Having been recently taking a closer look at the witness voting situation on Hive, it has become apparent that a lot of accounts aren't paying much attention to the topic and numerous people have said that they haven't even thought about witness votes since Hive first went live. To reiterate the importance of Hive witness selection - they are the main people who decide on whether changes to Hive on the blockchain level go ahead or not. Aside from actually running the servers that keep the blockchain running, their own personal views and preferences play a role in shaping the future of the entire Hive blockchain.
Each top 20 witness can receive significant rewards for this. When Hive prices recently peaked, each top 20 witness was being paid the equivalent of $250k annually for their involvement in Hive (not including money made from post reward upvotes and curation - plus other avenues). Clearly, the capacity for witnesses to make decisions that benefit and serve the Hive community is essential for all of our success.
Part of my focus here is to make sure that I use the $1.7+ Million USD worth of witness voting power that I have been given to vote for witnesses that both serve the blockchain through wise analysis, decision making and behaviour - but with a specific focus on respect for free speech and holding the balance in the community in an effective way. Clearly everyone has their own interpretation of what that means, so I will do my best to clarify my interpretation of it over time, so that witnesses can put forward a case for receiving a vote powered by this stake. Currently, I have numerous free witness vote slots, so if you are a witness or know of a witness who specifically supports free speech as a priority, then let me know in a PM or in the comments below.
Arcange's Witness Vote Tracker App
Thanks to @Arcange, we have a version of the witness vote tracker app that was run by @drakos (but which is now offline). If you want to learn more about witnesses, who votes for them, what it will take to adjust the rankings and also data about their performance in general, then do check out the Witness vote tracker by Archange.
This app is a great way to learn more about how each witness is in the position that they are, so you can then perhaps speak with friends who may be still voting for people who you can see are operating in ways that are not aligning with the values of your friends who may not be paying so much attention to the politics of it all. Hive witness voting happens in realtime, but too often it can seem like we are operating more in an old world paradigm of having an election every few years! It would be good to shake this up and have more variation on the blockchain. This is the motivation behind introducing witness vote decay, which was integrated in via the last Hard Fork on Hive - but was given a 1 year delay before starting (for reasons I don't agree with) and so we have to wait another few months before it activates.
You might think that you only have a small stake and cannot affect much in the grand scheme of things - and on your own you are correct - but with enough people shifting sentiment and making this clear to others, the snowflakes can become an avalanche ;)
Note: You can click on the notepad icon next to the witness in the list to view a list of all the accounts that are upvoting the witness in question. Also note, I know there was a bug in Drakos' version of the code that meant that some voters weren't showing up in these lists.. I don't know if @arcange has fixed this, but I suspect he doesn't know it is a bug so possibly not.
Wishing you well,
Ura Soul
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Note: Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Hive Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Hive blockchain or DApps such as PeakD and 3Speak... You can really help Hive by making your witness votes count!
Another thing to take into account is that many witnesses are Hive developers as well, the largest in both aspects being Blocktrades. Ask yourself what your goal is for Hive and whether or not they are working towards that goal.
My goal is decentralization and I don't feel like the core devs are working towards this goal. When you have the power, it's unlikely you'll make the changes necessary to balance that dynamic.
Even if you don't mind who's in the top 20, nor how long they've been there, I think it's a great idea to switch votes around. If we can remind some of these 'representatives' who's really in charge, complacency is less likely to set in.
I think complacency is an issue right now and a mega reshuffling of witnesses is in order.
*Speaking to everyone/no one in general..
Voting for witnesses is one of the most important ways to ensure that Hive remains decentralized (or as decentralized as it can be) and that it remains with the leadership of a group of people who will continue to ensure that Hive grows and maintains value.
I like the idea of actively (not passively) "recertifying" witnesses every 1-to-2 years. I get it that we're all busy and become overwhelmed with other projects, and life, but with such high importance on witnesses - it would only benefit the community to have an annual recertification. I'd suggest recertification occurs at an account-by-account level, and refreshes every 12 months, similar to if you were to change your password every 30-90 days in a corporate environment.
The witness vote decay rule was introduced in HF25 and results in the witness votes expiring after 1 year of no witness votes being made by the account. I'm in the process of adding a script to display what this is going to do to the witness ranks when it goes live - to the new Hive stats site I am building.
I think the format of this new rule seems reasonable, though I imagine that some people will just run a bot to make a new witness vote every so often automatically.
Ah, ok. I remember reading about that being proposed for a HF, but don't recall it being implemented. Good to know that it was rolled out.
I don't like your comment about bots.. but that makes complete sense .. since folks around here use bots for everything..
There's no way around people automating their own activity on Hive, so such a bot is to be expected. At least the decay will remove hangover stake from Steem users who aren't active on Hive.
Agreed. Clearing of the stagnant votes will be interesting to watch!
Delegating their witness votes is essentially the same thing, so technically no new bot is necessary.
I would hope that over time there is a lot of competition for witness votes and more people circulated in and out of the top 20.
The mix of skills at the top are important to ensure hive thrives.
Absolutely, yes!
The site has been rewritten a long time ago and does not run drakos' code. So far, no one has reported such a bug to me.
Great, ok, thanks - good to know. :)
Thanks for the blog, this should be a bug that I was unable to vote my favorite witnesses. Let me try again if the bug fixed or not. Your blog is indeed helpful as always.
Thank you for your work. Good luck and all the best.
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