What are Witnesses on Steemit and their Duties?

Steemit Witnesses and their duties or what do they really do or what have they been done so far?

Im so sure majority of us, might have thought about this for long, who are Witnesses and their duties? In this post I am going to explain in details without using ambiguous words, meaning that I will explain in details using simple English for us to understand.
There are lot of mixed information on Steemit, as to what Steemit Witnesses does, or their duties. But I must tell you today, Steemit Witnesses are group of individual who/that operate a server, with which produces blocks and publishes a price feed Steem Token to US Dollars.

What is Steemit itself?

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Let take it one after the other, Steemit is a social platform powered by a decentralized blockchain called Steem.

Now Steem itself, Steem based on grapheme which is powering others like bitshares, also, Steem is delegated Proof of Stake blockchain, which work are different to another consensus, to make it clear, Consensus means A process of decision-making that seeks widespread agreement among group members, or you could say a general agreement among the members of a given group or community each of which exercises some discretion in decision-making and follow-up action. By now you must have known/understand the words Consensus, because this words really defines who Steemit Witnesses are.

Steem are mined through Proof of using Brain Unlike other like Bitcoin, which uses proof of work and other coins with Proof of Stake Not every Stakeholder or participants or Steemit users take parts in the block producing process. Only a selected which are voted by the stakeholders.

Roles of Steemit Witnesses?

The witnesses, are basically the one securing the blockchain, managing all of your transactions and making a consensus between different nodes. A user can decided to run his or her node but, you will always get your data from the witnesses because they are the decision –makers and they are there to ensure things got secure.

So, Basically the Steemit Witnesses are like Governors’ of the Federal Reserve System. Witnesses secure the blockchain, this mean that, they decide collectively on the version of Steemit is running and where Steemit will go. If developers or someone else comes up with an idea, like changing the setting which requires a hard fork and the basics of the chain, for instance, like how SBD are created.

Who are Developers?

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To make things clearer here, developer are kind of like the mayor wants to change something and the city council, can either say Yes or No, In a simple words, developer is a person who or entity engaged in the creation or improvement of certain classes of products. Relating the developers to Steemit development, Computer software developers is the one relating to this topics, they mainly creates or modified computer software. A skilled professional computers programmers is to code tests, debugs and maintains the comprehensive instructions known as computer programs that devices should follow to execute their functions. Another word, the developers are kind of like the mayor wants to change something and you guys the city council.

Back to Witnesses:

Basically, the witnesses are like governors of the Federal Reserve System. Witnesses secure the blockchain that means they collectively decide on the version of Steemit will go. If developers or somebody else comes up with an idea. For example, changing the setting which require a hard fork and the basis of the chain, like how SBD are created. Witnesses, also expected to provide an ongoing price feed of Steem tokens in U.S. dollars. The witnesses are generally voted for because they are trusted members of the community. Witness are expected to keep a block-producing Steem node running 24hrs a day and 7 days a week. They are rewarded for their services and running their node by getting powered up by one Steem for each block they produce. They create the Steem blockchain in real time every 3 seconds. Every 63 seconds, we are trusting the top 20 witnesses to produce one block for us. Top 50 witnesses from 21 to 50 produces blocks every hour to every minutes that is to my knowledge.

Here are the Top Witnesses:

Witnesses from Position 11 - 20 Win

Voting the Witnesses?

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Having understand what witnesses are? So, who are qualify to vote for his or her choice of Witnesses?

Witnesses got voted in by people like me and you, I mean every Steemians have the right to vote any witnesses they feel deserve their voting, example are like an election; if you dont voted, others will do, but the problems is that, if you dont vote witnesses who will support your interest, then nothing will happen, your interest will not be met, is like voting a representative to support the interest of others in terms of decision- making, people may vote a witness who may be malicious or unreliable, if you want your witness to be rewarded, then you need to cast your vote for them, because they will be reward and making decision according to their ranks, I mean total votes they got from voters. You can vote to approved a witness when you have decided to vote for one.

How many vote can you cask for witnesses?

Of course, you are free to vote upto 30 witnesses, meaning that with your single account, you have right to vote for about 30 witnesses, that is your account is limited to approving 30 witnesses accounts.

To Become a Witness?

Of course yes, you can become one, BUT, there are requirements in becoming one.

• You must have trust from the community

• A powerful and reliable server must be available.

• A powerful with excellent bandwidth to operate Steem

• Creating a signing key then broadcasting your intent to become a witness, that is you will need to declare your ambition to become a witness.

• You need to understand most Steem concepts

Above should have convincing you enough the needs to vote witness, please do so today.

This Link is a straight forward to list to cast your vote for any witnesses:

Click Here to vote for witnesses

For example, we need to vote xpilar witness from our community (WOX) because it has been doing greatly for lot people, for the person he his to many groups members and to support our interest as a whole: we should cast our vote for him to place him too ten, ofcourse we can do this?

Click here to vote Xpilar Witness you will see xpilar-witness in no 11! Cast and vote for him.

I remain your man, @davidad, thanks for taking time to read through my blog.

Thanks for the stopping by on my blog