If we as @blockbrothers learned anything from recent events of this bear market and the layoffs at Steemit Inc. is that there is a huge need from the community to hear from witnesses.

@blockbrothers are already very active in the community through @exyle and @s3rg3 (Dutch Community), @brittandjosie (our community manager) and our own @blockbrothers account. But we like to do more.

Today we would like to shed some transparency on which witnesses @blockbrothers vote for and why.

There might be some unexpected witnesses here.

If you like our choice for witnesses you can set @blockbrothers as your witness proxy and we will honor that trust.

Set blockbrothers as your proxy via SteemConnect

Below you will also find a list of the new witnesses we will rotate in and the once we will rotate out soon.

We will be transparent about our witness choices from now on and in the future and will inform the community before we make any changes.

@blockbrothers approves of the following witnesses.

Witness	Reasoning
@abit	Saved the blockchain after the chain stopped after HF20. Knows his stuff. Maybe not as visible on the blockchain as other witnesses but someone you want to have around.
@adsactly-witness	Community witness. Heavily invested. Support bloggers as well as developers. Very active under the @adsactly-witness and the @adsactly account.
@aggroed	One of the most dedicated Steemians. Minnow Support Project Founder. Community leader and Co-founder of Steem Monsters. Run their own infrastructure decentralising the blockchain.
@blockbrothers	Community (@exyle and @s3rg3) and developer witness (@bennierex and @eqko). Creators of Steemify and very invested and informative for the community through @exyle and @s3rg3 (Dutch community).
@blocktrades	Developer witness. Business owner of blocktrades.com. A portal to convert other crypto to STEEM and back (for a fee). Has a team that can build for the blockchain. Business owner.
@busy.witness	Community and developer witness. Creators of the first alternative front-end for Steemit.com with Busy.org.
@curie	Community witness. Curator of content.
@cervantes	Community witness for the Spanish Community.
@fyrst-witness	Community and Developer witness. Very active community member. Founder of Steemspeak on Discord. One of the biggest community servers outside of Steem. Owner of Booster. A promotional service for the blockchain.
@followbtcnews	Developer witness. Owner of Steem.chat Owner of Steemtipper.com.
@good-karma	Developer of the Esteem ecosystem. Run their own infrastructure decentralising the blockchain.
@jackmiller	Very active community witness.
@lukestokes.mhth	Community witness.
@ocd-witness	Community witness. Curator of content.
@oflyhigh	Underrated witness. Knows a lot about the blockchain. Programmer. (got on our radar when he answered this question about the price feed perfectly. here.
@pharesim	Developer witness. Made https://steeminvite.com. Is able to check Hard Fork code.
@reggaemuffin	Developer Witness with @buildteam. Run their own infrastructure.
@someguy123	Developer witness. Not active as a community member but is the creator Of Steem in a box which is an extremely helpful tool for everyone that wants to setup a witness.
@steemcommunity	Community and Curator witness.
@thecryptodrive	Business man and developer Witness with @buildteam. Run their own infrastructure.
@therealwolf	Developer and community witness. Creator of Smartsteem. Recently trying to get Steem on Coinbase.
@utopian-io	Witness for https://join.utopian.io/
@yabapmatt	Developer witness. Co-founder of Steem Monsters.

The following witnesses we still approve of but will be rotated out:

Witness	Reasoning
@teamsteem	Not active enough for a community witness (used to be).
@demotruk	self voting on comments
@patrice	Not active enough anymore.

Witnesses we will rotate in:

Witness	Reasoning
@stoodkev	for his work on Keychain and SteemPlus
@steempress	for their work on Steempress
@wise-team	for their work on Engrave
@fulltimegeek	For his work on Vaporchain
@partiko	For their work on the Partiko app
@anyx	For his work on optimizing full nodes

If you support us please vote here for @blockbrothers

_{you can also choose to set blockbrothers as your proxy at the bottom of the page (fill in blockbrothers in the field)

or use either of the below links to do so automatically using steemconnect.}
^{Vote for @blockbrothers via SteemConnect

Set blockbrothers as your proxy via SteemConnect}

_{Makers of Steemify. The dedicated notification app for anything happening on the Steem blockchain.}

_{or apply for the Android beta here : steemify@blockbrothers.io}