Hello Steemians. Happy new year to all of you. Great to have you visit my blog again. And as you all aware, for the past four days I haven't updated this blog. This is partly due to my enormous task of carrying my brainchild, @Euronation along and ensuring that it achieves its weekly objectives, among which is holding at least one webinar session every week. The webinar had been held yesterday which had seen more than 30 people get registered instantly. Being a Steemivangelist, this is part of my selfless service to the community in order to bringing relevance to steem blockchain.
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Having said that, the focus of today's article will be on the imperative of voting for steem witnesses. Voting for witnesses is a fundamental right of each and every Steemian who truly love this life saving scheme. Reading through some articles authored by @jerrybanfield, @lukestokes and @netuoso, I was shaking to my root by the enormous pivotal roles witnesses play for the sustenance of steem ecosystem.
And being one of the leaders of the subcommunity @euronation, I have to write this article to encourage participation in witness voting; having increased the number of witnesses I currently vote for from abysmal 2 witnesses to 26 witnesses. And still being on the look out for worthy witnesses according to my judgment to fill in the remaining 4 slots to complete the number to maximum of 30 allowable witness votes per account.
Understanding the responsibilities of witnesses and why we must vote for them
In his article titled steemit is free, but witnesses determine its future, @lukestokes said and I quote...
When you convert SBD to STEEM or you get a payout in SBD value, the price feed maintained by the witnesses directly impact how those processes work as well as the overall economic system. If the blockchain stops functioning efficiently, it'll be because witnesses are missing the blocks they are supposed to validate or they haven't updated their nodes properly. Your vote ensures only witnesses who have the best interests of the Steemit community in mind and who regularly demonstrate their intentions via their attitude and actions get to be in this important role.
With the recent significant appreciation in the price of both steem and SBD, the craze to acquire as much of these assets as possible has equally become unprecedented with lots of dead accounts getting resuscitated back to life.
While you chase around these assets, have you ever wondered how you are able to transfer either steem or SBD to your bittrex account without hitches? What if after carrying out the transfer of either SBD or steem, you found out that the asset has been lost to thin air? How will you feel?
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You have account balance of some $80,000 in your wallet and wake up in the morning to see that the whole platform is no more...you wanna upvote an article but the upvote button loads forever...you suddenly found out you can neither make a post nor make a comment. Under all these scenarios (God forbid), what will you do? How will you feel?
You earn hundreds of dollars per post but with blockchain not working, you earn zero because you cannot make a post! How then can you help to make seamless the workings of steem blockchain? Vote for witnesses, not just one or two but the 30 allowable witnesses per account!
In order to never to witness these scenarios is why you must select a number of witness and vote for them. Witnesses are like life and blood of steem blockchain. Without them, no transaction can ever be processed; everything freezes!
Not voting for witnesses is harmful to steem blockchain
As it is pivotal to create awareness around steem ecosystem to domesticize it globally, it is equally destructive by the same proportion to the platform if those being recruited are not being encouraged to vote for witnesses.
It is unfortunate that most of the steem/it campaigners who profess enormous love for this scheme, hardly have witnesses they are voting for, let alone encouraging their recruits to vote. ***Personally, I used to be guilty of this until I came across a post by one of the most respected Steemian, @lukestokes in which he made some staggering statistical revelations that turned me around to really understand why we must vote for witnesses.
According to him, 'we have only 7.5% witness voting engagement' based on his released data of July 31st, 2017...
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
Your vote counts; you have a role to play — play it!
The above stats are unspeakably uncool and very toxic to the platform that has proven to be the beacon of hope of the hopeless and citadel of continuous education. This is certainly not acceptable by any standard!
In his post titled top 100 witnesses by number of votes, @jerrybanfield said...
...witnesses are ranked by the votes based on how much Steem Power every voter has. This means a witness vote from an account with 1,000 Steem Power is worth 1,000 votes from accounts with 1 Steem Power! That said, every single vote is VERY IMPORTANT because those with more Steem Power are influenced by votes from those with less!
The emphasis in this quote is ...every single vote is very important!. Hence, voting for witnesses is not determined by your position in the community — so just vote.
Conclusion
I believe we cannot appreciate why we must vote for witnesses today. Our obligations to steem blockchain should not just be about preaching the Steemit gospel and scrambling to grab our own share from the reward pool, we must endeavor to vote for witnesses by ourselves and also encourage witness voting in subcommunities we have influence in.
To that extent, and as the founder of one of the most organized subcommunities here known as @euronation, I will be discussing with @euronation leadership on why we must include witness voting as part of the conditions that must be fulfilled by those wanting to be part of @euronation community. And I hope you do same.
The below screenshot is the list of the witnesses I am currently supporting, according to https://steemd.com/@eurogee . And in the subsequent articles of this series, I shall give specific reasons why I voted them.
My top 10 witnesses
@blocktrades, @steemgigs, @utopian-io, @ausbitbank, @curie, @pharesim, @kushed, @lukestokes.mhth, @jerrybanfield, and @neoxian
Please include them in your list of witnesses because their performances here are simply amazing
I want us to make witness voting part of our primary assignment here. You can do it right away or allow me to do it for you. Either choices are welcomed; please let's do this. It doesn't take time...
Click here to vote for witnesses: https://steemit.com/~witnesses as in the below image:
Thank you very much.
Follow @eurogee, the Steemivangelist and the founder of @euronation Newbie's Support Team; follow @euronation
