Steem Witnesses - Who Do You Vote For? Do You Use A Proxy?
Hey everyone so having been on Steemit for about 3-4 months now I have started become a regular who is invested in the future of it. It is highly influenced and basically built entirely off the blockchain STEEM. Essentially we have vote for witnesses and they ideally represent us and help the community. I've been reading into it and doing some research. If you need to know more check my other post all about witnesses: https://steemit.com/steem/@scottcbusiness/steem-witnesses-the-political-system-of-the-steem-blockchain
Since this is decentralized and we are all here to make some money and do what we love without being blocked by oppressive restrictions voting does matter because otherwise people with money can with ease take advantage of teh system which may already be the case. The only thing we can do is use our collaborative power to make a difference. Keep in mind, even if you don't care, others do so at least consider proxying your vote to still make a difference.
Who Do You Vote For?
I'd like to see the cases some people are making for who they vote for and why as I spend the next little bit looking into all of them and giving my recommendations. I don't have much inclination yet as I'm going to start reading each of the top 100 witness threads starting tomorrow, but I'd like to hear from users what they think. I will be going through any review I find and including them in my report this week that I do. This matters because we all have to have input on this or again consider proxying to people who are doing it.
The main issue is lack of communication between witnesses and Steemit for us to know who we should vote for. So this is why I'm starting to dive in and one person I'd like to highlight is @davemcroy
In his post 2 days ago here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@davemccoy/steemit-a-social-platform-or-a-bot-gaming-system which I resteemed he says "We at @newbieresteemday are happy to be presenting a series of witness interviews in the very near future. We have already lined up witnesses like @yabapmatt @steemcommunity @qurator and we have many more in the queue. We have a list of questions for each witness to answer, but the one I will want to ask most is this."
I am very interested to see this and will follow it in the future. This is the kind of thing we need for awareness and having a strong and open communication between the witnesses and the people they represent.
Why Proxies Matter
The simple answer is some people don't care about the politics or voting of witnesses. That makes sense as some people are here just to browse, where as content creators and people more seriosuly invested in the future of the platform might have some more concern about who is calling the shots. So, it matters if you aren't voting because bots and people with a lot of money can take advantage of a lazy voting system quite easily and then ruin the platform worst case scenario. So proxying your vote to someone who is actively looking into witnesses and keeping up with it and posting about it makes a lot of sense. This way you could proxy me for example and then check in once every now and then and see the updates I share on the witnesses and if you disagree you can let me know and maybe we will come to the same conensus. I have somewhat of an influence on here now so I want to use it all to give back and contribute to the long term stability of STEEM and Steemit. So then consider myself or others who are involved in the politics to proxy your vote or to get updates on to stay informed and do your part!
So yeah this was really short because it's not so much about the article as it is the question and the discussion I want to see in the comments to get a good feel for how people feel about the witnesses and why. Please share!
Every time I post I select 1 random winner from the upvotes, resteems, and comments totaling 3 winners and give them 0.01 SBD each and announce it on the next post! I also send out 0.001 weekly to followers! I use https://snackaholic.github.io/steemfortune/en/ by @snackaholic
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Were:
@machroezar
@razyy
@gktown
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Proxy
Proxying your vote is pretty simple you just go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses navigate to the bottom and type in a username here:
I have started to take an active interest in Steem witnesses treating them as future global decentralized politics. If you don't want to learn or bother to stay up to date with it, but do not want your vote wasted then you can make me your proxy to vote on your behalf!
Delegation
📲 If you don’t always use your vote power or all your SP or just want to get upvoted regularly, you can delegate SP to me to receive upvotes on all your content
Use https://steembottracker.com/ to delegate any amount to me!
Since I am an independent journalist, I like to pick witnesses who are somewhat in line with my philosophy, or at the very least ones that are openly anti-censorship.
I also look for witnesses who are trying to help out newcomers and minnows. Also witnesses who have cool projects.
The ones I like most sofar are @ausbitbank, @aggored, @lukestokes, @jrswab, @krnel, @neoxian, @ura-soul, @teamsteem
I still got some research to do into other people though
Awesome glad to get some idea of where to start :) Thanks a bunch will check them out
Thank you for the shoutout!
thanks john, glad to have you here. :)
I just voted for a @krnel, he is a great guy writing on important topics, most witnesses do not. Not listed in top 50!
Curie always got a vote :)
Haven´t thought much about proxy but you make a valid point, and I have only thrown down 5 / 30 votes..
Peace
True! I'll check out krnel!
Great article, thanks for sharing @scottcbusiness and Steem On!
Thanks for checking! You rock :D
Nice topic
Cheers
Thank you somuch for your response on my coment.from today your every post will got an upvote from me.
Wow thank you so much! Every little bit counts to help spread it so more minnows can see and learn and grow together :) Plus it helps me earn more so I can focus more on Steemit and move away from my day job
I do my very best, I lack writing skills/talent, but I am determined to blog and share ideas, and learn eventually.
I believe in the potential of cryptos, and steem ofcourse.
For sure for sure! You can always check out my stuff tons of info on Steemit :)
Glad to see you taking this seriously (not that I didn't think you were.) But you know full well many do not. I myself have 23 votes left so i've voted for 7 witnesses. I do plan to use all my votes but need to be fully invested in my vote bc unlike the US presidential election, votes here matter.
I'm a little confused on your description of the proxy. Could you better explain that? I don't use that feature and the way you are describing it isn't the way i thought it worked.
So teach me. 🙏😊
I was more so explaining why you might use a proxy. It takes all your votes so you have to be somewhat trusting into letting them delegate everything. Votes here do matter, but technically someone could pay their way to be a witness.
Yeah no way I'd use a proxy! But good info none the less
Yeah I mean it's not for everyone, but for people who were only using it as social media and or don't care are giving one more vote over to like bots or purchased steem power by not voting at the same time. So proxies do make sense in that capacity
It seems at this point there is one common question to ask any potential witness. The question is if they support the removal of trapped votes from inactive witness accounts?
To get an idea of how much dead wood must be pushed through by any up and coming witness, have a look at all the red named witnesses on the following list of the top 400 voted witnesses...
https://steemian.info/witnesses
This situation works as an advantage to those already past the inactive dead zone.
Yes there are lot of issues that overly benefit the decision makers that aren't being changed that must be addressed
I've been here for 35 days and I haven't get a grasp the whole meaning of blockchain and what its has got to do with the crypto currencies. No one has ever explain it in a layman's term like making references to the actual day to day examples. They kept on referring to the same terms which is already jargon to most. Is it that everyone here have a background of a basic algorithm or computer programmer language?... I don't. It frustrates me every time and each time I tried to read or watch I don't understand. Perhaps I have a low IQ but is it only me feeling this way?
All I know from here is that there witnesses are like city council..they represent us (Steemit community) to communicate with the platform developers and that is important for us to choose our representative carefully for the future of this platform. To date I am still unclear of which witness is specialized in which contribution (charity drive, platform version updates, in heading specific community (Spanish, Korean Chinese) and so on. There is just no list to refer to and everything is hit and misses. Frankly speaking, most of the 17 votes are those witnesses who voted for my posts(not manual votes of course)... yup, that's the truth. For my case, I have 13 more votes left and it might be more if those witness that I vote not making any visible change in the community. Apologise to @scottcbusiness for venting here.
well steemit is a social media built off the steem blockchain they are steem blockchain witnesses actually. They don't talk to the devs, they more or less are the devs now I believe since it's open source and people can contribute ideas etc and they consider things for hardforks in the blockchain for the version of Steemit to be affected as well. This is my understanding not fact!
I guess its still a new thing that nobody can give the definite answer yet. What we can see here is very promising so long as we select the right people. Thank you so much for your views @scottcbusiness and I think I can see a glimmer of light now. Can't wait for your proposal to kick off... I will surely stay tune.
Awesome glad to have you!
thank you so much for the sbd !! it means alot and y do u keep doing it?xx
Was doing weeekly payouts, now monthly to all my followers :)
bloody hell thank u x wow u have heaps of followers it must take ages to go through them all lol
haha cheers, a script ;)
lol :)
I have no comment but I've resteem it. Thanks for your gift all again
Cheers thanks!