I started last October in Steemit and the way it was presented to was it's just like Facebook. Upload a picture and get likes for it which are called upvotes here and you get a bonus of those votes having monetary value. Sounds simple enough right so let's go for it!
So with optimism, I registered and forgot about it until almost the end of October that I was given guides on how to make a great introduceyourself post and I followed it to the dot. It was long and had images and told my personal story and it got less than 5 views and netted me 0.05 cents. That was harsh!
Yet I persevered and still continued posting. I joined a group and one of their first requirement was to vote for @steemgigs as witness because that was @surpassinggoogle witness name and he supports the Philippines in Steemit.
I admit I did not go through the FAQ on my first month. I was ill-equipped and basically had zero knowledge what I was doing in Steemit aside from posting, upvoting and resteeming. To be honest I was treating it like any blog platform I had before which was as a virtual diary.
Everything changed in my 2nd month as I saw the possibilities that can be achieved with Steemit. The first thing that I thought of was using Steemit for the charity that we have been running for the past 11 years called @giftinkind.
Gift in Kind PH is an organization born of our desire to help less fortunate communities in terms of providing school supplies to elementary level children. In the last three years, our focus was on Banawen Primary School which is a school for the children of Indigenous tribe called Aetas.
You can know more about that in this post if you are interested.
Promoting Steem to Gift in Kind Foundation| Our first step to modern fund raising
So with that in mind my focus was on getting stronger for their sake. At this point I was already a believer of the Gifteconomy of Steemit and wanted it to work for that organization. To that end, I needed to learn everything that I can about Steemit and thus I began my study of all aspects of Steemit from creating better posts, curation rewards, markdown guidelines and formatting, and the important aspect of Engagement which has the Discord channels, communities, and building relationships. I made several guides about this and had it published to help fellow red fishes who were starting out.
So how is this important for choosing your Witnesses? Well for starters you tend to vote for witnesses you know and what they do and a lot of witnesses are usually in communities like Minnow Support Project (P.A.L), YouAreHope, SteemPH, Steemgigs, Qurator. The Writer's Block and others that I might not be aware of since I already have over 20 different Steem communities and sadly I am not active in all of them.
Witnesses are very vital for the Steem block as the top 20 decides what gets implemented in the Steem Blockchain. Below is taken from the FAQ itself and a number of very important stuff like DPOS and number of blocks each one handles.
What are Steem witnesses?
The Steem blockchain requires a set of people to create blocks and uses a consensus mechanism called delegated proof of stake, or DPOS. The community elects 'witnesses' to act as the network's block producers and governance body. There are 20 full-time witnesses, producing a block every 63-second round. A 21st position is shared by the backup witnesses, who are scheduled proportionally to the amount of stake-weighted community approval they have. Witnesses are compensated with Steem Power for each block they create.
I believe it was December when I started adding my witnesses and I had a whopping 5 witnesses! They were:
1, 4 and 5 were voted because of the push from a community that I was in that had them. 2 and 3 because I used their services and products.
I was your typical user that followed everyone else and voted without really knowing what they did or their stance on the things that happen in Steem.
I was perfectly unaware of anything and kept swimming in the tiny part of the ocean but things were bound to change.
January was the time of some major changes in the way that I was behaving in Steem, I was no longer interested in the status quo as I really wanted to be serious in what I can bring into the platform as well as I read this awesome post from @ashleykalila
This one gives us a condensed version of what the 20 active Witnesses do. So armed with the knowledge of what they do I was able to pick to add a couple more witnesses that I agreed with and what they wanted to achieve on the platform.
I even shared this with several communities that I belong to and asked them to read it and be informed. A few took a look at but the majority was just apathetic to the whole matter and did not bother to vote nor even assign a proxy.
That is another thing although the information is already served to them, people are too apathetic to do it. In a way, a lot of people are still functioning in a scarcity mindset of what can you do for them. If they don't receive support nor have any perceived value then they don't have the incentive to do it. This kind of mentality is very sad for me. We have to see it as our responsibility to vote for witnesses.
So I was feeling pretty smug about being able to utilize my witness votes and chose some of the names on the list and some I just because I believe in what they do like for the OCD-witness, Curie and, Busy-witness since I almost exclusively post from busy all the time even on mobile.
Then a month ago during one of the live curation programs we had in the @promo-mentors channel we had @ameliabartlett talk about her latest post regarding lady witnesses and I have left out @patrice who is doing an incredible job in @steemcleaners who is out looking to punish the plagiarist, spammers and phishing scammers out there! So I immediately rectified the situation and changed a vote for her.
Ladies of Steemit, Volume 6 | Can I Get a Witness?
The next piece on the puzzle happened 11 days ago with a discussion in Steemitizens of Steemit of @sircork where a couple of the witnesses talked about the phenomenon of the dead witnesses - they are not really dead, well I hope note, but that they just stopped being active witnesses for the Steem Blockchain.
At this point, the tool https://steemian.info/witnesses was shown and this blew my mind because this has all the information both technical and project details that you need to be able to choose who your witness will be. This awesome tool is run by another awesome witness @drakos
The link icon encircled in red leads to their witness details post or page so that you can read about what they do.
Here it is showing the following information:
- Full Rank - current rank on the list
- Active Rank - current rank minus the dead witnesses
- Witness - name of the witness
- Operations - here you can approve, unapprove, check the voter's list of the witness and a link to their witness update or application if new.
- Votes (Mega Vests) - remember I said that the delegated proof of stake is important. This is why. To know your vest you can go to https://steemd.com/@username and look on the lower left side
This is mine currently as it transforms both by actual and delegated SP into vests. 1 MV is 1 Million Vest
So I have 0.8 MV
- Voters - total number of voters
- Missed Blocks - this is important as you will be able to see how updated a witness is in completing his or her block
- Last Block - the block that was last processed by the witness
- Registration Fee - registration fee of STEEM
- Block - size of the block they are processing
- Version - What version or Hardfork they are using. We are currently in HF19.
- Price Feed - their price for SBD
- Feed Age - Feed age in hours of the block
- Bias% - This is how the witnesses set the bias towards pegging 1 SBD to 1 USD.
- APR% - I read somewhere that this affects the interest rate in the Savings in your wallet
We stated earlier that the Top 20 makes the call on what will be implemented in the blockchain. Another important aspect as Top 20 witness is they act as the main witnesses to process the blocks and position 21 serves as a backup.
the Witness on the 21st spot is rotated according to the ranking of the witnesses from 21 -400. Currently, we only have 127 witnesses,
Block Production
Blocks are produced every 3 seconds, in rounds, which are 21 blocks long. Therefore, each round is 63 seconds. Each witness in the Top 20 produces a block within that time frame, while a backup witness is shuffled to produce a block at position 21 based on their rank.
Witnesses produce blocks according to the scheduled round, proportionally to their rank in the system, excluding the top 20 witnesses who are scheduled every 63 seconds. The ranking is based on the total amount of VESTS of their voters.
You can monitor the schedule live at https://steem.bitcoiner.me/schedule/.
Now, this is the problem on the witness page (https://steemit.com/~witnesses) only shows 50 Witnesses there out of 400 positions. Out of the 50 listed 4 of the witnesses, there are already inactive. There is a high probability that some redfish like me when asked to vote for witnesses. might click on some of the names there and inadvertently click one of the inactive ones. I had an inactive witness on my list but changed that when I saw that he was already crossed out.
Maybe Steem Inc. can remove an inactive witness that has not provided updates in a month. There have been recommendations to show at least 100 witnesses.
Below is a great suggestion by one of the witnesses @ura-soul on how to improve the witness page.
Suggestion: Improved Witness Voting Page for Steemit.com
So I only have 0.8 Mega Vest if I change my vote from the top 20 and move it to the 21st-100 it would not make any impact on them since they have hundreds of thousands of SP behind them but may change the ranking of a witness I support.
I wanted to present to you my 30 witnesses and a snapshot of what they do. You can choose to do the same votes or go through their witness link and make your own decision.
| Witness | Full Rank | Active rank | Latest Witness Update | Project/Initiative | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| @blocktrades | 13 | 13 | @blocktrades | often serves as the internal wallet of Steem, main SP delegator of @anomadsoul who engages the whole Steem community | |
| @followbtcnews | 16 | 16 | Full Steem Ahead! Vote @Followbtcnews For Witness | Runs the Steemchat node with @crimsonclad | |
| @curie | 23 | 23 | Witness Update - Acknowledgement of error and changes to @curie witness operation structure (April 2nd, 2018)] | Committed to find exceptional content from undervalued and new authors | |
| @busy.witness | 25 | 25 | Busy v2.4 Release: New features that will make you love Busy.org | A Steem condenser that packs a lot of innovative features and gives an upvote to users who use it and the busy tag | |
| @drakos | 27 | 27 | Drakos Witness Update 2018-03-11 | Whenever an account gets hacked the Philippines community will turn to @drakos. He also maintains the steemian.info site where I got most of my info on witnesses | |
| @utopian-io | 28 | 28 | Utopian The Community-Driven Witness Is HERE! Vote For My Witness, LETS GROW TOGETHER! | runs the condenser utopian.io that approves and rewards content about troubleshooting, bug finding, design and guides for open source applications | |
| @teamsteem | 30 | 29 | I Allocate 2,000$+ Daily On Steem! | Is a community focused witness who has 1% self vote rating according to Steemocean.com and gives most votes away to different topics | |
| @yabamatt | 31 | 30 | Witness Update - Voting Bots & Listing Requests | He made the Steembottracker which a lot of people use to see which bots are voting and he also has his own bot Post Promoter | |
| @therealwolf | 40 | 39 | MAKING STEEM GREATER - @therealwolf is now a Witness! | Creator of Smartsteem and Smartmarket which are bid bots and vote selling services. His service checks for quality and blacklists people who abuse it | |
| @ocd-witness | 41 | 40 | OCD - Introducing #ocd-resteem - Get Resteemd By @ocd | Another major curation guild that looks for undervalued authors. | |
| @patrice | 44 | 43 | @patrice Witness Application | Protecting the Steem blockchain from plagiarist, spammers, and phishing scammer through the Steemcleaners initiative together with another witness @anyx | |
| @markymark | 47 | 46 | Witness "@themarkymark" | Creator of the Buildawhale bid bot, fights spams and plagiarism | |
| @anarcho-andrei | 102 | 84 | Anarcho-Andrei: A New Witness Statement | Community active witness who supports writers and authors | |
| @sircork | 65 | 60 | Meet YouAreHOPE's Founder, Steem Witness & Steem Community Contributor: @SirCork | YouAreHope founder who is committed on using Steem as a means of funding charities all over the world. Also runs the Steem Star Network to give everyone a voice in this platform | |
| @dragosroua | 56 | 54 | Witness Update - DragosRoua | Runs the node for Steem.suppy which is a great tool to see your efficiency in posting and comments and ints value | |
| @qurator | 118 | 96 | Announcing the Qurator Witness! | Started as a community that encourages good quality posts. Runs contests and encourages engagement | |
| @enginewitty | 127 | 100 | Frustrating Witness Update | One of the most approachable witnesses and has delegated to a lot of communities and advocacy like LadiesofSteemit | |
| @swelker101 | 104 | 85 | Witness Update 01/04/2018 - The vote begging Post! | A witness that supports authors and writers. Also involved in supporting musicians | |
| @jackmiller | 120 | 97 | New Witness Announcement! Greetings from @jackmiller | Community focused witness who sees Steem can be used for Charities and other forms not limited to just blogging, Delegator to several community projects | |
| @ats-witness | 52 | 50 | Long Time User, First Time Witness! | Community minded witness who is supporting the Open Mic series | |
| @guiltyparties | 85 | 70 | GuiltyParties Witness Update | This witness is involved with communities around veterans and Steem Silver and Gold. Usually can be heard in Steemi Ramble and Steem Star Network answering questions about witnesses | |
| @krnel | 71 | 62 | KrNel's Declaration of Witness | Writes about philosophy, truth, and morality. Active in the vegan community | |
| @yehey | 100 | 82 | YEHEY - Witness Update 2018-03-03. Witness Server Upgraded. | Community focused witness who curates travel and good quality posts | |
| @liberosist | 51 | 49 | Accidental witness @liberosist | One of the two big trailers for Curie which is dedicated to find exceptional content | |
| @mahdiyari | 97 | 79 | Why vote me as a witness? | Creator of Steemfollower and Steemauto. Also wrote bots for Steemcleaners | |
| @steemgigs | 55 | 53 | Steemit: "Our Gift To Humanity!" Please Read This Steem Witness Proposal Post, Till It's Eternity! | @surpassinggoogle's witness node to support the steemgigs condenser and his vision of everyone has something to offer | |
| @ura-soul | 86 | 71 | @ura-soul Witness Application | Creator of Steemocean.com which you can see the voting behavior of everyone. Submits fixes of Steem to Utopian on a regular basis to make the platform better | |
| @arcange | 57 | 55 | Arcange - Witness Update | He has created a lot of essential things in Steem like his SteemSQL, the Scam warning bot, Steemitboard updates and even a Google Chrome extension of Steem Toolbar | |
| @steemcommunity | 114 | 94 | Introducing @steemcommunity - A Witness Project by @abh12345 and @paulag | The newest Witness in the block that is being run by @abh12345 and @paulag. It involves empowering engagers and community leaders | |
| @jrswab | 109 | 89 | Official STEEM Witness Announcement | Communitit focused witness who created two communities to help educate and train Steemians both new and old |
I have gone through all 127 witnesses and looked at what they write about, their ideas and projects they want to do in Steem and I have chosen those that resonate with mine.
One of the biggest misconceptions of people is that witnesses cannot be bothered. They are human and are often social beings that would appreciate feedback or a comment.
If you do reach out don't just say hi or hello in chat. Get to the point unless your point is only to get upvoted and it is weird to approach someone out of the blue and ask for that without even building a relationship.
Don't think that your little SP as a redfish or minnow will not be important. Sure a thousand of us will not be able to propel a witness to the number one spot but it could move them higher in the ranking. So that the things that you care about will have a voice.
Think of witnesses as your representatives who will voice your thoughts. We cannot let apathy take hold that it is not important. They will steer Steem to either greater heights or ruin. Our votes matter.
If you don't agree with my list then do your own due diligence and research. Use Steemian.info/witness as your starting point. Use the search field to look for past posts. Reach out to witnesses in Discord or Steem.Chat. But for Pete's sake move and do something.
Those 30 votes that are lying around can be used. If you are too lazy to think then choose a proxy that you trust and hope they will make the right choice.
I know it is too much to ask people to look at it annually unless they start caring about it. I, myself vow to check every quarter on the active witnesses and make adjustments as needed.
So please Redfishes go and vote. You can always change it anytime.
A lot of the information used in this post came from https://steemian.info/witnesses by @drakos
For the most updated Witness Report updates you can check @timcliff The Reports from the Witnesses 2018-04-01
For an idea how active Steemians are in voting for witness you can check @lukestokes The Witness Voting Engagement Report - 2018-03-23
For full disclosure of witness information you can follow @witnesswatch WitnessWatch Weekly Report #10: How much do witnesses make?
Be informed in order to make the right decisions.
Click here for your Mannabase Income
Click here for your Kryptonia access for Superior Coins
My tinyyy issue with choosing witnesses is that, since SP matters a lot, we planktons barely matter, so I haven't really paid much attention to which witnesses I vote for. However, I have added a couple: @therealwolf and @themarkymark because I kinda like the way they do things, so I think that they'd make Steem a better place if they were bigger.
I also voted for @cervantes for a similar reason as you did @surpassinggoogle because they support the Spanish-speaking community. I think that it'd be great if I could post in Spanish and get generously rewarded as I do in English. :3
Yeah the Proof of Stake was at first put me off because it those with money and influence that would have a higher say to things but it is now a neutral point because these people put their own money into the platform and granting they are already rich or bought in the right time should not be taken against them.
Yeah I voted for both of them too. Although there is a movement to have all witnesses supporting bots to be unvoted. We will have to see.
This is a great write-up, and I really appreciated seeing what you valued that got a particular witness your vote. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you so much and I hope this moves you to try to vote for witnesses that you like their ideas and projects.
I already had voted for some of the same ones you did! I didn’t know about steemocean, though, and I’m glad I do now.
This was a really nice post. Lots of great information for sure. I was a bit overwhelmed to be honest, but in a good way! I was on Steemit for more than a month before I really even knew about witnesses and even though now I do, this post has given me even more info on them. Thanks again!
I have reduced a whole lot of information here because I was afraid it was too long already.
So this is actually a more condensed version haha. Hope it helps you decide who the witnesses you want to support as each of our votes is very important.
So so good I will resteem so that many will learn. I learn something new too although yes I have done my voting sometime ago. Now time to check whether they are active or inactive.
Thank you for educating us.
Indeed we have to check on our witnesses if they are still active or not at least check it every 6 months.
very informative post, I have resteemed for extra visibility
Thank you Paula and I made this post to help newbies understand how important witnesses are.
I just started knowing about witnesses but never knew much about it. So your post is enlightening for me as to what they do more. I did not know how important they were. But why are they being more talked about now compared to last month let's say?
I am asking this as, shouldn't we know about these people much sooner?
Now to make sure I am understanding this right, I can sort of see them as a government, and vote for who we think would do best for the people in our point of views for what we would like for our towns? In this case it would be Steemit of course as being our town lol. I cannot know about it all in one day and it will take me some time to know more, but it is a start. I do think it is important to vote but with research behind it, as in, not vote blindly.
How long did it take you to check out 127 witnesses?? It's going to take me a loooong time. I have homework to do!
Hahahha it took me two weeks to research and decide on my final witnesses.
You have a great metaphor there as it is indeed important to make sure that our town is kept safe and running smoothly as a town.
It is our responsibility to be kept informed.
This is on my to do list. After I am done all my baking. Well the cakes are baked now its all decorating with 2 days left to go. Lot's to do still. I can't come up with making a video for it :( I have no experience with it. But I will see with what I can come up with :)
Thank you for this blog. It is something more that I need to know to learn how it all works.
You are more than welcome FS. It is our responsibility to be informed and so I made this to help fellow steemians get the info.
This is a wealth of information about witnesses. As well as the consensus mechanism steem employs. Incidentally I am writing an article about it and how it is superior to the consensus protocol being used by bitcoin (which by the way is killing the planet). Aweseome article sir resteemed, upvoted, shared in facebook and tweeted for Maximum exposure.
With all the above social media platforms you mentioned, i bleived this post will trend as it is ought to.
Ahhmm, you are also doing a great job here on steemit too.
Keep it up and stay blessed.
Thanks as always Ankarlie and your article on how the system of Steem can replace BTC system is such a great topic.
Honestly, I've been in the platform since August of 2017 but I learned a lot from this post hahaha! Thank you so much!
No problem idol! You do a lot yourself in terms of engagement with the community. So just trying to do some as well here and raising awareness.
Nahh not anymore idol, but i hope i can host that contest again. Do you have any idea for any engagement initiative? Hehehe
I kinda like what you do as it shows some funny and awesome group pics and food.
Loads to read and learn about here, I think most of us should put together this kind of post to state why we support who we do.
Thanks for your support! :D
You are more than welcome Asher and with you and Paulag doing so many things for communities, as a community-driven thinking steemian it is my pleasure to give my very small vote to you and to recommend to anyone that listens to have you added.
Thanks man, really grateful for all the support we can get 😁
Great overview on a topic most people don't know about.
There are even dolphins who don't know what a witness does, and even I took some time discovering... it's a mechanism that isn't explained as often as other ones - and when it is, people don't read it as they categorize it under "Boring".
Cheers
Well I'm older on the platform and only took it seriously last January but I have learned a lot and trying to share it although lately I don't have local readers .
Thanks again for you vote and now for this awesome post!
Thank you as well for what you are doing in the platform.
I will check through as you suggested and make the necessary adjustment. I am slowly getting into the swing like you did in January. Let me see what I can give of me to make steemit better.
Thanks for this lovely post. I have resteemed it.
Thank you so much warpedpoetic! Indeed awareness that it is important is one of the primary reasons why I took so much time to research and compile all of this.
Great post @maverickinvictus. It is something I have been meaning to get around to. Now you have put all the links in your post it has motivated me. I Will find my witnesses this week.
Great that is the idea to have people act and look for witnesses that they want.
Sir, with all due respect, you are a genuise
I dont know you much, but from afar, and from your works i have read, i have no doubt that truely, you are doing well.
Secondly, i aporeciate your effort in steemit abeit.
Keep it up. Steemit needs people like you to encourage minnows..
God bless
Blessings
Thanks man I appreciate the kind words and indeed I am still community driven and I still spread my votes to a lot of people.
You climb up really fast for someone on the 2nd month! i have so much to catch up!
btw, thanks for always supporting me, lots of hearts....
cheers
Reena.K
Of course you are my Food goddess who always tempt me with wonderful food.
Thanks for sharing this impressive list! We plan on doing a similar research. I will find time to read in detail. Your post gave us a head start on the researching part.
Oh good luck on the researching part! Almost took me two weeks to read some of the info I got and I kinda cheated by looking at timcliff's notes haha (It was like Cliff notes again from highschool!! hahah I crack myself up)
I'm a minnow and the information you provided here is overwhelming.
I think only the experienced members can absorb this information very easily. But again thanks for this post I'm now beginning to understand things that affects the community.
Well it is all about taking the time to check what the witnesses do and it you agree to that vision then vote for them
I already voted one witness candidate.
and he is @surpassinggoogle
That is great that you do hopefully you will find more witnesses to vote for.
I've bern wondering for the longest time now what it is that witnesses do. Do they get these blocks by mining them @maverickinvictus?
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 4 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 26 SBD worth and should receive 169 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigOh how I wish that was true haha
Thank you so much for this! Hope it helps shed some light on the witnesses and what they do. Looks like you really looked into all of it and take takes time, wish all the steemit users could do it.
Thanks for the vote! Steem on and have a good one!
Resteemed
I love what Qurator is doing with all the activities, the way to make sure no gets 0 cents on their post and making sure that people are engaged.
My vote is tiny compared to what you do for the community.
Hey Mav, what an awesome and informative post! I want to let @mirrors know about it and hope she sees this. She's only been here a few weeks but I know she is trying to learn what she can about witnesses :)
hello @maverickinvictus wanna a lil bit correction, sir @surpassinggoogle is not only supporting Philippine users, I'm from Bangladesh and he also supporting me and some of my friends too and we consider him as our mentor, teacher and witness. thanks for the post :)
Wonderful post ..thanks for sharing...Best of luck friend ✫
Thank you
Nice, very good
well thank you for that
Yes, you are welcome
You got a 2.20% upvote from @postpromoter courtesy of @maverickinvictus!
Want to promote your posts too? Check out the Steem Bot Tracker website for more info. If you would like to support the development of @postpromoter and the bot tracker please vote for @yabapmatt for witness!
Good information sir @maverikinvictus for us the newbie to vote for the witnesses,so i will encourage my friends to vote now
This is really awesome and informative sir @maverickinvictus! Really informative and helpful for me and I guess to a lot more others who are new to the platform. Resteemed for better visibility 😁
Oh you remind me to change my 30 witnesses again.
When I joined November last year I just chose 30 from the top 50 based on their profiles (active posting blog). Then I changed it and set surpassinggoogle as proxy. Then I noticed there are witnesses who are upvoting my posts that are not on his list so I changed it again and checked the list at https://steemd.com/witnesses to complete my 30 witnesses.
I am lazy so I just copied/voted who i.e. blocktrades, teamsteem, etc. vote for haha 😂
Very informative. I wonder if we could use Steemian.info tools to raise awareness of dead witnesses? Does anyone know if there are any efforts for this in progress?
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We are just starting. Thank you so much for the support.
well take you for pointing it out then. This post took me 2 weeks to research and wrote it for more than 4 hours after several changes, edits and revisions.
And your hard work shows, it is a fantastic post. I am going to review it in detail as I am also doing weekly posts on the witnesses.
The comment left by transparencybot is not judgemental, simply blockchain transparency.