How Many Steemians Are NOT Voting for a Witness? I Found the Answer!
With the debates going on between ETH and EOS and the Bitcoin hardfork drama, now seems like a good time to think about how well Steemit's Delegated Proof of Stake governance system works as far as user participation.
@eeks asked an interesting question earlier today:
What % of Steem holders, by number, have ever voted for a witness?
I had to find an answer.
If you're not sure what a witness vote is, or why it's important, please see this post from a couple months ago: Steemit is Free, But Your Witness Vote Determines its Future.
I couldn't wait to finish work today, read to the kids, and get them in bed so I could start hacking on this question. I decided to only include accounts which have been active (meaning they published at least one comment or post). I'm also just looking at witness votes as of today, not taking into account if someone once voted for a witness but isn't anymore.
Based on the code I came up with to analyze the blockchain, here are the answers I got:
Inactive Accounts: 178,339
Active Accounts with a Voting Proxy: 652
Active Accounts with at Least One Witness Vote: 7,233
Active Accounts with No Witness Votes: 105,076
So there you have it. Out of over 100k active accounts, only around 8k are currently voting for a witness.
We Have 7.5% Witness Voting Engagement.
That's how much participation this governance system of DPOS truly has as of today, July 31st, 2017. I think it could be be better, but I also think it's the best system for blockchain governance yet created. You can't vote out a massive POW mining farm, but here we can vote out witnesses. I just put this code together this afternoon, so it's possible I messed something up. If you see something wrong or you'd like to see the code, please let me know in the comments.
Have You Voted for a Witness?
If you haven't voted yet, please consider setting @lukestokes as your proxy voter. Otherwise, go vote for some Steemit Witnesses you've interacted with and respect to do what's in the best interest of the network. I hope that includes my witness, @lukestokes.mhth.
Also, as an added bonus, here are the top 100 accounts by VESTed shares who are currently not voting for any witnesses and don't have a proxy set. If you know any of them, maybe ask nicely if they might consider sending a vote my way. :)
I've excluded 12 accounts that I think belong to Steemit employees. Seems to me it's a good thing for them not to be involved in the governance decisions of the Steem blockchain considering they control the Steemit account.
| Account | Vests | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | ranchorelaxo | 2673733493 |
| 2 | proskynneo | 2373715060 |
| 3 | recursive | 825386926 |
| 4 | newsflash | 727275397 |
| 5 | creator | 476774626 |
| 6 | skan | 434185626 |
| 7 | livingfree | 364402390 |
| 8 | virus707 | 272160060 |
| 9 | sigizzang | 257347550 |
| 10 | damarth | 236011480 |
| 11 | extrospect | 227949287 |
| 12 | otisbrown | 224641357 |
| 13 | ctrl-alt-nwo | 217232009 |
| 14 | modprobe | 216413276 |
| 15 | famunger | 209530527 |
| 16 | trevonjb | 203764309 |
| 17 | bayrene | 187111227 |
| 18 | faddy | 180946157 |
| 19 | cylonmaker2053 | 178188460 |
| 20 | surfyogi | 169154402 |
| 21 | topinvestor2021 | 158887912 |
| 22 | ramires | 158217200 |
| 23 | bramd | 155944655 |
| 24 | wans | 140185396 |
| 25 | toxic | 135771556 |
| 26 | dimimp | 130551482 |
| 27 | urbanoid | 125276495 |
| 28 | musicholic | 120968261 |
| 29 | enable | 115506130 |
| 30 | sandrino | 109995641 |
| 31 | candyman | 108080835 |
| 32 | peacephilpanda | 106190123 |
| 33 | greatpath | 100705804 |
| 34 | crypto-p | 99407451 |
| 35 | underdog600 | 98915172 |
| 36 | zurvanic | 98820346 |
| 37 | noaommerrr | 97887374 |
| 38 | joeyd | 96498688 |
| 39 | mrwalt | 95212368 |
| 40 | rhanna10km | 94348959 |
| 41 | eric818 | 94086523 |
| 42 | steemitblog | 93540695 |
| 43 | speda | 90728353 |
| 44 | sjmstem | 89079944 |
| 45 | skt | 84622347 |
| 46 | kimjungmin | 83171375 |
| 47 | timotirado | 80585337 |
| 48 | kb720k | 78468205 |
| 49 | alex | 75824112 |
| 50 | leon-fu | 73410353 |
| 51 | somebody | 69973768 |
| 52 | randomthoughts | 68367812 |
| 53 | hedge-x | 68211433 |
| 54 | mynewsteemit | 67980659 |
| 55 | ugos | 67445779 |
| 56 | spectral | 64254506 |
| 57 | triplej | 63296570 |
| 58 | originate | 62083308 |
| 59 | sizzlingmonkeys | 62008917 |
| 60 | theoretical | 61258065 |
| 61 | cornerstone | 58810529 |
| 62 | cjh | 58621087 |
| 63 | joele | 58384109 |
| 64 | wmougayar | 55544517 |
| 65 | ramblin-bob | 55415633 |
| 66 | davidp | 54406609 |
| 67 | a48 | 53893030 |
| 68 | benhoneywell | 53846674 |
| 69 | megaspore | 53320915 |
| 70 | jacobcards | 52763377 |
| 71 | kwak | 52668771 |
| 72 | steemydino | 52311525 |
| 73 | danlupi | 51918013 |
| 74 | awgbibb | 51830993 |
| 75 | libertyteeth | 51822920 |
| 76 | creadordelfuturo | 50408528 |
| 77 | xiaohui | 48138183 |
| 78 | dana-edwards | 46686840 |
| 79 | neilstrauss | 46301182 |
| 80 | grognak | 45315199 |
| 81 | morten | 44576706 |
| 82 | joeblack1 | 44220634 |
| 83 | alexbeyman | 43112913 |
| 84 | domino | 42928395 |
| 85 | bitacer | 41605383 |
| 86 | goldmatters | 41550124 |
| 87 | corbettreport | 41211236 |
| 88 | mining4bacon | 41046950 |
| 89 | felix.mg1 | 40927773 |
| 90 | clarkgold | 40915894 |
| 91 | doudou252666 | 40258372 |
| 92 | sword | 40097159 |
| 93 | bleepcoin | 39800446 |
| 94 | sephiroth | 39683922 |
| 95 | rl90 | 39479421 |
| 96 | kurtcorthout | 39464479 |
| 97 | samu-paha | 39274707 |
| 98 | margarita-chavez | 38608602 |
| 99 | katecloud | 37978769 |
| 100 | abuzarkalam | 37964202 |
If people find this useful, I may make it a regular weekly or monthly report to remind everyone to vote for witnesses and further distribute the governance process here on Steemit. Let me know what you think in the comments.
I ran a version of the report again this morning but did not include the requirement for a single post. Here are the results:
Total accounts: 291,340
Accounts with a proxy: 3,531
Accounts with a witness vote: 7,870
Accounts with no witness vote: 279,899
That's not surprising to me that there are bot accounts with no posts which have proxies set. What is surprising is I lost 40 accounts somewhere as the math doesn't perfectly add up. :)
Begin time: 2017-08-01T13:59:50+00:00
End time: 2017-08-01T14:39:31+00:00
The report takes about 40 minutes to run, and that's with the full list of accounts already cached. If I'm going to run this weekly (which I think I am), I'll probably set it up on a server to automate parts of it. I also want to play around with some charts showing SP distribution and such. I'm also curious to know how many accounts are voting per witness in the top 20 and 50 along with the SP distribution of those voters. Super interesting stuff here. I love the blockchain! :)
You can reduce that by 1, so now 279,898 accounts with no witness vote.
:)
decided that today was a good day to pick some more witness to vote.
had only around 4 votes.
just added @lukestokes.mhth , @ausbitbank and @jerrybanfield
use the power wisely dear friends
May the green monster be with you.
Lucas
Malabarize-se
@lukestokes, please allow me to translate your content to Chinese in order to spread more to the community who did not fluent in english!
If you like my action please upvote me!
My post link here : https://steemit.com/cn/@incrediblesnow/steemit
Go for it! If you could also link to this post in your translated post, I would appreciate it.
Yes sir, I have mentioned my content was translated from your post in my starting and I also post the link that link to your post! Thanks for allowing me to do so!
I have voted for witnesses and have 18 witness votes remaining, but I do not just want to randomly vote for people just to use up my votes. I saw that you can have someone more knowledgeable vote for you, but it seems it would erase all your previous votes. Is there a way to assign my last 18 votes by proxy without erasing the votes I have already submitted?
I think it would be really helpful if a post like this included how exactly to go about voting for a witness.
Hello Scott. I did include it, but I made the text small. Maybe I should have made it big instead! Haha.
Voting for a Witness
I agree, I didn't even know what a witness was. Still not sure that I do. Is it like a bitcoin node?
It's like the Steem equivalent of a Bitcoin miner.
Nice Comment!
It is like a bitcoin pool that gets to "mine" more blocks, process transactions and get paid for it with newly created tokens.
Unfortunately, no. Using a proxy is an all or nothing approach. If you're voting, cool! No need for a proxy voter, in that case.
Thank you for the reply; much appreciated!
So if i daily vote i should not use proxy? That, when i would sorted out and know to do it :-)
There's a difference between voting on posts and voting for witnesses. One is separate from the other. You can either vote for witnesses directly or you can select a proxy which your account will mirror and vote as they vote.
So, i voted for a witness (@teamsteem) and now you are the second one in https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Is that supposed to be enough?
I also upvote for @steemitboard when i see it in peoples comments (also followed you all).
Upvoting a comment or post is different than giving a witness vote. See the article I link to in the original post for more information. You can vote for up to 30 witnesses, if you like. It's up to you.
thanks a lot
Great investigation @lukestokes!
I had not thought it would be as bad as this! Having a 7.5% share of users voting for at least one witness and the rest nothing is really really bad. If all the small guys and gals bundled together it would make a huge dent in the board of witnesses.
I'm an active Witness and are also a very strong writer about how important it is to make a vote. I write constantly about the issues about dead witnesses as well as inactive witnesses.
I recently started up my project "Project Minnow Witness" to let everyone that wishes to use me as a Proxy for voting on the new and upcoming witnesses that still does a very good job. My criteria may be strict, but they are just.
Some posts I've been writing about the situation of witnesses in the past:
Excellent work, thank you for spreading the word! I've noticed you've been doing some great stuff, and I love that you're so helpful for those getting into Gridcoin. I may have to change something up in my voting to find a spot for you! :)
I do what I can with the shares I got :)
Any support is greatly appreciated, but fully voluntary. I would never beg for votes. If you or anyone finds what I do good, then I'm happy. A vote is great support for me and helps me do even more good work however (^.^)
That's the exact reason I'll be looking for a spot for you. Begging for votes means you're not doing enough to get noticed on your own, IMO.
Thanks for your efforts @sc-steemit.
1- I have voted for as a witness.
2- Do you have a post about active witnesses that are not in top 50?
The witnesses I mention at the bottom of this is the ones I've picked as good active witnesses.
https://steemit.com/minnowwitness/@sc-steemit/starting-up-project-minnow-witness-current-report-end-of-july
I regard a good active witness a person that looks after and takes care of the technical things of having to make sure it runs well and gets updated. I'm not basing them on how many articles they do, what side projects they do or how many followers they have.
Thanks. I will check them out.
I agree, but I would like it if the witness has a good relationship with the community too. It is especially important that he/she listens to the needs and suggestions they have.
Naturally is having an ear to the ground ans listening in on what the community speaks and buzzes about.
This is what I expect if a minnow witness. A fulltime top 25 witness i expect a but more on though
Low voting percentage is lower than I would have guessed.
But stepping back from a practical perspective - do we have any evidence that lack of voting is in any way corrupting or impacting the witness pool?
Are there known bad actors that we should care about trying to get out?
How would we find about known bad actors that need to be out?
I vote when I see someone making specially good efforts to try to advance the best interests of the community.
So I'll go and vote for @lukestokes
But not sure how it really matters or what impact my vote will have.
Just doing it to be a "good citizen"
STEEM On!!
DaveB
Thanks David. At the moment, when the community is (somewhat) in agreement about things, it's not really a big deal. Even then, what really matters is how the accounts with the most Steem Power vote. When it comes to blockchain governance, having it built in is really nice. Other cryptocurrencies have run into big problems with miners battling users battling other corporate interests. It can get nasty. One of the things I love about DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake, the system Steem uses, unlike POW-proof of work) is that we have this voting system built in. If there was a conflict, however, we'd need to make sure we actually use it. There have been conflicts before. One hardfork proposted by Steemit, Inc as an example, never went live. The witnesses rejected it.
So yeah, it's important and can be difficult to keep up with. Thanks for being a good citizen. :)
Wow not that many people voting for witnesses then.
Thanks for the information and great to see a photo of you. You can tell a lot by seeing someone's eyes! You have integrity! & also my 27th vote!!
I think the Steemit is very confusing for many people and must be even harder if English isn't your 1st language.
With all those inactive accounts, do they stay open indefinitely? I get the absolute basics about the blockchain only, so isn't having lots of inactive accounts kind of wasting space or blocking it up?
I love that you 'want to help create a world we all want to live in', me too. What I loved when I was finding out about steemit was that like minded people could connect and do good in the world. It seems very spread out though and many whose focus is just to make money!
Thanks for all your hard work.
Thank you for your support!
Yes, Steemit is a bit confusing and the learning curve is steep, but I think it's worth it. As for inactive accounts, it's similar to generating bitcoin addresses. They don't really take up space, they just exist. Now useless spam on the network... now that's a different story.
Thank you for your encouragement. :)
You're welcome!
Thanks for your reply and answer. May the useless spam be reduced!
Blessings! :)
I missed this post when I was out camping.
I think that it is a bit overwhelming for new members. Unless you read the white pages there isn't a lot that directs you to vote for a witness.
I am still creating my criteria and am planning a post on how I choose. I am enjoying reading all the recommendations for witnesses by others on this post.
It is something very unique to steemit and users of other social media apps will require education if we expect them to assign a proxy or vote for themselves.
On a positive note, it is probably a good thing that users are not just throwing their votes out blindly to witnesses that they know nothing about or even what their role is. It would be interesting to know more details on the 8k members who have voted compared to the 105k who haven't (number of posts, date joined, SP, ect)
Latest Blog
Yeah, I do plan to break it down much further. I just need to find the time to mess with the code. Also, it takes a long time to run (an hour or so depending on how I slice the data), so I'll have to think through how I want to do it. These things go in sprints. I get all fired up and work for hours without sleep, and then I let it sit for a bit and come back to it later. Maybe tomorrow I'll hack some more. :)
Excellent Post, I believe in the very near future there will be a lot more witness voting activity. I think in the past month or so we've seen it increase quite a bit. The more competition for witnesses the better, it will drive witnesses to over perform like @lukestokes 😉. After you're done voting for him if you happen to have a second vote readily available I'm here 😎 To occupy that.
Setting a voting proxy is also a great way to start if you haven't voted before. Sadly Luke doesn't vote me as witness 😛 Awww but before you get all upset lol his current list of witness votes are all incredible witnesses and steemians in general, so it'd be tough to get on that list, to say the least!
Get To Voting People!
Let's turn that 7% into 17% by nights end!
Let's make it happen! :)
I had used all my votes previously but I recently removed them all. I'm now only going to vote for witnesses that advocate for a far more fair distribution of power and an increase in the number of witnesses as the wealthy have far too much power on this site. So far, I haven't found anyone worthy of voting for.
How do you define power? Do you mean decisions about code changes and hard forks? Do you mean Steem Power? If SP, what do you suggest? Should we be able to take SP from some accounts and give it to others or should we just change how new Steem Power is created to favor small accounts? If we favor small accounts, what's to prevent Sybil Attacks where one person can create a bunch of small accounts and take more of the reward pool than they should (especially with self-upvoting)? We've already seen this abuse with the flattened reward curve.
Do you mean the top 20 should be increased? If so, why? The role they serve is to secure the blockchain and create new blocks. Adding more is not needed for the protocol to function any better. Do you suggest the reward given to the top witnesses should be decreased? If so, some projects they fund might lose funding as it will become to expensive to maintain full API nodes and such. I'm not saying this isn't a bad idea, and maybe the rewards should decrease, I just want to make sure we consider the risks. If few people want to be full-time witnesses (it is a 24-hour a day on call job), then the entire Steem platform could have some systemic risks and instability.
Again, what do you mean by power? Do you mean in terms of flagging or determining who gets rewards and who doesn't because of their Steem Power votes on posts?
I don't think the world will ever be full egalitarian. Every attempt at it that I've seen throughout history has lead to violence and even poverty. Using stores of value as a way to influence systems is a much better approach than violence, IMO. It's also open to anyone who is willing to dedicate themselves to earning wealth. I see a dollar bill as a certificate of appreciation (to quote Rabbi Daniel Lapin) because you can only get one if you provide value to someone else.
At least, that's how it's supposed to work. Fiat currency controlled by central bankers and governments kind of screws that up.
It will be interesting to see if the stats have changed following your post here!?
Based on the interest and the benefit it can give to the community, I think I'll turn this into a regular weekly report and start tweaking it a bit to show some other interesting stats as far as steem power distribution in the votes.