To understand exactly what a witness is, you first have to know what the blockchain itself is. Simply put, the blockchain is where everything really happens. It is a public record of anything done through an application built on top of it. The most widely known (and first) was Steemit. Any time you write a blog post or make a comment, it gets written on to this public record and anyone is able to see it. Other dapps (Decentralized Applications) like #DLive or #Steepshot go through the same process of being digitally etched into the history of the chain. Even upvotes, flags and transfers of funds get 'witnessed' on the #STEEM blockchain.

A concise definition of a witness would be that we are the ones writing the digital information to the chain. When enough information or data is produced to be recognized, it gets signed by us and written into a block. By acknowledging that data, we effectively 'witness' what just happened on our beloved STEEM #blockchain. We do this by maintaining servers to house the all the data we have agreed to 'witness'.

Not all #witnesses are the same. In my little over a year of actively being a part of the blockchain, I have been a witness for a relatively short amount of time. I have come across many different kinds and as we are all individuals, that only makes sense. However, I have been able to classify them into 4 major categories:

The people that chose to become witnesses that fall into this category should be pretty self-explanatory, but I will give you the run down anyway. These are the people that make the front-ends, back-ends, condensers, graphics, you name it. All the pretty little toys that we get to play with, they create. Be they a graphic designer or a coder for python, there is someone that makes all this tick so we can use it and have a good experience doing so. Behind every great STEEM-based app you're using, was or is, at least one brilliant developer.

I have to ask you a question, how many of you have actually bought STEEM and powered up an account? I know I have. Some people here though, are business savvy and smart. They have heavily invested their money into services like a bid-bot or sell their voting power or even just collect the dividends from their stake. This kind of #witness has just as much reason to see the chain stay running as smoothly as the fresh-out-of-the-egg 'minnow'.

Community witnesses are a class of their own. In a sense, they can be considered investors because you'll often find them parting out their SP via delegations to bolster different organizations or communities. At the same time, they try to maintain a semi-social presence and keep up with their own personal postings. Heavy community witnesses are involved usually with one or two main 'projects' or 'initiatives' and typically try to build them as they go. Each dapp built from this chain are communities in themselves and as such, Steemit could be considered the largest of them all on the blockchain.

This is the category I would put myself in. True - I have invested a small chunk of change into the blockchain. True - I delegate my SP to various other causes and communities via multiple accounts. True - I also donate to worthy causes and initiatives on the blockchain. But what is most true, is I am out here in the trenches. I read tons of material on a daily basis, I make comments when I feel the need is valuable (or even just funny or sympathetic), I reply to comments made on my shitty posts but most of all, I am **available**. I'll talk to you in Discord or on a messenging service, even chat! I really like going to various radio and DLive shows, heck I even have a few of my own! I strive and thrive on the interaction. The more sincere and/or original the sentiment, the deeper the bond grows with another STeeMPeeP.

I'm not kidding, even if you don't vote for me, you have 30 votes and they should all be used to support your witnesses out here pulling funds from their pockets to keep this blockchain running as smooth as we can. If you feel you want your vote to count but have no idea who to vote for, you can always proxy (assign someone else vote for you) to another STeeMPeeP you trust. I know there are several people proxied to me because I do stay pretty well on top of what they are all doing and try to hand my votes out accordingly. The choice is yours, but please don't let yours be idle if you care about this platform (whichever one it may be you are reading this on) and the future of this - the STEEM blockchain.