the technical ability to run a reliable server to the required specification. There are many guides on creating and maintaining a witness, two of my favourites are by @someguy123 and @drakos.
Once set up, a witness puts out a post introducing their witness campaign, what they stand for and what they intend to bring to the community. See mine here. It's true that some of the top witnesses are devs and have the technical expertise to use the blockchain data to create various offshoots such as Steemworld.org, Steem Supply, Steem Bot Tracker etc. Others, like myself, I like to call 'community witnesses'. What I lack in dev skills I hope I make up for in building and maintaining communities to help other Steemians.
So, like, I should vote? How?
Everyone gets a total of 30 witness votes. On Steemit, go to the right of your avatar and click the 3 horizontal lines to the right.
A sidebar will reveal a list of choices. Look down the list for 'Vote For Witnesses'.
Clicking that will bring you to https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Upon opening the page you will be presented with a list of the top 50 witnesses.
If your choice for witness is not in the top 50, scroll below the list to this section where you manually enter their username (without a @), and click 'Vote'
You will be asked for your active key - not your posting key - to confirm your votes. If you can't find it, go to your wallet, click on 'permissions' and see your active key.
Remember, you have 30 votes, but don't use them willy nilly. I suggest checking @drakos's site here for important information regarding the top 400 witnesses.
Ok, what am I looking for?
If you look at my name in that list, you will see that my rank is 107. However, because there are 14 disabled witnesses above me, my effective rank is 93. If a witness is disabled for a long period of time, they are not doing their job.
Take a look at missed blocks. Sometimes it is unavoidable if a server goes down and a backup doesn't take over. Some of the top witnesses you may notice have a large number of missed blocks, but bear in mind the top 20 witnesses get a block around every minute, whereas someone as low as myself gets one every 12 or 13 hours - so within the same time frame they could potentially miss many more than I would, for example. If a witness server is disabled for any considerable length of time they are missing blocks, which has an ill effect on the network.
Next, check Feed Age. This is the price feed we pool from the exchanges. It needs to be kept current. Mine updates every 12 hours. If the price feed is not kept up to date, the witness is not fulfilling their duty.
What if I don't want the trouble of going through these lists in order to vote for witnesses?
I get it, charts and graphs aren't for everyone. Perhaps you just don't know all these mysterious witness folk. Return to https://steemit.com/~witnesses and scroll right to the bottom until you see this.
Using this, you can give your 30 witness votes to somebody else you trust to make hopefully the right decision as to who to vote for. Your voting power in effect gets added to theirs, making their witness votes that little bit stronger. This is how witnesses rise in rank. The number and power of votes determine their position.
What? Ranks? Why?
A block is produced every 3 seconds. As I alluded to earlier, the top 20 witnesses produce a block each every 63 seconds. Blocks are produced in 21 block rounds - 21 x 3 = 63 seconds. During each round the first 20 blocks go to the top 20 witnesses. The 21st goes to a back up witness outside the top 20, based on their rank. Their rank depends on how many mVests they have voted to them. As a rough guide 500 vests = around 1 SP. Therefore more votes and more vests = a higher ranking and higher chance of getting picked to produce a block.
So what do witnesses get out of it?
Apart from the satisfaction they are supporting this beautiful system we have in place? For every block they witness, they receive 1 Steem Power. For example, I currently witness a block roughly once every 13 hours. At this rate, over the course of 7 days I will witness 12 blocks (thereabouts). For that I will receive 12 Steem Power directly in my wallet. Over the course of a month this becomes 51 Steem Power at my lowly rank. In stark contrast, somebody like @aggroed at rank 7 will get a block every 63 seconds. The top 20 get about 0.1 SP a block. Over the course of a day this translates to 1 day = 24 hours/day × 60 minutes/hour × 60 seconds/minute = 86400 seconds/day / 63 seconds = 250 SP. Of course, he uses the majority of this to support @minnowsupport and delegates most of his power out.
So, to sum up.
Yes, it is important you vote for reliable witnesses. Use the tools I have shown you and check out the work they put out through posts. See if what they bring to the table appeals to you. If you don't feel like going through the trouble, proxy your votes to someone you trust - like me for example ^.^ Support those guys and gals that support you, make your Steem experience a good one and who's ideals you agree with and support.
Like what I do? Vote for my witness https://steemit.com/~witnesses - scroll below top the 50 witnesses and enter my name in the text box, then click vote. Thanks for your support.
Good post. A few corrections/clarifications though:
If you're using it, your account password (the one that begins with P5) should be sufficient. No need to look up your active key.
By the way, if you're using your account password to log in, however, and your account is valuable to you, consider backing up the original P5 password very well and only logging in with your posting key.
Rank does not factor below the top 20 witnesses. For all witnesses below the top 20, the accounts are scheduled to produce a block based on the ratio of their delegation votes to the rest of the backup witnesses' delegation votes.
1 SP per block was the case until the December 6th 2016 hard fork. After that, it got a bit more complicated. Witness block rewards are now a fraction of the inflation of STEEM, which is variable. Currently, top 20 witnesses are rewarded with about 0.19 SP per block generated and backup witnesses are rewarded with 5X that, about 0.95 SP per block generated.
Thank you for the clarifications.
@gmuxx thanks for explaining what a witness is and what they do and how they do it.
This deserves a resteem :)
Thank you.
Mehn, coupled with the responsiblities, you witnesses are so chilled!!!for example, I currently witness a block roughly once every 13 hours. At this rate, over the course of 7 days I will witness 12 blocks (thereabouts). For that I will receive 12 Steem Power directly in my wallet. Over the course of a month this becomes 51 Steem Power at my lowly rank. In stark contrast, somebody like @aggroed at rank 7 will get a block every 63 seconds. Over the course of a day this translates to 1 day = 24 hours/day × 60 minutes/hour × 60 seconds/minute = 86400 seconds/day / 63 seconds = 1371 SP i died there. Well thank you for the info, it has never made sense to me till now. More grace, voting you as a witness now. Enjoy
Currently active witnesses (i.e. top20) are getting
0.191 SPper block.Thank you. Slowly learning.
I made a mistake with the rates for the top 20 witnesses, it's around 250 SP a day.
Thank you. Slowly learning.
The math and background info here is excellent. I had no idea the top witnesses made so much SP for their work...but I guess that's why they're the top witnesses. Great summary!
Thanks for the clear guide to what witnesses do. I appreciate your commitment to the Steem blockchain, the Steemit community, and to all the writers on the platform. You have one of my votes.
Thank you for your support.
Whao. This is the best post on witnesses and witnessing on the blockchain. 2 months of steemit and most of these facts are unknown to me--or rather were, thanks to you!
Happy to shine the light on witnessing. Thanks.
thank you for explaining this. I am really new here but this helped me understand a big question I had about how this works
I had no idea! I don't have a technical background at all, but it sounds like witnesses are miners?
Thanks for sharing. I went ahead and cast my witness vote for you!
By the way, I saw your post series introducing new Steemians. I went ahead and made my "introduceyourself" post yesterday. I was really hoping to meet more people with it. Can you please introduce me to your followers? I've already written up one travel related post (7 Things I Have Learned Traveling) and am working on another one about my trip to Gambia.
Anyways, nice meeting you. I enjoyed your clear writing. I'm looking forward to more of it now that I'm following. Steem is kinda tricky/overwhelming, especially for new users, so your posts help a lot!
I am happy I could shed some light on the job of witnesses, although no, they are not miners as such.
I don't usually take #ians requests, but as I have not done one this week yet I will make an exception because of your awesome comment.
Witnesses currently get 0.957 SP per block.
Top 20 witnesses get 1/5th that amount, which is 0.191 SP per block, i.e. 24x60x60/63x0.191 = 261 SP per day.
Thanks for the clarification.
Truly an excellent guide, bossman. There are others, of course, but information like this bears repeating, and repeating often. We don't have nearly the kind of user engagement in witness voting that I'd like to see, so the more info we put out, the better off we all are. :)
Great post, thank you, I voted for you and it was easy enough, took me less than a minute. I would suggest writing in the "So what do witnesses get out of it?" part your take. What you did write here in the comments that in the future you would like to support the writer's block (which you already do greatly) from the generated steem as well. (I can also understand if you don't want to self promote or keep this post informative, but for me -although I like the minnowsupport as much I know about it, but I'm reading your post and interested in your take as well. What do you get out of it and what you plan to do with it with the future, just a sentence...or maybe I should go and read your witness post, huh? :)))
And I agree with @damianjayclay , communities like this can highly benefit from having someone from their group as a witness. The 'feeling' part, but also the financial part as well if the witness is willing and happy to share and give back - which I think is in most cases, it creates a win-win-win. (from Steem's part to have trusted people who run the world...haha, that sentence finished itself) Thank you!
Amazing post! So easy to understand :D
Can you now please make a post about Steemit hardforks? xD
Haha, yes - when I know ;-)
This is probably the best summary of what a witness is and does. Thank you muxxy and pfunk for further explaining:)
Well done @gmuxx even as a techie and a witness I'm not sure I could have explained it any better. What I do know is that we need to get more of the base involved in voting for witnesses. It is really a terrible thing to see how many steemians have never voted. I imagine most have never read the White paper much less even heard of a witness. Perhaps HF20should have a way to offer a "pinned Post" like telegraph can do.
Keep up the community support. And again thanks for this clarifying post.
Thank you for the guidance sir
I know how important it is to have witnesses voted and I remember reading when you announced that you threw in your hat to be a witness and of course for someone who is supporting the writing community I immediately voted you as my witness.
The math you presented is absolutely amazing and gives me more idea the responsibilities of a witness aside from the technical aspect.
Thanks for explaining about the witnesses I didn't understand it at all, now I do 😊
Great post. I'm still getting used to all this so it's interesting to know the processes a little better. Kinda feels like you're being something of an advocate for us. Kudos.
Thank you. I'm hoping that as I rise in rank I can start to divert earned funds into The Writers' Block to help toward our upcoming projects etc.
Thank you so much for this. I have been trying to work out what witnesses are for the past couple of days. You have explained it beautifully.
Glad I could help.
Great guide. Always wonder what kind of rewards witnesses outside the top 20 made.
Also good to know about the site for the witness. Checking it out now as I don't think I knew about it.
Thank you,sir. ...Now i understand the role of a witness in the community
Thanks for explain what is witnesses. Help post. Thanks
Fantastic resources for planktons and minnows to research the witnesses that we will vote to keep supporting this platform and the steem blockchain it's built upon. My partner and I joke that I am "mining" steem power through my comments and content but I am understanding that being a witness is more close to the miner on this blockchain. He built his own mining/gaming rig but I had to get more creative to start getting involved in a community. I am encouraged by your witness outside of programmers, because we are all seeing that so many of us can have our own positive impact on the community. Thanks!
Nice work you're doing out there @gmuxx
It's really encouraging
This might be very relevant at the moment :)
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@reggaemuffin/witness-discussion-sbd-price-and-reverse-peg
Very nice post...
you re a great one....