Witnesses work hard to improve the Steemit community and maintain the blockchain, so I interviewed @aggroed, @theprophet0, and @ausbitbank to help understand exactly how hard they are working for us, and why they deserve our votes

If you are a new member on Steemit, or have been around for a while you may or may not have heard about Witnesses and are probably wondering what they are and why it concerns you. Witnesses are responsible for maintaining the integrity of the blockchain and validating blocks so that transactions run smoothly. This is a very time consuming process that requires a costly dedicated server and a flawless internet connection. They are rewarded for their efforts, but they need our help getting votes to move them up the list so they get the chance to verify more blocks!
Someone that is ensuring that your hard-earned cryptocurrency stays secure, and maintains the blockchain's integrity, deserves every bit of Steem Power they get rewarded (and more). This is a call to action, to bring awareness about what they do, and how hard they work to keep our community flourishing. Hopefully when you realize how important they are, you will commit your votes as you see fit. I will go over exactly how to do that later on.

A bit about the Steem blockchain

Steem is a cryptocurrency based on the open-source Graphene blockchain that has produced bitshares, golos, Steem, and Peerplays to name a few. These blockchains are decentralized open ledgers that maintain the database in multiple locations on nodes. No single person has the ability to tamper with the ledger, which keeps all transactions transparent to the general public. The Graphene blockchains differ from your standard Proof of Work (PoW) blockchains that use lots of energy to mine blocks through the use of computer hashing power to solve algorithms. Steem uses Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), wherein appointed delegates (Witnesses) are used to perform a variety of functions that contribute to the overall health and security of the blockchain. For this effort, the Witnesses are awarded with .89 Steem Power per block witnessed according to @aggroed. Awarding the Witnesses with Steem Power gives the Witnesses an illiquid reward that requires them to continue to invest their efforts back into the community, or wait 13 weeks for the Steem Power to convert into liquid Steem that can be sold on the open market.

The Steem network produces 21 blocks every 63 seconds with 3 seconds in between blocks. The top 19 Witnesses each get to verify 1 block every minute or so, and two spare blocks go to both miners and Witnesses equally, depending on their overall voting weight.
These Witnesses depend on your voting weight to increase the number of transactions (blocks) they get to produce within a given round.

The Witnesses are expected to perform a number of functions

Maintain a block-producing Steem node that runs 24/7/365.25 (average including leap year).
Verify blocks to ensure that they are legitimate missing as few as possible.
Maintain an up-to-date price feed on Steem.
Keep their server updated with current versions after hard forks, which just happened with HF19.

This is very much unlike conventional PoW mining where you just set it and forget it, and requires constant attention to the price of Steem across multiple exchanges. These guys and gals are constantly at work, maintaining their servers and contributing to the community.

Why should I vote for a Witness?

As I mentioned previously, a Witnesses position is determined by their overall voting weight provided by us, the general Steemit public. This position determines how often they get rewarded with a block to verify. Without our votes, they move farther down the list and all of their time and effort is left unrewarded. Everyone has their own reasons that influence their choices when voting for a Witness. Some of the main factors when deciding who to vote for are:

Accuracy of block verification
Involvement in the community (giving back)
Quality of posts provided
Provision of platform improving software

A group of witnesses has pooled their resources to form a little group called PALnet (Peace, Abundance, & Liberty) which runs the minnowsupport project. If you are not familiar with the @minnowsupport project, it is a Discord server run directly and indirectly by a group of fantastic Witnesses dedicated to helping minnows (500 Steem Power and below) grow in the Steemit community. They are in no order @ausbitbank, @aggroed, @theprophet0, @someguy123, @canadian-coconut, @teamsteem, @thecryptodrive, & @neoxian.

Many of the same Witnesses are also involved in various crowdfunding initiatives focused on sending less fortunate Steemians to SteemFest 2 in Lisbon, Portugal. These types of initiatives, and the contributions to the community are a big factor in my choices for delegating Witnesses, and you should consider them when using your 30 allocated votes.

Three of these Witnesses: @aggroed, @ausbitbank, and @theprophet0 have taken the time out of their very busy lives to answer few questions about being a Witness, which I will share with you, my fellow steemians.

The first comes from @aggroed

@necrophagist Being a witness seems like a very time consuming process. Why did you decide that you wanted to become a witness?

@aggroed Steemit's a pretty amazing place. I'm a controvert with my opinions on the world and dont' much care for the mainstream. I basically think the world is run by immoral banksters and that their power stems from being able to print money at whim as debt. If we can cut that off we can make changes as a society. Steemit allows that, and as that sunk in I thought it was time to help this place as much as I could to grow. To me that means focusing on new users, retention, and support. That's why I ran as a Witness and why I founded the Minnow Support Project with some like minded people.

@necrophagist How long have you been a Witness?

@aggroed I've been a witness for 3 weeks or so. In that time I've sent a kid and his dad to steemfest, helped send 2 others, started a Discord project that now has 1150 unique members, and have helped tons of minnows go from 50 cent posts to some that earn several hundred. It's a pretty awesome feeling.

@necrophagist How many hours a week do you spend on Steemit, including server maintenance?

@aggroed Steemit is a time suck. I get up, write an article, get dressed, get on the train, answer questions about the article, work a few hours, stop for lunch, manage the discord server, work, hop on the train, write an article or manage the server or make another connection on steemchat, get home, eat with my family, spend some time with my kids, and then go back to helping this place grow. It's kinda around the clock for me.

@necrophagist What is your involvement in the PALnet and minnowsupport project?

@aggroed I started PALnet with @ausbitbank, @teamsteem, @canadian-coconut as a place for people that care about Peace, Abundance, and Liberty to gather and help one another. A few days later I added the Minnow Support Project too it and it's taken off. Since then we've grown by leaps and bounds. We have a bunch of other witnesses in the channel and some dolphins and whales that swim with us. I dropped a post with a picture of some pretty famous Steemians in the channel.

@necrophagist Why is it important to vote for Witnesses, and why should Steemians vote for you?

@aggroed I try to keep talking about what witnesses do. it's a shit ton or very little. You technically only have to run a server. When it's not hardfork time that's not the hardest thing in the world to do. The question is what projects do you take on and how do you help other people working on this. For a lot of them it's making apps and programmy stuff. For me it's all about the social side and the caring and feeding of the minnows in the pond we share. Hopefully, people notice that, vote for me, and as that'll help me do more social stuff for this place and grow the healthy community into an enormous healthy community.

Next up is Steemit's youngest witness, at 15 years of age @theprophet0

@necrophagist Being a witness seems like a very time consuming process. Why did you decide that you wanted to become a witness?

@theprophet0 Well, I decided to become a witness last October, and I made that decision because I just thought it was the next step in my STEEM journey.

@necrophagist How long have you been a Witness?

@theprophet0 I have been a witness since October, but, I had to shut my witness down for a month (April) because of personal issues and I wasn't able to maintain it at that time, but now I plan to run it... FOREVER! :)

@necrophagist How many hours a week do you spend on Steemit, including server maintenance?

@theprophet0 Well, I am on STEEM for about 12-16 hours a day, and I am actively learning server maintenance :)

@necrophagist What is your involvement in the PALnet and minnowsupport project?

@theprophet0 My involvement in the PALnet and MinnowsSupport project consists of helping new users, finding good content that is under valued, and guding people.

@necrophagist Why is it important to vote for Witnesses, and why should Steemians vote for you?

@theprophet0 It is important to vote for witnesses because we run the STEEM blockchain, without us, the blockchain would not function. But, you must look into all the witnesses you vote for, don't just vote for random ones... see what each witness has to offer. If you would like to see what I have to offer, check this out: @theprophet0/theprophet0-witness-update-i-m-back-i-m-alive-and-i-m-here-to-stay-100-of-the-liquid-rewards-earned-from-this-blog-will-be

And last, but not least @ausbitbank

@necrophagist Being a witness seems like a very time consuming process. Why did you decide that you wanted to become a witness?

@ausbitbank *I decided to become a witness because I had been involved with the network for almost a year and was putting in full time work and promoting steemit to everyone I met anyway. When the time came it seemed like an obvious choice.
@necrophagist How long have you been a Witness?

@ausbitbank I've only been a witness for about 2 months now, but it feels like a lot longer already

@necrophagist How many hours a week do you spend on Steemit, including server maintenance?

@ausbitbank I'm generally awake from about 8am to 4am every day, and if I'm awake the first thing I do is check my messages and servers. I treat this like a full time job, but I put in some crazy overtime hours every single week. I would guess at least 40hrs a week of focussed time at a computer and the rest of the time I'm obsessively checking my phone anyway. I have a problem...

@necrophagist What is your involvement in the PALnet and minnowsupport project?

@ausbitbank I kickstarted the minnowsupport bot with its first 1k SP and I've been working with aggroed to help moderate and promote the initiative to new users. Its one of the fastest growing groups on the site, it's blows my mind how fast this place is growing

@necrophagist Why is it important to vote for Witnesses, and why should Steemians vote for you?

@ausbitbank It's important users are aware of the witness system and they vote for people who are acting with the best long term interests of the network in mind. There are witnesses in the top 100 that do not have any technical know how, do not contribute code or promote the network at all that are purely there because they made good connections in the bitshares space. Steemit deserves better representation by passionate visible active users not well connected millionaires that aren't even using the site themselves.

Convinced yet? Here's how to Vote

First, point your browser to https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Vote away, using your best judgement. If you want to know more about a Witness, be sure to visit their Witness feed. You can always add in a witness who is not in the top 50, or you can choose your favorite witness as a proxy and delegate your votes too!

Witness feeds

@ausbitbank
@aggroed
@theprophet0
@someguy123
@teamsteem
@thecryptodrive
@neoxian

You can verify how well these witnesses are doing their job of verifying blocks a couple of different ways and this may also factor into voting choices.
Stats on Witness activity are available at
Steemd & Steemdb

Thanks to the PALNet and MinnowSupport project

The PALnet and MinnowSupport project is one of the fastest growing Steemit social groups, with over 1150 members dedicated to helping each other grow into dolphins and eventually whales. Please join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw

Minnow Support Project: Problem Statement, Vision Statement, Mission Statement, and Plan to help you grom from Minnow to Whale with friends in record time