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RE: Witness Questionnaire - A Solution for Voter Confusion?

in #steemit9 years ago

Thank you so much for posting this! I can't wait to read the answer to "1)In a few sentences or less please explain the role of a witness in the Steemit/Steem ecosystem as you understand it."... because I literally have no idea what a witness even is. I feel like the voters of England who voted for the "brexit"... and then looked up what the "brexit" was... the next day.

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This summarises it quite well:

On the Steem blockchain, witnesses serve a role of validating signatures and timestamping transactions by including them in blocks. A block is any group of transactions (posts, votes, transfers, etc) which update the state of the database. Each time a witness produces a block, they are paid for their service. If a witness fails to produce a block, then they are not paid, and may even be voted out.

Every round of block production begins with the shuffling of 21 witnesses: the top 19 witnesses (by vote), plus one randomly-selected standby witness, and one miner witness. Each is given a turn to produce a single block at a fixed rate of one block every 3 seconds. If a witness does not produce a block in their time slot, then that time slot is skipped, and the next witness produces the next block.

Thanks. Sorry for making you do this legwork. I probably should have looked it up. LOL

No problem. It's on the Steemd witness page.