A steemit witness is not someone who happened to see a crime in progress, they are a community delegated blockchain steward responsible for block verification. This particular blog is going to pass through one of their nodes before becoming a permanent fixture on the blockchain. If the block was missed, an error appears and you have to re-submit any action (upvote, edit, follow, etc.). Once a witness misses a block, the block goes to the next witness in the queue who likely verifies correctly and gets rewarded roughly 1 SP.
Since the inception of Steemit, the size of the blockchain has gotten quite bloated and witnesses have to keep modifying their servers to handle the increasing users and data influx. It is a time consuming responsibility and running a server is only a small part of the job. It takes so much more to be a member of the top 50 witnesses.
I have had the opportunity to interview multiple witnesses from various walks of life to see what makes them tick, and why they are so passionate about steemit. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, read more about witnesses HERE.
The steemit witnesses are constantly evolving and changing positions based on their weighted votes assigned by the steemit community. New witnesses are continually starting up new nodes for the opportunity to help maintain the blockchain and be rewarded for their efforts.
One of these veterans is @good-karma, and he has been busy developing eSteem for quite some time and happens to be in the #4 spot currently.
Hi good-karma, thanks for doing this interview. Lets start off by telling the world a little bit about yourself.
Hey, thank you for having me! Well, my name is Feruz aka good-karma. I am founder and lead developer of eSteem project which is first application built on top of Steem after steemit.
How long have you been a witness, and what made you decide to take on the responsibility of being a blockchain steward?
I believe it is almost 1 year now when I started witness nodes, right after I have started eSteem project I have decided to provide reliable nodes, support the platform that I am building application for. It took 6 months of this last year to reach top 20 spot which I am thankful to all supporters and voters to put their trust on me.
You are currently the #4 witness, but for a while were at the #1 spot. Does this fluctuation impact the amount of blocks that you are required to verify?
Top 20 produces same amount of blocks everyday.
Witnesses come in many flavors, and you are an esteemed developer (pun intended). How much time do you dedicate your steemit software development and other various steemit activities (node maintenance, posting content, etc.)?
Most of my time in a day goes to check witness nodes, development of eSteem and couple other projects as well as catch up with community and write something useful.
For those who are unfamiliar with some of the steemit interaction tools that you have developed, what are they, and what exactly do they do?
Besides eSteem, there is SteemFest mobile application developed with collaboration Roeland and Cass to help event attendees with information and location of each sessions. SteemPoll is another application to help bootstrap projects and get decision of the crowd on projects. Idea is to have embedding polls on top of Steem, it is still early stages and being developed whenever got extra time after other projects.
SteemFest is coming and you are obviously going to be in attendance. What are your plans for the big event?
As usual, SteemFest mobile application will be updated once we have everything set up and ready. There are few surprises that will be announced during event. Eagerly waiting to meet Steemians from all over the world!
HF19 has had some mixed reviews within the community. What are some changes you would like to see in the next hard fork?
Changes on HF20 being discussed in various channels, posts. So far I like the path we are taking and easy registration and onboarding solution will help eSteem quite a lot in terms of being able to market app to mainstream.
Voting for witnesses is an important responsibility. Why do you feel that steemians should vote for you as a witness?
Witnesses play important role for direction platform is moving and helping to keep network stable. And your vote always helps to elect trustworthy people that know how system works and can contribute in some ways to growth of the platform.
OK, so now that you know what these wonderful witnesses do for our community, the least you can do it vote for them. Dead witnesses verify no blocks, so cast your votes and make sure our blocks get verified and not dropped.
First, point your browser to https://steemit.com/~witnesses
Vote away, using your best judgement. If you want to know more about a Witness, be sure to visit their Witness feed. You can always add in a witness who is not in the top 50, or you can choose your favorite witness (or other steemian) as a proxy and delegate your votes too!
Don't forget to check out @good-karma's witness thread. Also feel free to check out esteem to check out @good-karma's steemit interface
Previous Interview threads
@ausbitbank
@aggroed
@theprophet0
@neoxian
@someguy123
@timcliff
@dragosroua
@followbtcnews
@reggaemuffin
Upcoming Interview threads
You can verify how well these witnesses are doing their job of verifying blocks a couple of different ways and this may also factor into voting choices.
Stats on Witness activity are available at
Steemd & Steemdb
Thanks to the PALNet and MinnowSupport project
The PALnet and MinnowSupport project is one of the fastest growing Steemit social groups supported by @aggroed @ausbitbank @theprophet0 @neoxian @someguy123 @thecryptodrive @teamsteem, & @followbtcnews. We have over 5000 members dedicated to helping each other grow into dolphins and eventually whales, and are fueled by member delegations. @crimsonclad has been working her tail off creating a new website for the MSP and PALnet members.
Grand total of more than 120,000 SP to help upvote minnows!
Check out @crimsonclad's beautiful new MSP site at http://minnowsupportproject.org/ and please join our Discord server at https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
Image courtesy of @justcallmemyth
thanks to @kristyglas for the line breaks, find more here
If you are a witness and would like to be interviewed, you can find me in the PALnet discord chat or steemit.chat
Check out some of my previous posts if you like what you've read
Witness Awareness Series: Interviews with various witnesses
Interview with @reggaemuffin
Interview with @followbtcnews
Interview with @dragorsoua
Interview with @timcliff
Interview with @someguy123
Interview with @neoxian
Interviews with @aggroed, @theprophet0, and @ausbitbank
Most Recent Post
The many flavors of Witnesses: crypto-anarchist, entrepreneur, developer, community advocate