Meet Steem's Top 10 Witnesses!

in #witness7 years ago

meet steem top 10 witnesses.png

Witnesses create the Steem blockchain and our witness votes decide who gets to produce each block at https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Every 3 seconds, we are trusting a witness to produce the next block with all the transactions. The top 20 witnesses each produce one block every 63 seconds worth 0.18 Steem Power per block in earnings. The top 100 witnesses from 21 to 100 rotate to produce 1 block every 63 seconds ranging from every few minutes at rank 21 to once every day or two at rank 90 in exchange for 0.8 Steem Power per block.

Questions

Which witnesses should we vote for? How do we get to know existing witnesses better? What are the top 50 witnesses contributing in addition to maintaining the witness servers? Where is a more in depth list where we can easily get to know the witnesses in addition to https://steemd.com/witnesses and https://steemdb.com/witnesses? I hope this post and the matching video starts to answer these questions! While this post will look at the top 10 witnesses, future posts will go at least through the top 50 witnesses with 10 done at a time!

Thank you very much to @lexiconical for doing the research to make this post possible! Almost all of the text in the "Meet Steem's Top 10 Witnesses!" section of this post is directly from @lexiconical's research and is his writing. The text before and after this section along with the video is my contribution. We decided to do this after I had the idea and asked if he would help with the research. I am giving @lexiconical all the SBD from this post in exchange for his contribution which saved me hours of research and allowed me to directly present it here in this post as well as in the matching video! Note that because of voting adjustments in the last three hours of me editing this post, all of the ranks are slightly off in my post compared to actual rankings. Our posts going forward will account for this by not making any duplicate reports.

Meet Steem's Top 10 Witnesses!


Option 1: 38 minute in depth YouTube video!

Option 2: ~ 10 minute read in this post!

1 - @gtg

Gtg, or “Gandalf The Grey”, has risen from the ranks of humble stand-by witnesses, to become the current top witness. His expertise in IT security makes him a reliable seed for the #1 witness spot.

He has been involved both in improving the Steemit website’s securities via programming, and helping to educate others on network and witness security via his blog. He composed one of the earliest Steemit guides on witness node security and protection from DDOS attacks:

Much of his time remains devoted to helping users with security, as his transfer history quickly shows with messages like this: “You have leaked your private owner/active key to the public putting your account at risk. Your active key was changed to prevent further damage, however your owner key was changed already. “

In the past, Gandalf has given out delegations to new users for free to help increase minnow engagement on the platform. He has been around most of Steemit’s life, and continued to blog during periods when his witness updates produced as much as $988 and as little as 41 cents.

Gandalf helped to secure a 10% airfaire discount for all the users planning a trip to Steemfest.

Gandalf holds 154,000 SP and is not powering down.

Gtg’s Current Witness Update:https://steemit.com/witness-category/@gtg/4addfq-gtg-witness-log
Gtg’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@gtg/witness-gtg
Gtg’s Witness Security Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@gtg/heavy-duty-witness-node-infrastructure

2 - @jesta

Jesta is a talented developer on the Graphene blockchain (Steem/Steemit).

Jesta is the developer behind some of Steemit’s favorite tools, including the popular ChainBB (the interface for viewing Steem more like a forum) and the ubiquitous tool Steemdb. He has also contributed a number of experimental scripts and other projects, such as a Steempython based “fake-smart contract” script that allows for ICO-like events on the Steemit blockchain.

Jesta is also responsible for the phenomenal and cleverly-named desktop wallet for Steem, Vessel. Vessel can import private keys, encrypt passwords, claim rewards, send to any account or exchange, manage power downs and set witness proxies. Vessel also allows you to easily view and manage current active delegations via GUI, a function that to my knowledge does not exist elsewhere.

Jesta is also a witness on the Peerplays project, to which he ported his database tool and called it Peerplaysdb.

Jesta holds 30,000 SP, and is powering down.

Jesta’s Current Witness Update: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jesta/jesta-witness-update-march-through-may
Jesta’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jesta/witness-thread-jesta
ChainBB FAQ: https://steemit.com/chainbb/@jesta/chainbb-frequently-asked-questions-faq
Steem DB Apps: https://steemit.com/steem-project/@jesta/steemdb-profiles-for-appsplatforms
Peerplays Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/peerplays-witness-update/@jesta/peerplays-blockchain-launched-and-throwing-my-hat-in-to-the-witness-list
“ICO” Experimental Script: https://steemit.com/steem-dev/@jesta/an-experimental-script-for-running-ico-like-events-on-steem

3 - @timcliff

Timcliff is an active developer on the Steemit platform, doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work to help keep Steemit’s code accurate and updated. He has helped update the vote-slider code to account for delegated SP, updated the Blocktrades “Buy” link to fill in the currently logged in Steemit’s user’s account, and has also created code to reduce the vote-slider threshold to 125 SP (though the community has not yet implemented it.)

Timcliff is also active in keeping the Steemit documentation up to date, which helps to make onboarding new users as friendly as possible. He has rewritten the general Steemit FAQ, the cover image FAQ, and the Steemit welcome page.

Timcliff posts the “Reports from the Witnesses” series, wherein he amalgamates weekly updates from all of the witnesses (even beyond rank #100) who submit them. This serves as a great weekly digest for witness updates, particularly for those witnesses with less visibility looking to climb up the ranks. New witnesses should consider submitting weekly updates to this series.

Timcliff holds 38,000 SP and is currently powering down.

Timcliff’s Current Witness Update: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/the-reports-from-the-witnesses-2017-08-27
Timcliff’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/timcliff-s-updated-witness-application
Most Recent “Reports from the Witnesses”: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/the-reports-from-the-witnesses-2017-08-27

4 - @Good-karma

Good-karma is the highly talented developer behind some of Steemit’s most critical supplementary tools. The most important of these is probably Esteem, the mobile (Android/iPhone) and desktop app through which many regular users interact with Steemit daily. Without his unceasing efforts, Steemit would not have a robust mobile app offering which, in this day and age, would be practically suicidal for an aspiring social media platform.

Esteem is bringing a lot of features to the mobile Steemit experience that even the web interface has to get from outside locations, such as Steemdb. In the most recent update, Good-karma announced the activity manager which will not only add Facebook-like timeline features to the Esteem app, but will also “game-ify” engagement by rewarding the most active users on the mobile platform!

Good-karma has also developed the SteemPoll, SteemMonitor, and Steemfest apps.

Good-karma is a Peerplays witness, and a stand-by witness for Bitshares at #57.

Good-karma holds 108,000 SP and is powering down.

Good-karma’s Current Witness Update: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@good-karma/good-karma-witness-update-25th-august-2017-fda4af0e46c47
Good-karma’s Original Witness Thread: N/A
Esteem Most Recent Update: https://steemit.com/esteem/@good-karma/esteem-activity-manager-upcoming-491f172c2b667

5 - @RoelandP

RoelandP’s best-known contribution to the Steemit platform is probably the original Steemfest, which took place in Amsterdam in 2016. After 3 months of organization, the original Steemfest managed to draw 206 attendees from 31 nationalities across the world.

A talented event organizer, RoelandP made sure all the details of the original Steemfest were in order. This included everything from uploading media like photos and videos, organized livestream sessions, and managing payouts from the travel reimbursement fund to defray attendee travel costs.

RoelandP is also the creator and maintainer of the Steem Appcenter, a thorough repository linking to 150 supplemental apps that run on the Steem blockchain.

A regular promoter of Steemit and the Steem blockchain, RoelandP has even given a presentation on the merits of Steem at the Oracle corporate headquarters in Amsterdam!

RoelandP has made good on his promise 11 months ago to “Bring future Steemfests across the world“, as Steemfest #2 in Lisbon looks to be an amazing 5-day event. I am truly jealous I won’t get to attend!

RoelandP is a full Bitshare witness, #13. His node has a shockingly low missed block rate of only 14, which is less than 3% as high as the second best witness in the top #23, (openledger-dc).

RoelandP holds 185,000 SP and is powering down.

RoelandP’s Current Witness Update: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@roelandp/6trgaz-witness-update-roelandp
RoelandP’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@roelandp/witness-roelandp
SteemFest #2 Website: https://steemfest.com/
Steemtools: http://steemtools.com/
Bitshares Witness Stats: https://cryptofresh.com/witnesses?r=roelandp
RoelandP’s Oracle Thread: https://steemit.com/steemit/@roelandp/recap-my-steem-presentation-at-oracle-yes-the-database-company-p-for-the-dutch-telecom-society-group
Steemfest #1 Post-Thread: https://steemit.com/steemfest/@roelandp/thanks-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you-thank-you

6 - @Pfunk

Pfunk is one of the oldest users on Steemit, and as he notes in his original witness post, he acquired much of his stake via mining.

Much of Pfunk’s efforts on the Steemit platform revolve around fighting abuse. Pfunk donates weekly to the Steemcleaners initiative. Pfunk is also active in curating and curbing abuse directly, via the abuse channels in Steemit chat and flagging directly. He is a fixture of the Steemit.chat channels.

Pfunk is a sponsor of the Steemit Open Mic initiative, which aims to recognize musicians on Steemit and support them with rewards. Pfunk also likes to post photography and has used Steemit rewards on camera equipment in the past.

Pfunk is also a Peerplays witness.

Pfunk holds 35,000 SP and is NOT powering down.

Pfunk’s Current Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@pfunk/pfunk-hf17-18-witness-update
Pfunk’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@pfunk/pfunk-s-witness-post
Open Mic: https://steemit.com/openmic/@pfunk/hey-did-you-know-there-s-a-weekly-steem-open-mic-contest

7 - @Pharesim

Pharesim is a developer, mostly in web-related languages such as “PHP and JS, but also Python, Java and Go.” He has also developed piston scripts for witness usages and voting bot scripts on Steemit.

Pharesim’s highest profile project is SteemDice, which is operated under @steemdice1. Steemdice is a “provably fair”, simple dice rolling game that allows you to gamble Steem or SBD with a narrow house edge.

Pharesim is one of the key developers begins the PEVO project, which he describes as: “a decentralized long-term digital archive for scholarly publishing.“

Pharesim holds 576,000 SP and is currently powering down.

Pharesim’s Current Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@pharesim/rejecting-hf17-and-a-few-thoughts
Pharesim’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@pharesim/witness-post
Steemdice Project Page: https://steemit.com/@steemdice1
PEVO Project: https://pevo.science/

8 - @Riverhead

Riverhead is probably best known as being a key developer and server manager for the Steemit.chat service, a key piece of secondary infrastructure for many Steemit communities. In particular, certain community-serving channels such as the “Abuse” channel operate only thanks to the hard work behind the scenes at Steemit.chat.

Riverhead has also generously donated 10000 SBD to the Steemfest 2 initiative as a sponsor.

In his spare time, Riverhead has contributed the python code for a few small bots around the Steemit ecosystem, including an internal market bot and a price-pegging bot bot Bittrex/Coinbase spread on SBD.

Riverhead is also a Bitshares standby witness, at #36.

Riverhead is holding 694,000 SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating substantial faith in Steemit long-term.

Riverhead’s Current Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/rocketchat/@riverhead/witness-riverhead-update-week-of-august-1st-2016
Riverhead’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@riverhead/witness-proposal-riverhead
Steemit.Chat Update: https://steemit.com/steemitchat/@riverhead/where-s-steemit-chat
Steemfest Sponsorship: https://steemit.com/steemfest/@riverhead/steemfest-sponsorship-giving-back
Market Bot: https://steemit.com/trading/@riverhead/rudimentary-internal-market-bot
Pegging Bot: https://steemit.com/trading/@riverhead/simple-pegging-bot-bittrex-coinbase

9 - @Someguy123

Someguy123 is a well-known developer (top 3% at Bitrated) of third-party applications for both Litecoin and Steem. His skills include python, javascript and PHP, as well as system administration.

He has been personally vouched for by Charlie Lee, also known as the creator of Litecoin. He’s developed a number of projects, including Lite Vault, Explorer, Steem Center, and the AnonSteem service which allows another vector for registering new users onto the Steemit platform.

His Litecoin Block Explorer reportedly has up to 99% up-time. He maintains a live uptime tracker at: https://status.someguy123.com/

Someguy123 has also developed the “Steem-in-a-box” toolkit, a package designed to help anyone quickly and easily deploy a witness and seed node for Steem. He was instrumental in spreading the word about the “low-bandwidth” issue many users experienced around July, 2017, particularly minnows and others users in the Minnow Support Project.

Someguy123 holds 31,000 SP, and is NOT powering down. He leases via @minnowbooster.

Someguy123’s Current Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/all-witnesses-important-update-v0-19-1rc1-steem-in-a-box-is-updated
Someguy123’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/someguy123-witness-thread
Litecoin Founder’s Vouch: https://www.bitrated.com/Someguy123
Steem-in-a-box: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/steem-in-a-box-updated-for-v0-19-2
Bandwidth Issue: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@someguy123/dear-witnesses-please-increase-your-block-size

10 - @Roadscape

Roadscape is (as of 11/16) a front-end developer working for Steemit, Inc. Most of his day-to-day work revolves around adding new user-interface features and fixing bugs of all types.

Roadscape’s best known tool is Steemd, the first user-interface for exploring the Steem blockchain. You all probably know it better as “that place I refresh every day to see my voting power.”

Among Roadscape’s early projects was a social network on top of the Bitshares network called “Cryptofresh.” Though late made redundant by Steem, it was an excellent proof of concept.

Roadscape is a Bitshares Standby Witness (#30).

Roadscape holds 935,000 SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating substantial faith in Steemit long-term and was kind enough to be the very first witness in the top 10 to vote for @jerrybanfield as a witness!

Roadscape’s Current Witness Thread: N/A
Roadscape’s Original Witness Thread: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@roadscape/witness-roadscape
Roadscape Interview: https://steemit.com/witnessfiles/@nextgen622/the-witness-files-issue-10-with-roadscape-a-developer-at-steemit-inc

Time to vote!

Given what we shared about the top 10 witnesses here, would you please join us in making witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because our witness votes are the most important votes we make? Each of us can vote up to 30 times which can take a consistent effort to ensure we have active witness votes. If choosing 30 witnesses sounds exhausting, the easy solution is to set a proxy at the bottom of the page to make all our votes for us. I am honored that 50+ of us with 186 MV in voting power in total are trusting me to make witness votes as a proxy. A proxy can be changed at any time and is all inclusive meaning if we want to make our own votes, we have to either do all of them ourselves or set a proxy. I put a lot of thought into who I vote for as a witness and update my votes at least once each week as do many other witness voters here.

Set JerryBanfield proxy

Thank you for reading!

@lexiconical and I hope you enjoyed this post which we worked together to produce! In the next post in this series, @lexiconical and I hope to present the top 11 to 20 witnesses in the same way we have done here! The witness votes adjust every day meaning even as I write this, the rankings moved enough to mean technically we presented 10 of the top 20 witnesses where @anyx was left out because of rising into the top 10 while @pfunk was included despite dropping from 6 to 20 in the few hours we were finalizing edits on this post! We will adapt to make sure we cover @anyx in future posts and avoid duplicating any witnesses twice!

Love,
Jerry Banfield

Shared on

PS: Witness votes are the most important votes we make on Steem because one vote for a witness lasts indefinitely! Would you please make a vote for jerrybanfield as a witness or set jerrybanfield as a proxy to handle all witness votes at https://steemit.com/~witnesses because when we make our votes, we feel in control of our future together? Thank you to the 569 accounts voting for me as a witness, the 187.3m VESTS assigned from users trusting me to make all witness votes by setting me as proxy, and @followbtcnews for making these .gif images!

Vote Jerry Banfield Steem Witness

OR

Set JerryBanfield proxy

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@Jerrybanfield, This is a very good post. We #UpVoted it with 100% of our Steem Power enjoy your Steem Reward you deserve it. We will be asking @inertia to look into voting for you as a #Witness he is acting as the Proxy for @ADSactly right now.

We love the fact that you took the time to explain each of the Top 10 Witnesses and what their #Skills and Accomplishments have been on the Steem Platform.

Thank You for sharing all this valuable information with your fellow Steemians!

Thank you, @ADSactly. I'm glad you found my writing and Jerry's video / formatting / posting work to be of high-quality!

We appreciate your support.

Someguy123 is a well-known developer (top 3% at Bitrated) of third-party applications for both Litecoin and Steem. His skills include python, javascript and PHP, as well as system administration.
He has been personally vouched for by Charlie Lee, also known as the creator of Litecoin. He’s developed a number of projects, including Lite Vault, Explorer, Steem Center, and the AnonSteem service which allows another vector for registering new users onto the Steemit platform.
His Litecoin Block Explorer reportedly has up to 99% up-time. He maintains a live uptime tracker at: https://status.someguy123.com/
Someguy123 has also developed the “Steem-in-a-box” toolkit, a package designed to help anyone quickly and easily deploy a witness and seed node for Steem. He was instrumental in spreading the word about the “low-bandwidth” issue many users experienced around July, 2017, particularly minnows and others users in the Minnow Support Project.
Someguy123 holds 31,000 SP, and is NOT powering down. He leases via @minnowbooster.

hes best

@adsactly thank you very much for your upvote and comment here sharing what you liked about the post because that helps me to understand what to keep doing more of! I appreciate you considering making a witness vote for me and will be available on Discord this week!

I am newly joined in steemit.This blog helps me I think

Totally agree with you here

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This post is very accurate and is giving a really good overview of what these guys are accomplishing and why they are in the top witness position they are in.

I've been on Steem since May 2016 and have known the earliest Steem witnesses since June 2016 and I'm very please by the good research that has been put into creating this post.

Your approval of my research on this topic means a ton to me. As Jerry can attest to, I was worried about the difficulty in doing this topic justice as a relative newcomer to the platform. However, every witness I've reviewed so far has been such an asset to the platform it's been simply a process of trying to include all their projects without getting too verbose!

Your regular contributions on my blog quite literally keep me going. You are one of my most generous supports. Thank you so much for your help.

Your many contributions are also noteworthy!
Heres an up vote to get ur comment closer up!

SteemON TeamSteem!

before I say greetings to you @teamsteem I am steemian from indonesia .. and I am honest I also find many progress myself read this article .. and I also get additional knowledge on witness capacity. maybe there is less with my language because my mother tongue indonesia .. and english a little difficult to understand ..

@teamsteem very grateful to see you enjoyed the post and we appreciate your service as a witness and author on Steem!

Now this is really good work @Jerrybanfield it's much better than doing drama posts. Drama should be left in the steemcleaners channels and not be brought to the trending page of steemit. I understand people's frustrations with abuse but it's equally frustrating to have the worst of steemit brought out as dirty laundry. This project is beta and as such we try to deal with abuse in the proper channels rather than make it a trending story and cover up all the good things that steem blockchain presents. My drama post was intended to show you that anyone can make drama posts, and not to target you specifically. We do have a lot to deal with, I hope you understand. Now bringing this positive side of steemit and introducing the witnesses is a much better approach. I would like to see an article about the dev team if you can manage that it will be great. keep on steeming

Jerry, very good information. And thanks for transcribing as well, I always hate to watch a video for information, reading is a lot quicker for me.

I need to check who I already voted on as a witness, I may need to add a few from this list.

One question though, since you so explicitly state this in the data.
What are the reasons for powering down by the witnesses? I can believen some need (some) money and cash in, I cannot believe that they're taking all their money and run, but your remark:

@Riverhead is holding 694,000 SP and is NOT powering down, demonstrating substantial faith in Steemit long-term.

as well as a similar remark for @roadscape triggers my question.

If I manage to get some money I can spend, I'll setup my own witness as well, it's a good way to contribute to Steem.

@blevley outstanding question thank you for asking this because other readers must certainly be wondering the same thing! Powering down allows payments of Steem Power into Steem once a week which can then be cashed out on an exchange. Witnesses have costs to maintain servers and costs often ascoiated with related projects which often are either not profitable or make a small profit. For example, my witness server, seed node, and backup server are about $450 a month in hosting. It would be reasonable for me to power down enough to at least pay the server costs.

Thus, powering down allows witnesses to change Steem Power rewards received into fiat currency. Ideally we want to keep as much Steem in Steem Power as possible to lower the market supply and raise the demand. One factor I consider in votes is whether witnesses are powering down because if witnesses consistently dump Steem Power earned on exchanges, then we also have a constant supply which is likely to equal lower prices. Witnesses with the most long term faith in Steem are likely to want to hold as much as possible because with a price of $10 coming in the near future, powering down and selling today could lead to missing 90% as opposed to holding. That said, we all need money to pay our bills and sometimes the witnesses that are all in on Steem also depend on the Steem Power rewards to pay the bills on projects which often do not have much of a return. Thus, it can be a delicate balance for witnesses especially in the top to keep the bills paid while also holding as much as possible!

I'm happy with your post, it really inspires me, and I think also others just like me

Thank you very much, it's exactly what I was thinking.

Maybe we should include how much the witnesses are powering down. It now seems an all or nothing situation, while if a witness powers down 10000 SP from 576000, that's nothing, no biggie.

The power down always happens in equal increments over 13 weeks (iirc), so the size is always the same, proportionately.

To echo Jerry's answer above, the truth is running the servers and back-up servers to keep Steem secure is surprisingly expensive...like, potentially $500+ a month expensive.

It's not unexpected that witnesses will need to power down, in some cases regularly, to cover costs. The main reason I included the Steem Power data, other than that it was interesting to me, is that it helps provide a little background information on the focus of each witness. Some have re-invested much of their funds into witness upgrades, or community efforts, while others are betting very big on Steemit long-term.

One should not construe powering down as positive or negative, it simply is. One of the things that immediately became clear while researching the witnesses is that they spend a lot of time and effort witnessing. None of them are witnessing to make a quick buck.

I'm sorry if there was some confusion, I'm not saying that people are making a quick buck.
I have over 30 years IT experience, trust me, I know the cost of running a reliable service.

The reason I specifically asked is because there are a lot of new users that read remarks about founders and witnesses powering down, and don't know what the impact on the system is.
Especially when people start casting doubt about the viability of the system and there is no decent decent response from someone knowledgeable.

You replied earlier

The power down always happens in equal increments over 13 weeks (iirc), so the size is always the same, proportionately.

While I understand that it takes 13 weeks for the power-down to complete, my question was more about the total amount that was being powered down.
It tells you something if someone with 500,000 SP powers down 50,000 or if they power down 500,000.
Having said that, everybody can and may power down what they want, they earned it, it's theirs to spend.

I really love Steem(it) and believe in its future. Hell, I'm working towards becoming an iceberg and have all the whales swim around me ;-)

I'm just thinking about the larger community, especially when Steemit really starts growing, we must be very clear in our communication.

Maybe the updated whitepaper describes the effects of power down a bit better, the original paper was a bit vague about power down and its impact.

And thank you for the effort for collecting all this data, I know it's a lot of work.

"I'm not saying that people are making a quick buck."

I didn't mean to imply you did, I just wanted to head off any negative comments at the pass!

"It tells you something if someone with 500,000 SP powers down 50,000 or if they power down 500,000."

Absolutely, but you won't know until they cancel the power down, ie in retrospect.

We're glad you found our efforts worthwhile!

@jerrybanfield, thank you for allowing inside the lives of the top 10 witnesses.
You mention they are witness for other altcoins, it is similar task for them ?
Keep on steemit!

Yes those altcoins are based on DPOS which is the same technology behind Steem thus being witness there is very similar.

The Witness members are like the Senate of USA/Roman Empire.

This is worse than " Jehovah Witnesses " ... who came up with such a naming convention ?

Nice analysis

This post received a 3% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @sumayia! For more information, click here!

Great Witnesses , I also Like Pfunk for his Openmic contest :)

I didn't realize @pfunk was sponsoring that too, thanks for the update! To the top with this comment.

Thank you so much for always writing positive contents to help us get through.
You know something, i'm here on steemit because of you, i was taking a html lesson on youtube then i saw your ad then i decided to post my content on steemit and earn money and i just started 15 days ago and to be honest i'm so glad that i saw your ad that day and if i became rich one day that would be because of you actually . Thank you so much @jerrybanfield i appreciate your work please keep it up.

You're welcome Emma! Thank you for helping me see what your experience was like joining and how I helped!

You're the one who deserve to be thanked =)

I'm also in steemit because of you Jerry... You are a blessing to many people. Keep up the good work in spreading the good news of Steemit. I owe to you everything I earn here. When I become rich because of Steemit I would really want to meet you in person to thank you. God bless!

Yesterday i vote you as a witness ... and also vote for @moisesmcardona ... but honestly I do not know who more to vote ... vote for you because I saw that you are the ones who do the most by steemit ... beyond the top ten what did you do ... are they the ones that would recommend me to vote?

@matuca this is what we all face when we get started with witness voting which is why I think participation is low! Thank you for voting for me as a witness and making your first votes! In each of my witness updates such as https://steemit.com/witness/@jerrybanfield/19-2-update-new-backup-server-steemj-progress-witness-update-2 I will show who I am voting for currently and continue making posts like this to assist in choosing new witness to vote. If we do not want to invest the time and energy to stay on top of witness votes, the best way to fully participate is to set a proxy that is willing to research and consistently update witness votes.

For example, if you set me as your proxy at https://steemit.com/~witnesses, all of your witness votes will be done made through me meaning when I switch votes yours will automatically switch too. A proxy can be cleared at any time to allow for using our own 30 votes again or to change to another proxy as desired. Proxy voting is probably ideal for most of us getting started while taking the time to either set a proxy or make each vote individually is essential for those of us active each day on Steem!

Set JerryBanfield proxy

perfect ... thanks for replying and for the information ... I ask you because I do not know if you saw it ... in one of your previous posts I put a screenshot to show you a new user that use your name and your photo ... i dont know if you make another account or not ... but I wanted to let you know

Thank you Matuca, that sounds like a case of abuse (they're calling it Identity Theft here, I believe).

Jerry, you might want to report this to the SteemitAbuse channel.

@sherlockholmes may be interested.

yes... for that reason I informed to jerry ... first so he know and secondly if he want to take action ... the only difference was that put a point between name and surname ... was @ jerry.banfield...
there are always fools who want to win with the reputation of another person...and if there is something important is our reputation...maybe jerry already saw ... but for the warning

@jerrybanfield , this is definitely a case of identity theft starting up. Might want to report this.

Thanks Matuca, this is a great help.

@jerrybanfield , this is definitely a case of identity theft starting up. Might want to report this.

Thanks Matuca, this is a great help.

Hi Matuca,

We are hoping this series of posts will give you exactly the information you need to make an educated decision on this question.

Yes, I follow Jerry a lot...so I will be attentive to his future advice...