Yesterday I made a post about steem.supply and someone asked me on Steem chat what witness is.
I'll just explain this in a simple (non technical) way, so that anyone can understand.
WHO'S A STEEM WITNESS.
First of all there is no such thing as STEEMIT WITNESS, It's called STEEM WITNESS.
STEEM is a Blockchain (distributed open ledger ) which STEEMIT (social network) runs on.
So a witness is a group of persons or a person who operates or runs a node. they keep an eye on these nodes that take care of things here.
STEEM has what is called node and each transaction is contained in a BLOCK and each block has a transaction speed of 3 seconds.
There are lots of steem witness. Among the steem witnesses , the Top 19 witnesses produces a block almost every minute.
The other witnesses combine to produce about 28,000 blocks. Each block produced by a witness is greatly dependent on the ranking of the witness.
what will happen when a witness fails ?
If /when a witness fails to produce a block for a transaction, that transaction could/will be lost forever.
So, if witness number 4(based on ranking) fails, witness 5 will replace witness numbers 4.
Each steemian has a maximum of 30 votes to vote for witnesses. So you'll have to vote wisely. Currently I've voted just 3 witnesses. I voted 
list of 30 witnesses I wish to vote (this list is in no particular order)
There are lots of other awesome witness you could vote. To get the list of witnesses click here and spread your vote.
how did these guys become witnesses?
Most of these witnesses were early miners in the network. anyone (steemian) can become a witness through votes made by the Steemit community.
These votes from the community will help you get elected. But you must be liked and highly respected by the community.
So this is just a simple explanation of who a witness is, what they do and how to become a witness. I hope this little write up was helpful?
- Note: this is just a steem witness explanation to an amateur. There are lots of technical details not included in this article**
