Which Steem Witnesses have been making the biggest waves in the Steem Ocean so far in 2018? Some have come and gone from the top 20 positions.. Some newcomers are moving up fast - Let's take a look!
Overview
I have split the list of witnesses into three bands:
- Produced over 20,000 blocks in any 1 month in Q1 and Q2 of 2018.
- Produced blocks within the range of 500 to 20,000 per month in Q1 and Q2 of 2018.
- Produced between 0 and 500 blocks in any 1 month in Q1 and Q2 of 2018.
I then removed all the witnesses from those bands who did not change their overall production levels much between January and June 2018.
This left only those witnesses who have significantly increased or decreased their production levels during the period.
Note: All data presented here has been taken from the witness pages provided by 
Hive account@drakos here. I did notice that some data appears to be inaccurate, such as 
Hive account@jerrybanfield being listed as creating blocks when inactive... But it's the best data I have for this research and analysis currently, so I'm going with it! ;)
Band 1 - Top Level - Producing More than 20,000 Blocks Per Month
Hive account@jerrybanfield came and went!
Hive account@riverhead all but disappeared and is now making a comeback.
Hive account@pfunk dropped a bit but is recovering.
Hive account@thecryptodrive showed some solid performance and growth too.
Hive account@furion dropped to almost nothing from his former glory!
Band 2 - Mid Level - Producing Between 500 & 20,000 Blocks Per Month
Hive account@charlieshrem dropped down by around half.
Hive account@joseph dropped significantly.
Hive account@adsactly-witness rose fairly consistently. 
Hive account@rival grew from almost nothing to a decent size.
Hive account@fryst-witness lost some ground but still holds plenty.
Hive account@ocd-witness also grew well from small to medium sized!
Hive account@arcange had smaller but consistent growth.
Hive account@klye lost a bit of ground.
Hive account@prc grew at a nice rate.
Hive account@blockbrothers virtually doubled in production.
Hive account@wackou ceased production!
Hive account@patrice had steady growth.
Hive account@therealwolf gew quickly from nothing to a decent size.
Hive account@busy.witness took a big hit and dropped to around 1/3 his former production level.
Band 3 - Lower Level - Producing Between 0 & 500 Blocks Per Month
Hive account@jacor-witness took some good ground, starting from nothing.
Hive account@b0y2k gained and lost but ended up doing ok.
Hive account@block-buster lost a lot of production along the way.
Hive account@stoodkev has had a strong start
Hive account@blackwidow had a strong start in a short period.
Hive account@yuriks2000 also had a strong start.
Hive account@guiltyparties made solid growth.
Hive account@emrebeyler grew well from nothing.
Hive account@jackmiller had great growth over a short period.
Hive account@firepower also had even greater growth.
Hive account@noisy.witness was another who had rapid growth.
Hive account@justyy too had good, quick growth.
Hive account@mahdiyari tripled his production.
Hive account@qurator grew from nothing quite well.
Hive account@ura-soul (yours truly) had a solid growth curve all the way.
Here's to a productive second half of the year!
(Witnesses are the computer servers that run the Steem Blockchain.
Without witnesses there is no Steem, Steemit, DTube, Utopian or
Busy... You can really help Steem by making your 30 witness votes count!)
Find out your voter rank position at steemocean.com!
I run a social network too!