RE: STEEM does NOT need more STEEM Witnesses.
No, there are not thousands of witnesses, but inactive remnants from the early mining days. They may be listed, but they don't get scheduled. Running a witness is not easy, it takes patience, investment, skills, and campaigning. It took me days before I got my first block. I've helped a lot of witnesses get their setup running, only to see them drop out and quit after a month. It's not for everyone. It can be frustrating for the starters to look at the top 20 and envy them, but those guys are mostly professionals and developers who have been around since the beginning of Steem. Instead, try to focus on your projects and don't be discouraged, if you have drive and determination, you'll climb up the ranks eventually. Sometimes I blame @jerrybanfield because he hyped the witnessing so much, it got people snared into something they can't handle.
P.S. check this link https://steemdb.com/@chillbill/witness. I can see you don't have significant votes yet, that's why you may be stuck for a long time before getting your first block! Get more non-minnow votes!
Thanks for your thoughts Drakos, I understand why people would give up, a 93/7 split makes the vicious 80/20 Pareto distribution look kind.
I don't envy oligarchs but it is always irritating to play a rigged game however small the potatoes.
Steem witness is a centralized system where 20 oligarchs get 97% of the pie. Optically that has got to be dysfunctional and I'm going to find out if in practice that proves to be right.
I'm very interested in Steem because I posit 'POS' blockchains produce feudal outcomes. Steem is an interesting platform which can test out that idea for me.
Beg others, to get votes, to do a service for nothing.... doesn't that strike you as a little bit creepy? Oh sorry I forgot that is: Politics. WCPGW. :)
Unfortunately, there's some politics involved. Can't do much to remedy that. And yes I agree about the top 20. I think it's a bad design by @dan. The system could easily reward the top 50 in a more equitable fashion.
Regarding the number of top spots, I don't know if I agree. Blocks need to be produced on time without much failure to keep the chain going on schedule. Adding more witnesses will obviously make the failure rate higher.
However perhaps the number top of top spots could be dynamic in proportion to the total number of active, reliable witnesses.
There's a lot of block misses in the top 20 itself. Having backup servers guarantees a healthier network. Many witnesses outside the top 20 are running very reliable servers.
Do you think there is enough block misses to justify more than 20 backups? I don't think there is.
That many witnesses outside the top 20 are reliable says to me that the number 20 should be flexible and based on witness reliability.