How much can one earn for being a Steem witness? How much dollar-value is Steem creating every day?
Witnesses
So Steem trades at: $1.368257
1 block gets mined every 3 seconds
How much STEEM is in each block? Is it just 1?
I can't really figure out how much the witnesses get per block; the FAQ says 10% goes to 'witnesses', but this article: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/til-how-much-witnesses-and-miners-make-per-block seems to say something else.
So let's just try and ballpark it -
(1block/3seconds)*(1steem/block)*(0.10)*(1.368257$/1steem)*(60secs/min)*(60min/hr)*(24hr/day)
So that's $3940.58 per day in witness fees. Pretty good deal for them. Figure that's split across the 20-ish witness/backup-witnesses, etc.
Still, $200 bucks a day just to run a computer program sounds pretty lucrative to me.
Economy
How much currency is Steem generating per day, then? Well, it would seem: $39,405.80
Seriously, generating that much dollar-value per day? That's crazy. I mean, my time is valuable, and my attention-span is valuable, but I've glanced through the Steem bloggy post things, and I don't think I'm seeing that amount of value being created.
Will definitely require more research.
How much bitcoin is created each day and how is that price supported? Understand the answer to that question and you'll have a better understanding what Steem is accomplishing. Better yet, how does 10,000 bitcoin to buy one pizza in May 2010 become worth over $24 million just 7 years later? You're about to head down the rabbit hole, my friend. Enjoy the ride. :)
I started my own witness here, and it's been running for about a month: https://steemit.com/@lukestokes.mhth/transfers
As a backup witness, the number of blocks you produce is based on how high up this list you get voted by other Steem Power holders: https://steemd.com/witnesses
You can see my block production here: https://steemdb.com/@lukestokes.mhth/blocks
The top 20 witnesses create most of the blocks, but they get far less per block than a backup witness which gets just shy of 1 Steem per block.
It's not just about running a computer program. You have to be supported and voted in by the community. If you don't provide value as a witness, you can get voted out. Most witnesses do regular reports (you can see some of them here).
Here's my proposal post along with my witness updates 6/6/2017 and june-19th-2017