Let’s Talk Witnesses!
As many of you know, witnesses are the ‘miners’ of this STEEM blockchain. They record the transactions that occur here on the steemit platform (along with all the other platforms that run on STEEM like DTube and Utopian). The witnesses produce blocks, set price feeds, and educate us on the overall health of STEEM. You can check out the list of witnesses here.
I don’t understand all the technical aspects of a witness and that is why I have my geeky teammates @mellofello and @andykapps to help in researching witness-related topics and who we as a team BeeYOU should vote as witnesses. We are slowly reviewing the list of witnesses and determining who we should support with our minuscule SP worth. Our team BeeYOU will have some interesting posts coming soon on some of the witnesses!
Every person that spends time on steemit should be vested in who we as a community should vote for as a witness. These are the representative of our platform!
What is this contest about?
So my contest today will be on sharing your thoughts on witnesses. Tell us anything you would like to hear or know about our witnesses. Tell us why you voted for the witnesses on your list. Simply share your thoughts on witnesses and you are entered in this simple contest!
I will start off with the reasons why our team voted for the witnesses we did. I shared this comment on @abh12345’s delegation post and will do so here too with some slight editing.
Who are the witnesses we support?
We have voted for 6 witnesses as a team. Going down our team's witness list, in no particular order:
@steemcommunity – a new witness team to come onto the scene, announcement made 3 hours ago. This up and coming witness is a duo team with @abh12345 and @paulag.
Our #newbieresteemday community has been supported by @abh12345 from the very start, which is close to 3 months now when our community was established. Asher has stopped by our members’ blogs to show his support, host a weekly curation and engagement league, and is delegating over 1332 SP across the 8 members of our Newbie Resteem community that ranked in the top 11 of his community engagement league (out of 300+ contestants). If you've ever received an upvote from myself or @davemccoy and many of our team members, then know it is possible through his delegation to us. He simply has the community welfare at heart. Mello met @paulag from the blockchainbi discord room and is also impressed with her dedication to the community.
They definitely have our witness vote!
📌 steemcommunity is staying as a team vote for witness.
@timcliff - Mello is the first of us to have interaction with Tim. Mello read his posts, researched him, liked what he stood for, and outright admires him (that's an outright compliment coming from someone who initially thought steemit was a pyramid scheme). I read Tim's witness and ocd posts and like him too.
Tim has graciously agreed to have Mello interview him on a Q&A post so we can help our newbies learn more about Tim as a person and witness. We hope we can help our newbie community make an informed decision before casting their vote. He will be our first witness in our interview post series! We received his responses back on the Q&A, now just have to find some time to write an engaging post.
📌 TimCliff is staying as a team vote for witness.
@curie - I voted for curie since I have seen their support to the newbie authors (even veteran ones). It gives the undiscovered authors with beautiful voices and talent hope that their work could one day be recognized. I can't say I've seen any other support elsewhere yet. They have the community spirit at heart so my vote goes to them.
📌 Curie is staying as a team vote for witness.
@yabapmatt - Both Mello and Andy went to the steemit meet-up in our area and met Matt. They were mighty impressed with him as a person and witness (again, that's an outright compliment from these two who were never fully onboard with steemit until after meeting Matt).
Matt has also graciously agreed to having Mello interview him on a Q&A post, which will be after Tim. He is also supportive of our #newbieresteemday community when he learned of us.
📌 YabapMatt is staying as a team vote for witness.
@qurator - I voted for qurator since I am a member and they have shown support to the community. However, I would like Mello to do his due diligence for us before we commit to this witness vote as a team. Just because we are a membership club does not dictate they should have our support. I know they are involved in supporting their members, but I haven't done much research on them myself. I do appreciate their continued support because their 1.1 or 1.2% upvote value does help.
I've reached out to Qurator about a Q&A session with Mello. No response back yet.
❓Qurator is staying for now, but pending further review and research.
@steemgigs - Ahh, Terry. He is @surpassinggoogle for those that only know of his personal account name. He is a big supporter of the Phillipines and Nigerian community. Sadly, I'm not part of that community and don't receive support from him (he did hit us with a 1% upvote on my ABC's of Curation post and brought over his curation trail, nice!). Just because I'm not a part of his community does not mean I don't see the support he show others here on steemit. For that, he has my witness vote.
📌 steemgigs is staying as a team vote for witness.
Contest Rules remain the same as all the other Let's Talk! posts but an extra $1 SBD will be an added prize on this one.
❤️ BONUS Prize 🎖: $1 SBD to the most awesome comment. The winner will be selected by our BeeYOU teammates.
❤️ Prize 🎖: One (1) lifetime membership to @steembasicincome.
Second stipulation: I will pick an Active Member from the #newbieresteemday initative to send the $1 steem required for sponsorship. The member will be the person sending in the sponsor request to @steembasicincome for the winner of this contest. By doing it this way, I can help to support a member of the Newbie Resteem initiative along with the contest winner.
💛 Contest winner for the steembasicincome will be randomly selected by using this web tool: https://www.miniwebtool.com/random-picker/.
#newbieresteemday member winner will be my selection.
💜 Payout: Prize will occur at the end of this post’s payout.
Ready, set, share!
Image Sources:
Let's talk witnesses from @davemccoy
Beeyou signoff from @seaslim
Newbieresteemday giphy from @amariespeaks
Newbieresteemday banner from @jogreh
Indicator
on a side note i would like to throw @valorforfreedom in the ring. He is up and coming and is making a witness bid and his daily how to blogs really helped me get started on steemit as I had noone to help me but thanks to his well thought out and executed how to posts i was able to navigate the platform better. Putting his name out there is the least i can do to repay him.
We will add @valorforfreedom as another witness to reach out to about our Q&A post. We are trying to interview the witnesses so we can have a better understanding of who they are as a person and witness.
One other witness that has given us a response to the Q&A is @jackmiller (thank you Jack). We just haven't had a chance to do our due diligence yet with our research. Also, @danielsaori is another runner up to being a witness. We will also ask him for a Q&A interview when he makes the witness announcement.
There are are so many on the witness list that we like, but have yet to research and do our due dilligence with them.
@jackmiller has always been a really good guy to me. i would fully support him also.
Thank you for the recommendation DDC.
I value that a lot.
Thank you sir! I guess I would have to find a reason more so for you not to get my vote and support forward as witness, and what I have dug into recently I've seen nothing but great things. It's an honor to vote you as a witness and please keep up the excellent work on all fronts!
Thank you too Cryptkeeper.
Thank you for your support! It was great meeting Mello and Andy at the meetup and looking forward to seeing them again at the next one!
#newbieresteemday is a great initiative and I'm happy to do what I can to help support it. I don't have enough time to read through all of the posts and keep up with everything going on unfortunately, but please get in touch with me if there's anything specific you want me to look at / support and I definitely will.
I also like all of the different contests and promotions you are running and would like to kick in some STEEM or SBD as additional prizes.
Last, but not least - since this post is about witnesses, please let me know if you have any questions about witnesses, what they do, how the system works, or anything.
The witnesses are the most important part of the Steem platform. Without them the platform would not run. They make the final decisions about what changes get made to the platform and what new features get implemented or not. So that's why it's of vital importance that everyone, big or small, knows who the witnesses are that run the platform and casts their votes!
Hey again Matt! I see that @beeyou tagged me again to get in touch with you! That is a very gracious offer to help us with different contests and promotions. I will talk it over with our people and see what ideas they can come up with, so thank you very much!
And I have a questions for you:
I agree about the fact that witnesses are important, and since we are all relatively new, can you tell us how our votes are counted? Is it one account one vote or is it based on SP or some combination of the 2? If it is based on SP, then could you tell us why you think it is important for us to vote (since we are so small)?
Thank you and thank you again for your generous offer! It is very nice of you and its also nice that you recognize what we are doing here! :)
Feel free to reach out to me on Steem Chat or Discord about the contests or anything else.
Regarding witness voting, the more SP you have the more your vote counts, just like with upvoting posts or comments. So someone with a million SP has a vote worth the same as 1 million people with 1 SP each.
There are a couple reasons why I think it's still important to vote for witnesses even if you have very little SP in your account:
Done, I connected to you on discord! Thank you for that offer btw...
And also I'm glad to see how you view it, I think both points are important but #2 is vital... Its good to know that you as a witness care that the newbies and minnows stay engaged!
Hi Matt. I do understand the challenges of having a balance between steemit/real world life. Appreciate you stopping by! Thank you for your support on this post. :)
My sentiments exactly! Many of us don't understand the roles of a witness and are not knowledgeable enough to make informed votes. Our team are already researching the witnesses we would like to support, and thought it would be a good idea to share with the Newbie Resteem community.
EVERYONE, please feel free to ask any questions you have for Matt
Thanks @yabapmatt for graciously offering STEEM or SBD as additional prizes for our contests. This contest is more of an 'opener' to the ones we plan on having regarding witnesses. Those will be more interesting!
I am tagging @davemccoy, the tireless leader of our community. He will happily reach out to you about future contests and ways our community could benefit from your support. So so many of our team members go that extra mile to support newbies on here. It would be wonderful if we could find avenues to help both our members and the newbies that make it into our steemit lives.
Hey @beeyou
I decided to come back after all. Spent Yesterday staying away from SteemIt, then realized life was pretty boring without you guys and gals :0)
As for witnesses, I’m not a very good researcher ( too lazy), so I guess it’s fair to say that my choises were pretty egoistic ones.
Of course I fully support @steemcommunity, the witness project of @abh12345 and @paulag. Asher is such a friendly guy who is supporting so many newbies. I truly believe they’re here to make the community a better place.
WhenI got hacked, there were so many people that really put up a personal effort to help me out in way or another. I know it’s their job to do so, still I’m highly appreciative they took all the time that was needed to get my account and reputation score back. So I definitely rewarded them with a witness vote. I’m talking about @patrice, @drakos And @guiltyparties.
@anyx is on the list too. However I don’t always agree with Cheeta policies, I still think he’s doing a great job trying to keep this place clean.
My other votes went to people who have provided tools I use on a daily basis. Without these tools, life on SteemIt would be a lot tougher.
@followbtcnews for Steemistry and more
@yapabmatt for steembottracker and the fact that he’s always willing to help out/give more info
@blockbrothers for Steemify
@dragousroua, creator of steem.supply
@stoodkev for his SteemPlus plugin
@samrg472, creator of steemdunk
Most of them have more projects under their name, but these are the ones that are best known.
Then, you’ve also got @curie, of course, and utopian-io, both for obvious reasons
I voted for @therealwolf before, but after trying to get an answer about something without getting a reply, I crossed him of my list
I vote and take away votes regularly. And since I saw @lynncoyle1 handing over the control to @abh12345, I must admit I thinking about doing the same thing. ‘Cos hey, what do I know, right? ;0)
Well you appear to know plenty!! I plan on keeping an eye out on @abh12345 to make sure he's holding up his end of the bargain haha, but truthfully, this is one thing I'm happen to give up control over! I know he will do a great joy with my votes.
However did I miss this reply of yours @simplymike? Thanks for stopping by and providing your insight on the aforementioned witnesses.
As for handing over control to Asher, it is a personal decision. I admire him greatly, but do want to support those I support only after my own research. I know he stopped supporting witnesses that own bid-bots, so many of the witnesses on your list would not be a supported witness. Only one I support right now with bid-bots is Matt, and I will continue to show my support there. He does want to show support to our community and I am not faulting anyone for being a bid-bot owner but heck, what do I know?
Life is boring without us right? Thanks for engaging with Mike @lynncoyle1! ;)
No worries, @beeyou, there are so many things I miss, every day again :0)
I assume (but I’m not sure) you mean yabapmatt when you say Matt?
I agree voting for witnesses is a very personal thing. I can relate to Asher’s decision to not vote on bot owners. Everyone is trying his own thing to give bot owners less power. If only STINC would come into play and wipe them all out. Wouldn’t that be awesome? Content that would be rewarded by curators only? But it’ll never be more than a dream, I guess...
Yes, I mean yabapmatt. :)
I plan on not writing posts until I catch up to everything, then something I read piques my interest and there I go, wanting to write another post when I don't even have time to respond to comments!
Ahh..that's another discussion topic there @simplymike. The chances of STINC coming to play is slim. I support the limit of rewarding up to 4 posts/day to avoid reward abuse (which they initially had implemented but then removed) but I don't see that happening either.
As for content rewards from curators...it would be the steemians with SP that would ultimately determine content worth right? And who do they support? Surely not the redfishes.
True... unfortunately. So the system is just set up to not work...
Lol - I never thought of him as ‘Matt’ - from his username, I assumed he was Japanese or Korean or so.
Just clicked through to his profile to see his pic, and saw he had done the name challenge, hahaha
Good idea @beeyou! I had about 15 witnesses chosen, 3 of which you mentioned here, and then Asher wrote his post a week or so ago when he noticed many of us on the Curation Leagues' list hadn't voted for witnesses. I added to my already-too-long to-do list, researching the rest to complete my witness votes, but never seemed to have the time to do it. The more I found out about @abh12345, the more I loved who he is and what he does for this community...all the selfless giving to support the League's alone led me to this decision: @abh12345 is my proxy!
It is not easy for me to give up control, but when I wasn't able to complete this task to the best of my ability, and I sure didn't want to halfheartedly tick off names just to get it done, I decided who better than Ash to complete the task for me. It was simply serendipitous that he announced that he and @paulag were running for witness today, although I had a little feeling that was the direction he was heading in.
So, for anyone reading this, who has no idea who to vote for, please don't leave your votes empty, but take my word for it and trust @abh12345 to complete it for you; he will complete it very well, I assure you!
(That last bit sounded like I'm working for his campaign haha)
I did however write a post about why I love @steemcommunity and @qurator as witnesses and why ;)
Hey @lynncoyle1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on why you love @steemcommunity and @qurator and why you have Asher listed as proxy. He definitely has the community at heart and will vote on great witnesses. For me and our team, we would like to slowly go through the witness list and learn about them before making a vote. There are so many good ones out there that are already doing a great job as witness, but still would like to do our due diligence.
My pleasure @beeyou! I too believe in due diligence, but I just didn't seem to have the time for it :)
:D
Thank you Lynn!
I'll do my best for sure. There will always be a few 'personal' choices in everyones witness list, due to perhaps something they showed you / gave you in the past, but I want my list to look forward and hold the community at heart. It will be tweaked as we continue into 2018 and beyond.
And of course, if you ever choose to remove the proxy then don't worry about doing so!
Again, you're welcome Asher! I will pass along what @hitmeasap said to me after his generous delegation: "Just don't doing anything f*#king stupid with it" haha
I would further echo support both @timcliff and @steemcommunity, they have helped or plan on helping our community. One witness you may want to look into is @ats-witness he is another that helps our community significantly and also helps other communities as well.
There's a few other witnesses I support and vote for, however.. Those are the three that are directly either helping our community or have pledged to in the future. So I would highly suggest those individuals and since you already have two of them listed, you may want to look into the third? :)
Hi @apolymask. I appreciate you stopping by and providing your insight on the three witnesses that are supporting the communities. I have seen @ats-witness as a sponsor of your IFC contest and it is very commendable that he is showing support to the community. We have not had a chance to research him, but will definitely do so! I admire all witnesses that support the community in one way or another.
Yes, we will definitely look into the third!
Glad to help! And glad you found the info useful and that you'll look into ats-witness.. He seems like someone who genuinely cares about the community and wants to help give back!
I came across him on a curie post. Definitely on my next witness list to research! Thanks @apolymask.
Cool. :) And you're welcome!
this is great what you are doing here .. I have to admit .. I'm still a little unsure about how the witnesses work exactly - but it's good to see you connecting with witnesses since they are so influential on this platform.
Speaking of influential - you were very instrumental in helping to get my article curried ... sooo . So I got you two shares of Steem Basic Income in your name - I hope it helps you out some.I like being a part of Steem Basic Income and I can see that you are already familiar with it. I know that you have been a huge help to me and I wanted to try to pay back the favor in some small way. Keep up the good work!
You did not have to sponsor me for two shares of Steem Basic Income @jorlauski! That is awfully nice of you. Thank you. :)
You wrote a great post that deserved to be curied. They do like to spread their upvotes and may not come around for some time since you've been curied several times. So write for the joy of writing which you are already doing with your great posts. You should use #ocd-resteem as the first tag for your quality posts. They also support great posts. Might not be as big a hit as curie but the support can be there if a curator comes across the post.
Our team hope to write more detailed posts about the technical aspects of witnesses, once we have time to research. As always, time is the enemy. :)
Thanks again! It really is sweet of you.
tagging everyone that stopped by on my previous contests, just so we are guaranteed some participants :)
@lynncoyle1, @simplymike, @kismet2018, @malloryblythe, @smylie2005, @sweetcha, @amariespeaks, @artgirl, @seaslim, @plushzilla, @davemccoy, @keciah, @doomsdaychassis, @leeart, @roundhere, @youhavewings, @starthere, @simon62
I'm also dropping your link in @asapers chat channel. There's conversations going on about witness now there too :)
Cool Lynn! Feel free to jump in anytime and help comment. ;) I'm trying to make my way down, but I think I am done for day. How many times have I said this? Engaging is exhausting!
Tell me about it sista! :)
oh your tagging me my dear @beeyou thank you I didn't notice that it is a contest I wrote about qurator witness earlier here is my post link
https://busy.org/@sweetcha/shoutout-qurator-is-a-witness
Thanks @sweetcha. I will add you to the contestant list!
I have voted those witnesses above because I believe they do make this platform a better place. They support quality contents and at the same find and develop talents. They also help support newbies.
I support who you support because what you do echoes what they do, creating a good and positive ripple effect.
The first witness I voted was @surpassinggoogle because he was the first one who gave noticed and kept upvoting my contents since then. He has also developed a platform called @steemgigs where in you can showcase your talents for a price. A service in exchange for service is on the making.
You are simply amazing and thank you for this thoughtful comment @leeart, I support who you support because what you do echoes what they do, creating a good and positive ripple effect. 💗
I appreciate that you are supporting the same witnesses. I feel it is important to know some of the witnesses on here so we can all make informed decisions on who we choose to vote as our witnesses. The list will definitely not stop here! Our team will continue to add on to the list as we learn more about the other witnesses out there.
I admire @surpassinggoogle very much for all he does for the community. If only I could be part of the Phillipines and Nigerian community! Gosh darnnit :) In all seriousness, he truly is awesome and is very supportive. I did receive a comment upvote from him once on my personal account when I first started out. I was amazed to see my first $2 comment upvote. At that time, I was lucky to see $0.01 penny.
As there are more and more witnesses, I hope that it is the answer to make the quality of this platform better. I think the witnessing is in all of us too. It starts with us how we want this community to be.
I appreciate every vote I get. However, it is @surpassinggoggle's votes that push my earnings to at least $1 lol! Then the others followed along.
Yes, I love that outlook of yours @leeart. It does start from the smallest refish to the witness whales out there.
It is good to see him helping so many out there. That's why I'm a strong believer of paying it forward, sharing with others and also giving back to those that helped us along the way.
@surpassinggoogle is a mentor @steemgigs is his witness and I'm a big fan of he.
It's no surprise that a lot of people loves him because of how much dedication and undying passion he has to make his vision realized.
I’m so glad you shared this Team @beeyou! I have not yet voted for any witness. I just haven’t educated myself enough to feel confident in my voting! I finally feel like I have a decent grasp on the basics of Steemit. It’s time for me to get engaged in the voting of our witnesses! I’m really falling in love with this community. It’s the right thing (just like voting in any election) to do if you want to make it the best it can be! There’s no whining about where it ends up, if you don’t make your voice heard, right? Thank you so much for putting this out there. It’s a great start for me. How many witnesses do we need to vote on?
I'm in the same boat. I haven't completely understood the whole concept, so I hadn't worried about it yet, but it's been sitting in the back of my mind for awhile now. I'm ready to cast my first vote now, if I can work out how to do it.
Hi @viking-ventures. My post is more of an intro post to get everyone's thoughts on witnesses. If you read the comments, there are many like yourself on here. Some that know a tad more about witnesses than you do, but we are all still learning. We'll have future posts that will explain witnessing more in detail. A future contest will be with us helping you cast your first witness vote! You can wait to make a vote then, or if you are ready now to vote for a witness, let me know. I can walk you through it.
I can wait then. And thanks for your posts on this confusing subject. There's so much to know on Steemit - a steep learning curve (or perhaps steem learning curve!) - it's going to take time to catch all the little bits on it now that I've got the basics down.
Right on point!! Get that active key out and make your first vote @pretty.dorky! Really, take your time to learn about the witnesses, who they are and what they stand before you vote for one.
We've had many of our newbie team members ask about witnesses and who they should vote for, so we decided to start several posts introducing some witnesses to everyone. Those will come out soon.
We can vote for a total of 30 witnesses. We can also unvote those witnesses at any time if their actions don't align with our own beliefs/thoughts.
See, look at you... Always giving out helpful advice to others... That's why I am a proud @beeyou fan and happy to have her in our membership club! She is always energetic and encouraging, and lots of fun to everyone! :)
You got a 100.00% upvote from @bearwards courtesy of @unleashpower!
The force is with you! You got a 50.00% upvote from @steemyoda courtesy of @unleashpower!
I have not voted all 30 of mine yet, but I have added a few over the last month or so. The first witness I picked I believe was Tim Cliff (@timcliff), and the reason was pretty simple, when I was but a newbie a big bad wolf came after me, I asked a simple question, and was pounced on like I was meat. They chewed me up and spit me out, and I thought that I would shout. I asked why and Tim helped me. The flags were more of a psychological shock than any real damage but Tim help fix the damage they did.
Since then he has accepted suggestions from me, even stupid ones and has always been nice about his replies. he has also helped me on other occasions, and I have seen him help other new users out. I doubt that I will ever unvote him.
@anyx, Cheetah builder, Guard builder, steemcleaners leader, she, (I think she a she), is a one person, (in case she is not a she) protect the people force to be reckoned with. She believes a lot in steemit, and keeping it clean.
@arcange, I do not know a lot about him or his blog, what I do know is that he tries to treat people with respect, and he hates scammers. You will often see him in the same areas and on the same post as Guard, warning of and fighting scams.
These three are my top respected witnesses. I have tried to be very careful about who I selected as witness, and I will adjust one day. I of course selected @steemcommunity as one.
edit:13 minutes after posting. I no longer have witness votes, trying out that proxy thing, so you have to ask Asher who I vote for now.
Hi @bashadow. Thanks for sharing your thoughts on some of the witnesses. I hope the big bad wolf is not a witness himself! That would be a shame if someone misuse their power like that. I’m glad Tim helped you with it.
The other witnesses you mentioned are also ones we like but we just want to do some due diligence research before committing. Looks like you now have a full witness list!
Yes, I did not have the time to do a good hunt for witnesses, so since Asher has helped me and I trust his and Paulag's intent, I gave my proxy to Him, so that all my votes could be used.
Good for you. I'm going to go through my witness selection slowly.
As for handing proxy to Asher, I said the same thing to @simplymike.