It has been around four months since I first started my Witness on Hive blockchain. I have originally started with Witness software version 1.27.6 which was the current version at at he time and already did a couple upgrades. First I have upgraded to version 1.27.8 and then just a couple days ago I have finished upgrading to version 1.27.11.
Obviously I am still a new Hive Witness and am learning a lot about running the node and how things work. It was a great learning experience and I have missed a few blocks while learning the ins and outs of running a Witness node. You can see where I am in terms of daily Hive earnings from my witness on the chart above. You can clearly see that I am still a tiny fish when it comes to Witness nodes ranking.
What do Hive Witnesses Do?
Hive runs on a system called DPoS — that stands for Delegated Proof of Stake. What it means in practice is that we, the community, get to vote for who we trust to validate transactions and keep the network running smoothly. These people are called witnesses.
When someone is elected as a witness, they set up a server (or more than one) that runs 24/7. That server’s job is to follow the rules of the Hive blockchain, process transactions (like posts, votes, transfers, etc.), and permanently store each new block. If witnesses didn’t keep those servers running, Hive wouldn’t work — it’s that important.
Every 63 seconds, the system selects the top 20 elected witnesses plus one randomly chosen backup witness to validate and sign blocks. Each witness has just 3 seconds to do their job. If one of them misses their turn (say, due to a server issue), that block gets skipped and passed on to the next witness in line. It’s a fast-paced and critical role.
Witnesses earn rewards in Hive Power (HP) for each block they sign. These rewards don’t come from the same pool that content creators and curators get paid from. Instead, Hive has four different reward pools, which are outlined in the official whitepaper:
65% goes to the main reward pool (split equally between content creators and curators)
15% goes to people who have staked Hive Power (HP holders)
10% goes to the witnesses for doing block production
10% is reserved for the Decentralized Hive Fund (DHF), which supports development and community proposals
Top 20 Witnesses are called Consensus Witnesses and these twenty get to validate a block every minute, so in my opinion these twenty should be running the latest software and run the most powerful nodes. While I don't know if our top twenty run the most powerful and stable nodes, I do know that they do not all run the latest software:
In fact as you can see from the image above only three Consensus Witnesses run the latest Witness software and some run 1.27.0 and 1.27.3 which in software engineering anything .0 version wise is usually patched pretty quickly and I was always told not to go with .0 release into production, but that might be different when it comes to the Hive Witness software.
But validating blocks isn’t the only thing witnesses do.
They also keep the blockchain updated with accurate price feeds for HIVE and HBD. This is important for things like conversions and budgeting proposals. On top of that, witnesses vote on and set key blockchain parameters, such as:
The interest rate for HBD savings (currently 15% APR)
The account creation fee (currently 3 HIVE)
The maximum block size
So when we vote for witnesses, we’re not just choosing who keeps the lights on — we’re also helping steer the direction of Hive itself.
Witness Earnings Statistics
If you look at the daily earnings of our Hive Witnesses above you can clearly see that majority of the earnings goes to the top 20 Witnesses. I have zoomed in below to show the dramatic drop off more clearly:
So what we can see is that top twenty Witnesses earned around 441 Hive in the last 24 hours. So 441 Hive x 20 Witnesses is 8,820 Hive out of total 10,923 Hive distributed to Witnesses in the top 20.
We can see that Hive Witness in the 21st position earned 123 Hive and by the time we get to the Witness in the 25th position the earnings are below 100 Hive Per day: Actifit at 94 Hive per day. Still a pretty good amount of Hive to earn per day.
Let's see how Hive earnings are distributed outside the top 20 witnesses. It is hard to see how much the nodes are earning on the big chart that includes every one so I am providing more detailed charts below:
Here is how the Witness daily earnings are distributed in the top fifty without the top 20 Consensus Witnesses. As you can see the earnings are dropping as you get towards the bottom of the top fifty and by the time we get to number 50 Detlev we drop below 28 Hive per day.
The next twenty Witnesses continue to see their daily Hive Earnings Dwindle from around 25 Hive per day to just over 10 Hive per day in the 71st ranking position.
As we move into the Witness rankings 72 to 92 you see the earnings continue to go down. I am featured in this segment with around 6 Hive tokens earned per day.
So how are the rankings determined? The rankings are determined only by the amount of staked Hive tokens voting for you. So if you have the biggest Hive Stakeholders vote for you then you move up closer to the top. Obviously the Witnesses in the top 20 are people who have been involved with Hive Blockchain for many years and a lot of them are developers working on Hive blockchain or major projects on Hive.
Another factor that determines the number of Hive votes for you is the time that you have been a Hive Witness. The longer you have been around the more likely that you have picked up some Hive votes for your node.
In fact there are Hive Witness nodes that are inactive for years (see the greyed out lines above) that have a lot more votes than my active node or many nodes above me. Take a look at @aggroed one of the founders of Splinterlands that has been off for over two years and is still ranked at 76 by the amount of Hive voting for his node. Obviously his node and other nodes that are not actually processing blocks do not get any Hive rewards, but they are still high in the ranking. This is just how our Hive voting system works.
Another interesting thing that you can see in the screenshot above is that it is a job of the Hive Witness to provide a price feed, but as you can see some of the Hive Nodes with a fairly high ranking have not provided a price feed in years as well. You can see those in the forth column from the right in red. For example @innerhive with 1659 days.
And that is not just the lower raking nodes, some of our Witnesses in the top 30 have not provided a price feed in a while:
My Witness Stats
Here are my total Hive earnings in the last 30 days:
As you can see Hive Witness is my second top source of Hive Power at 162.5 Hive in the last 30 days. I have had Witness offline for my upgrade to 1.27.11 so I didn't quite get to the 180 or so Hive that it could have been. Now that I am all upgraded my numbers should improve a little bit.
My Witness basically validates a block every seven hours and ears about 1.5 Hive tokens every seven hours for it. My top source of Hive is Author rewards at around 800 Hive per month and finally curation at about 90 Hive per month.
I came to Hive from Splinterlands which remains a big area of interest for me content and curation wise so I am saving all of my Hive to increase my Hive power. I never power down and it is a long play for me.
I am a Hive Witness and would really appreciate your vote for me as a witness: https://vote.hive.uno/@seattlea
I also run an SPS Valdidator node so if you have some staked SPS please vote for my SPS Validator Node HERE
If you wonder what is the best way to get involved you can use my link to begin your Splinterlands and HIVE journey.