The Reports from the Witnesses 2018-01-07
The Reports from the Witnesses aims to provide the community with a summary of what all the witnesses have been up to. Every week, I collect all of the reports from the individual witnesses and assemble them into a single aggregated report. New witness announcements and witness retirement announcements are included in the report as well.
Witnesses can continue posting their posts to the witness-category and/or witness-update tags, and I will assemble everything I find there. If I miss any reports, just let me know and I will correct it. If you want to direct message me a report via chat, that is fine too.
Historic Reports from the Witnesses can be found here:
https://steemit.com/created/reportsfromthewitnesses
So without further ado, I bring you the fifty fifth edition of 'Reports from the Witnesses'!
Reports from the Witnesses 2018-01-07
@gtg - Witness Position #3
@someguy123 - Witness Position #6
@good-karma - Witness Position #7
@lukestokes.mhth - Witness Position #10
@clayop - Witness Position #11
@pharesim - Witness Position #17
@pfunk - Witness Position #19
@jerrybanfield - Witness Position #24
@cervantes - Witness Position #28
@klye - Witness Position #29
@drakos - Witness Position #30
@themarkymark - Witness Position #38
- @haejin pleads to have have his 10,000 followers not vote me for witness
- Fix Witness price feed if using Conductor
@arcange - Witness Position #54
@blockbrothers - Witness Position #55
- Ask us Anything #2 - What are the things to look for when voting for a witness?
- Blockbrothers application for Minnow Support Project witness vote
- Witness update Week 1 - 2018
@patrice - Witness Position #58
@boatymcboatface - Witness Position #60
@sc-steemit - Witness Position #82
@steemitboard - Witness Position #87
@swelker101 - Witness Position #90
- Witness Update 01/04/2018 - The vote begging Post!
- Witness Update 01/05/2018 - I too have lowered my Account Creation Fee to 0.1
- Witness Update For Steem-in-a-box HF19.X - A Quick Wallet Fix
@yehey - Witness Position #96
@ura-soul - Witness Position #98
@gmuxx - Witness Position #101
@precise - Witness Position #116
@pcste - Witness Position #122
@evildido - Witness Position #133
@castellano - Witness Position #182
@jamzed - Witness Position #189
@forykw - Witness Position #219
@puncakbukit - Witness Position #244
@kennybll - Witness Position #331
New Witness Announcements:
@gmuxx - 01/01/2018
@helo - 01/02/2018
Some Notes:
- Many witnesses do not report every week, and prefer to only report when they have updates.
- I recommend that you include communication as one of your criteria for evaluating witnesses, but keep in mind - it is not the only criteria. There are some witnesses that prefer to work "behind the scenes", and do not do much as far as reports.
- For witnesses that are not currently posting any reports, I would encourage you to provide the community with at least some insight into what you are currently working on :)
Remember to vote for witnesses!
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you aren't sure who to vote for, check out this Witness Voting Guide.
It would be great to see a report by the position of the witnesses ( at least 1 - 30) and some of their contributions to this great platform so that we can correlate what is making the valuable here and their contributions.
And as always, You are doing a great job.
I have two things to say, (in order)
Stop canceling the rewards of your posts. They are worth it.
I had a viral post tonight. First one in many months, I'd like you to see it.
... with all of that being said.. I have something genuine to say to you.
I don't know where I'd even be to understand what is going on around here without you doing what you do. Rewards, upvotes, steempower aside. I trust in the constant effort you put forth, and in that alone, I sincerely thank you.
I pause.
Tim, really...
Thank you.
Thanks @intelliguy! Coming from you that means a lot :)
I have accepted rewards on a lot of (non witness) posts recently. I will continue to accept rewards on those. For my witness ones, I am still happy with my decision to decline rewards on those.
I’ll check out your post soon. Looking forward to it :)
I know you are happy with your decision. I'd almost respect it too.. (keyword: almost)
I get frustrated everytime I see the strikethrough on the post reward that you should deserve.
So you stay happy.
I stay frustrated.
Sounds like a plan. :)
Allow me to plant a seed of thought:
Why not accept the reward, and tally the funds, and spend it where it needs to go for the benefit of steem, projects, or users. I fully trust you to know what to do with it. :)
Lol
My preference is to leave it in the rewards pool so it is available to other members of the community ;)
Is it correct that witnesses get 1000 Steem per day for their work as witness? And is this 1000 Steem per witness or do all 20 witnesses have to share this daily shower (-> 50 Steem per witness?
Another thing: I think SBDs are a dangerously flawed instrument which must be removed. I wrote a post about it and it would be great to have your 2 cents about it plus what to do to get this to the top of the to-do-list.
Here is a post that describes the witness pay:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/til-how-much-witnesses-and-miners-make-per-block
I will review your post and comment there.
thx for the link. Is this correct: A normal top19 witness produces 1 block per minute and this 24/7 and for every block they get 0,1874 Steem. At the current price of about 6 US-$ they one witness makes a whopping 1,500 US-$ per day... or half a million per year. wow.
Are you all doing this professionally then or is it just a side gig? And are there any minimum requirements for witnesses like coding skills, business experience, maybe some economics knowledge or anything else.. or can you just walk in and claim the position?
Also: Can you give me a link or explain how the witness voting power is distributed. thx.
Also: Can you give me a link or explain how the witness voting power is distributed. thx.
Whopping?
There is nothing whopping about the top witness pay.
...and when you ask things like "can you just walk in and claim the position". Absolutely not. Do some research.. read all posts written by @timcliff over the last year and see if he just simply "walked up" and "claimed his position".
He spends countless hours building up and earning his position. We need our top witnesess to be well funded. It is a massive responsiblity and backbone of the network.
The top witnesses are basically the Executives of the decentralized corporation called STEEM. It's not easy to earn the position, it isn't easy to maintain that position. It isn't easy to run a reliable node and keep it reliable.
All in all, their pay is well deserved, and it can be annoying when people perceive that they could have simply "walked up and claimed the position".
@timcliff has earned trust by the community and has his seat voted in. That is not easily done. No, no one can walk up and claim his position easily.
...and I like that.
You can, you just have to buy yourself in or make enough valuable posts to get the necessary voting power.
(parenthesis added) Tim does a great job, but all his posts are a bit much for me. Maybe if you pay me 1000 Steem I will do it.;-)
I had a hunch that this might be the case^^
I cannot say anything about the programming and maintenance end of Steemit, but I have the impression, the witnesses have no clue about the economic end of their job or how to run a consumer oriented business (eg: zero regard that user might not understand them when using technical terms all the time -> "bluepaper").
Also: I like very good pay for very good people, but I think there are several witnesses among the current top100 who just aren't up to it and who also don't do enough for their pay (Tim not).
edit
sry if I added and deleted several times the same comments. Something is wrong here. I'm trying to keep the chaos under control..
In my view there are several top witnesses who are well worth the pay, and some that are not.
I would love to see more individuals come along who are able to add sufficient value to earn a top 20 spot, and work their way to the top. It is not easy, but it is possible. There are several individuals (jesta, myself, netuoso, aggroed for example) that have done it.
A good top witness will be taking steps to grow the value of STEEM. Even though they themselves are making a lot - if they do a good job, they will actually earn the entire community more than what they are paid.
Oh, if that's your concern: I'm not intending to become a witness. I'm just interested in the system and the economics behind it.
I would like to write a speculative post about witnesses, but I fear downvotes. Can you promise me to undo possible downvotes by zeroing them out with an upvote big enough?
It wasn't a concern about you joining, it was the opposite - I would like to see more witnesses join (not less).
Also, I wasn't necessarily speaking of you specifically - anyone who can add value to the platform through a witness campaign would be good to consider it.
Well, my upvote is not nearly enough to counter most of the the larger stakeholders. I also can't guarantee that without knowing what the content of your post is.
In general though, I would encourage people to post what they feel is important even if it means becoming targeted.
If you want to protect your main account, you can create a "throw away" account via AnonSteem.
Technically in a previous hardfork, the miner position was removed and a new ‘top 20’ position was added in its place with the same pay. Also, it is one block every 63 seconds - close to one per minute, but not exactly.
If the price of STEEM stays the same (or goes up), then yes - that is how much witnesses are making per day.
It is up to individual witnesses how much time they devote to it. For me it is pretty close to a full time job, but I do have a ‘day job’ in addition to my witness. One thing about witness pay is it can be great when the price is up, but we were still expected to do all the same stuff when the price of STEEM was $0.08 as well. We can also be voted out at anytime.
Anyone who has the technical skills necessary to get a witness node up and running can be a witness. Getting the votes from stakeholders however requires that they prove they are trustworthy individuals and are able to add value to the platform.
It is up to each individual stakeholder to decide what is important to them when voting for witnesses.
There is data on witness voting on steemdb.com.
So, nobody controls them or tells them to do more/a better job or what?
How much does the technical end of running a node cost?
Would you change some of the pay for some more security on being witness?
It is a decentralized system. Witnesses are accountable to their voters. If their voters remove their votes, they lose their ‘job’.
I spend about $300 per month on my infrastructure, plus my time. From a technical perspective, it requires some level of Linux sys admin skills, and a small amount of programming knowledge.
Not sure what you are asking.
Let me give you an example: When markymark isn't doing what he was supposed to do again, do you (or others) shout at him for his laziness? Do you tell around that he's a bad witness? I think for the hygiene of Steemit that is very important.
Is it tax deductible and do you publish the bill?
Well, you get ~0.2 Steem per block right now but can be fired any time. What if you had the choice to only get 0.15 Steem per block but after being voted out you'd still be in for another 4 weeks. Sort of American style VS European style.
I don't know the details here. What was he supposed to do?
The witnesses (and stakeholders) often get in very heated discussions, but there really isn't a central person to make this type of call. Even if I were to yell at someone for "not doing their job" - the worst I can do to them is publicly call them out, or take away my witness vote (if I am voting for them).
The real way that witnesses get hurt by doing something wrong, or 'not doing a good job' is by not getting votes, or by people who have voted for them taking their votes away.
Yes it is tax deductible. No, I don't publish the bill. The hosting companies that I use for my witness servers are kept private for security reasons.
No. I am paid per block that I produce. If I am voted out, I produce less blocks (or no blocks depending on the severity). If I am not producing blocks, then it doesn't make sense for me to get paid.
Also, at what point does someone earn their 4 weeks? A lot of times a top 20 witness is only there for a few hours, or a few days. Do they have to stay elected for at least a week to earn that? Or two weeks? Also, what happens if someone turns out to be a malicious witness? Would we need to invent a way to turn off the 4 weeks pay in cases like that? Who would control it? ...
My opinion is that I don't see what value it adds, and it would make the system more complicated.
(see my reply below)
Thank you for this @timcliff. I'm still trying to learn about this platform. I voted you as one of my witnesses. Should I have voted? Even if I am new?
Anyone is allowed to vote :)
If you are unsure who to vote for, or how to evaluate the witnesses, you can check out the witness voting guide linked in the post.
Thank you @timcliff
You can vote up to 20. And you should. But of course it takes time to figure out who is worth voting for. Hang around in witness category and watch and read what they are doing, what are their projects. That way you get better idea who are most devoted to this community.
You all are doing amazing work on steemit and am glad. Please keep it up.
Thanks for the good works @timclif, thanks also for always being inspiring. Keep it up brother
Lots of link and nice report. Thanks for the great info @timcliff.
I was checking to see what position Kurt Busch was in, but apparently he didn't make the cut. :)
This only shows the witnesses that posted witnesse reports this past week.
I would be surprised if Kurt Busch were on Steem. He's a Nascar driver. Seeing "gtg - position #3" reminded me of Nascar. :D
Thanks Tim! Our dedicated witness!
I have just voted for you as witness. Continue your great work in steemit. I am a 27-day steemit member and I do see potential here. I have been posting ever since. Just to drop you a note. I hope it encourages you!
Thanks :)