There are some questions about witnesses and voting for them that I continue to receive, so I figured answering a few of them here before I vomit out a big list of links might be a smashing idea.
Witnesses "witness" the blocks as they are added to the Steem block-chain. They are the means by which Steem is both decentralized, while still achieving consensus for things like new hard forks (a common event on Steem, rare and newsworthy on for most other coins.) They set things like the Steem price feed, interest rates on SBD in savings, and many other attributes of Steem via a consensus voting model, and choose which software upgrades to accept. Theoretically, if you controlled most of the witnesses, you could do severe damage to the block-chain.
In short, you want trustworthy witnesses who you believe have Steem's best interests at heart, and whose policies you agree with, when applicable. The top 20 witnesses each receive a substantial amount of Steem each day from witnessing many blocks, which is well-earned, as the position is difficult to achieve and entails substantial server costs and time. Witnesses from 21 down are "standby witnesses", and receive far fewer blocks (5% or less), scaling lower the further down the list they are. They are stuck in the worst of both worlds, in that they need very reliable witness hardware to hope to continue climing the ranks, but take substantial losses because of their small share of the witness reward pool.
As long as I can find information on witnesses, I'll keep going. Any witness is welcome to reach out to me to provide information I can add to my research.
Helping you to determine that for yourself is the reason for this series of posts, which I have devoted many hours of effort to.
However, voting for witnesses is stake weighted. In other words, if you have 100 Steem Power, your vote is worth 100 users who each have 1 Steem Power.
As a result, I am well aware that game theory simply doesn't incentivize small voters to make intelligent witness voting decisions, particularly 30 of them, which is how many witnesses you can vote for.
I suspect this is why almost 80% of Steemians are not voting for witnesses, if memory serves. Per LukeStokes, it was as low as 7.5% 3 months ago.
There is an easy solution, however. In a few clicks you can proxy (grant) your witness voting to another user you trust to decide for you. The option to do this is at the very bottom of the witness voting page, which you can access from the top right drop-down on Steemit. (3 Gray Lines button > "Vote For Witnesses").
Of course, I would welcome your proxies if you feel I am qualified to vote for witnesses on your behalf.
Proxies can be revoked at any time, and they do not affect anything else but witness voting (no effect on regular voting.) You can also see which witnesses anyone is voting for on their Steemd page, along the left-hand side, if you want to audit someone's votes before proxying to them.
Hey, it's not like I'm going to vote for myself.
Note: The following ranking is as of 10/28/17.
00 acknowledgement post
@lexiconical/meet-the-witnesses-0-remastered-status-update-acknowledgments-and-special-thanks
01 jesta
@lexiconical/jesta-meet-the-witnesses-2-remastered
02 timcliff
@lexiconical/timcliff-meet-the-witnesses-1-remastered
03 gtg
@lexiconical/gtg-meet-the-witnesses-4-remastered
04 someguy123
@lexiconical/someguy123-meet-the-witnesses-6-remastered
05 roelandp
@lexiconical/roelandp-meet-the-witnesses-5-remastered
06 good-karma
@lexiconical/good-karma-meet-the-witnesses-3-remastered
07 klye
@lexiconical/klye-meet-the-witnesses-11-remastered
08 blocktrades
@lexiconical/blocktrades-meet-the-witnesses-9-remastered
09 anyx
@lexiconical/anyx-meet-the-witnesses-7-remastered
10 pfunk
@lexiconical/pfunk-meet-the-witnesses-8-remastered
11 aggroed
@lexiconical/aggroed-meet-the-witnesses-12-remastered
12 ausbitbank
@lexiconical/ausbitbank-meet-the-witnesses-15-remastered
13 furion
@lexiconical/furion-meet-the-witnesses-13-remastered-view-ly-ico-ending-soon
14 riverhead
@lexiconical/riverhead-meet-the-witnesses-14-remastered
15 clayop
@lexiconical/clayop-meet-the-witnesses-17-remastered
16 thecryptodrive
@lexiconical/thecryptodrive-meet-the-witnesses-16-remastered
17 liondani
@lexiconical/liondani-meet-the-witnesses-18-remastered
18 pharesim
@lexiconical/pharesim-meet-the-witnesses-10-remastered
19 xeldal
@lexiconical/xeldal-meet-the-witnesses-19-remastered
20 lukestokes.mhth
@lexiconical/lukestokes-mhth-aka-lukestokes-meet-the-witnesses-24-remastered
21 smooth.witness
@lexiconical/smooth-witness-aka-smooth-meet-the-witnesses-21-remastered
22 jerrybanfield
@lexiconical/jerrybanfield-meet-the-witnesses-26-now-24-remastered
23 busy.witness
@lexiconical/busy-witness-aka-busy-org-meet-the-witnesses-22-remastered
24 wackou
@lexiconical/wackou-meet-the-witnesses-23-remastered
25 cervantes
@lexiconical/cervantes-meet-the-witnesses-27-now-25-remastered
26 bhuz
@lexiconical/bhuz-meet-the-witnesses-25-remastered
27 drakos
(Not yet completed, owing to his explosive growth in recent rankings. TBD, matey.)
28 abit
@lexiconical/abit-meet-the-witnesses-28-remastered
29 ihashfury
@lexiconical/ihashfury-meet-the-witnesses-29-remastered
30 fyrst-witness
@lexiconical/fyrst-witness-meet-the-witnesses-30-remastered
...
37 roadscape
@lexiconical/roadscape-meet-the-witnesses-20-remastered
If you have any additions or errata for this post, please let me know! I will see that they are voted to the top of the comments, and will make the appropriate edits (if possible).
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