Thoughts on becoming a top 20 witness from a former top 20 witness

When I joined Steem back in July of 2016, the top witness positions were idolized and admired by many in the community - myself included. These were the elite wizards who kept the blockchain running, and made decisions about the future of our chain! They could be seen actively working on various projects to improve the platform and community, and lots of people respected their views. They also made a lot of $$$!

The "Untouchables"

At the time I joined, there was a lot of chat about the witnesses. Some good, some bad. Many of the things that I kept hearing over and over though were:

Unless you were already in the "in crowd" there was no way to become a top witness.
It is impossible to become a top witness unless you were one of the early adopters.
The people who are already in the top have an unfair advantage, because they got votes from a bunch of stakeholders that are no longer actively voting.
There are tons of witnesses in the top 20 doing nothing, and they are never going to get replaced.

Sound familiar?

I have been hearing the same things repeated over and over since 2016, and they still continue to be repeated today!

Defying the odds

Those of you who already know me probably know by now that I'm a pragmatic optimist. I am not delusional, but I am always going to try and look for a positive outcome regardless of the situation. I am not going to simply accept negative view-points from people just because they are the prevailing way of looking at the world.

One thing that I noticed after I had been here for a couple of months is that there were several backup witnesses who were doing A LOT. Seemingly quite a bit more than those currently in the top..

Hive account@jesta is the first person that I watched work his way to the top. Watching Hive account@jesta's climb to the top was one of the primary experiences that shaped my view on our community, stakeholders, and witnesses. He worked his tail off! He built so many amazing tools, and did so much for the community that he probably touched the lives of every single person using the platform. Even if people didn't know who Hive account@jesta was, they were probably benefiting from one or more of the tools that he made.

Hive account@jesta was doing so much for the community, that after a while - people started asking: how is he not already a top witness?? It still took several more months after that point before he finally got into the top, but after a long (6-12 month?) journey - he finally made it!

Hive account@jesta was not the only one who made the trek to the top either. Hive account@anyx, Hive account@gtg, and many others did too.

What I found most interesting was the grumbling about how impossible it was to make it into the top kept persisting, but new people continued to make it into the top..

After being part of the community for about about four months, I decided to become a witness. My initial goal was just to get to the point where I was high enough to produce enough blocks to cover the costs of my witness and seed node servers, and I didn't really have any expectation of becoming a top witness (after all - it was "impossible" for someone like me), but I did do everything I could to add value wherever I could.

I followed a similar path to those I had seen go before me, and worked my tail off for months. I didn't know anybody when I first got here, so I engaged with the community and got to know people. I took positions on important decisions facing the community, and made a name for myself as an "influencer" - helping to shape public perception and drive consensus. I started to propose my own ideas on what seemed like important issues at the time, and did the work to turn those ideas into action. I worked on many large projects that added value to the community and helped our users (like adding the FAQ page to condenser with Hive account@pfunk). I got to know many of the large stakeholders and learned what they cared about, and focused on things that were important to them.

It took me about 3-4 months to get to a "break even" point (where I at least wasn't loosing money on my campaign), and that wasn't even counting all the "unpaid work" that I was doing. It took many more months of that before I was even a contender for a top spot, and months after that before I actually made it in. After many many months of consistent effort though, I did it. I was in. I was a top witness.

Shortly after making it into the top, I was quoted in an interview:

"I also always thought that the whole point of being a witness was to do things for the community. If anyone could just setup a witness node and start earning a profit, it would probably attract the wrong type of people.

Since then [becoming a top witness], I have just continued to try and find the best ways that I could add value to the community. I think to some extent the initial shock has worn off a bit, but I am still amazed and honored that I actually made it to one of the top witness spots. I am really proud of the work that I have done, and it means a lot to me that the people in the community have valued what I've done and voted on me for witness. I hope to continue to serve as an example to newer witnesses that it is possible to make it to the top, but it takes a huge amount of effort to get there."

Since that day, I have seen countless witnesses follow the same path. The key is that it takes a LOT of work (way more than most people realize) but it can be done.

What does it really take to make it in?

I have closely watched the witness campaigns of many of our community's witnesses over the past four years. I have seen countless witnesses work their way to the top, and I have seen even more fail. I have gotten to the point where I can usually fairly accurately see a top witness "coming" about 2-3 months before they actually make it in. There is a pattern.

I have coined a term for it called the "splash effect". The people who make it into the top are following the same path that Hive account@jesta, myself, and many of the other top witnesses have followed. They are doing so much for the platform/community that they can't be ignored. They reach and exceed the point where everybody starts to question how are they not already a top witness??

For all the backup witnesses who are sitting there thinking to themselves (or sometimes out loud): why am I not a top witness? I am doing so much more than the other top 20 witnesses. It is not fair. I have a blunt answer for you: you are not doing enough.

To truly "make a splash" you have to identify a need that the community has that is significant enough to have a noticeable impact, and meet the need in such an explosive way that the shock-waves of your impact are felt across the entire community. You also need to continue to deliver an indisputable about of value to the community over an extended period of time.

I realize that is a harsh thing to say, and I expect to get a lot of whiny responses in the comments about all the reasons why things are just so unfair, but whatever excuses you want to try and pull together - I have heard them before. Despite the unique situation you think you are in which is the reason you are not making it to the top - there have been others before you, and there will be others after you, who will do what it takes to make it in.

Some key things that I often see witnesses doing wrong are:

They overvalue the contributions that they are making.
They think that because they are doing more than the "lazy" top 20, they are owed a top 20 spot.
They expect stakeholders to just appreciate whatever pet project they are doing to contribute.
They do not demonstrate that they are able to build consensus around an idea.
They take positions that are too extreme and/or against the views of the large stakeholders. (Note: It is OK to take these positions if they are truly what you believe, but if you do - then it is on you to "win" people over to your side.)
They only care about the "little guy" and demonize large stakeholders.
They burn bridges with prominent community members.
They put their own interests above the needs of the platform/community.
They focus on certain aspects of their campaign and do well in those, but are week in other areas. Examples include: socializing with the community, networking with stakeholders, getting recognition for the hard work they are doing, influencing views on important platform decisions, demonstrating that they have what it takes to be a leader, and making contributions that grow the value of the platform/token.
Their splash is not big enough.

There is inertia once you are in the top, but the "mighty" do fall

One of the things that I often hear is how the top witnesses are not doing anything at all, and just sitting on top leaching witness rewards. While this typically tends to ignore everything they did to get into the top in the first place, it is also usually said with a defeatist attitude that implies we are doomed to a fate where they remain in the top - leaching off the rest of us forever.

Let me show you something. This is the witness list back from hardfork 11:

How many of those witnesses do you still see in the top today?

There are a few who have continued to add value over the extended period of time and are still there today, but most are gone. They have been replaced with new witnesses who proved themselves by making their "splash".

I would bet money too that if you took a screenshot of the top 20 witnesses today and came back in one year, that there would have been significant turnover and a lot of new faces.

It takes a lot of work to make it in, and once you are there - it does take a lot to push you out. But the actual reality of the situation (not just a political opinion from someone who is upset they aren't in the top) is that the witnesses who do not continue to add value get replaced with ones who do.

My views on vote decay

A lot of witnesses who are upset that they are not in the top try to sell the idea of "vote decay" as a way to make it easier for backup witnesses to make it to the top.

Want to know a good way to convince me not to vote for you? Start talking about how the system is rigged and we should take development effort away from other important priorities in order to make it easier for you to make it to the top, because you are not wiling to put in the work to get there on your own.

In my view, the fact that it is so hard to make it to the top is a good thing. This helps to secure out network against attackers. It also separates the strong from the weak, and helps to ensure that the people who make it to the top actually have what it takes.

Quit whining about how unfair things are, and go work on your splash.

Abandoned accounts

There is a separate (unrelated) part of vote decay that I do support, and that is if a stakeholder has abandoned their account (due to lost keys, death, etc.) that after a certain amount of time their votes should no longer count.

A pragmatic proposal that I have stated in the past is:
A stakeholder's votes could be removed if they have not used their active/owner key in a period of N days (for some very large N, such as 365 days).

This is something that I do think is worth doing, as time allows.

An interesting twist to this is what if a stakeholder used Steem, but never used Hive? Should stakeholders have 1 year from the day of the Steem / Hive split hardfork to use their active key on the Hive blockchain in order to have their votes continue to count? Something to think about..

Isn't there a security risk to the top 20 positions being slow moving?

An argument that I often hear from people trying to make the case for vote decay (again - to make it easier for them to get in) is that there is a security risk due to the fact that it takes so long to get voted out. In other words, if it takes so long for a top witness to get removed, what if there is an issue that requires them to be removed quickly?

What I have seen in practice is that there are always enough large stakeholders around at a given point in time to quickly shift around the top spots if it is necessary. There is not enough to take someone from 0 to 20 in an instant, but if a compromised top witness (or witnesses) need to be taken out quickly, it can be done.

This has actually happened on many occasions where there was a need to remove a top witness (or group) and replace them with a backup, and every time there has been a need - it was executed very quickly.

DPoS Requires Partition

The security of the Hive blockchain requires that stakeholders take their role in DPoS seriously. This means voting for witnesses, and periodically reviewing your votes to ensure that the witnesses you are voting for still meet your criteria.

If you do not feel comfortable deciding who to vote for (or don't want to spend the time), you have the option to proxy your witness vote to someone else. If you set an account as your proxy, your stake will be used to vote on whichever witnesses they vote for. If you do this, just make sure to periodically review your proxy to at least ensure that their votes are still aligned with your interests.

No vote too small

A lot of users with less stake often skip on witness voting because they think their vote doesn't matter. I know from experience that this is not the case. There have often been cases where a small amount of votes has made the difference between the 20 and 21 position. Also, every bit of stake that a backup witness has voting for them over the other backups increases the probability that they will receive more blocks.

Another reason is that your account is expected to grow over time. As you continue earn more stake (through participation in the network) your vote will be worth more.

Get out the vote!

If you have not voted for witnesses or reviewed your witness votes recently - I encourage you to do so now!

Two interfaces that allow you to vote for witnesses are:

There are also several other tools including programmatic APIs and cli_wallet if you are not comfortable trusting your keys to a third-party tool.

Vote for Hive account@timcliff :)

If you think the work I am doing is helping to secure the Hive blockchain and add value to Hive, I would appreciate your witness vote!

Thanks for reading!

I look forward to reading your replies in the comments :)

We have just started our path here)

I personally have voted for quite some time now (1 year at least for sure). I think that you’re one of the best witnesses personality-wise + i have rarely ever disagreed with your consensus stance.

Keep it up! You have my support:)

Very nice post and I admire both your work and our attitude.

Hive account@timcliff You are my favorite witness. That's why from today you are a my recovery account.

Hi. I appreciate that, although I currently have no way to confirm you are you. Please contact me through an external source (Discord, etc.) so we can discuss further.

Who is your Discord account?

Love the post, great way of presenting the reality of things.

The only thing that caught my eye is the generalization of us people who would like to see an implementation of "vote decay" (timer/ticker) on witness votes.

Some of us are not for it so as to make anything easier, but in fact the exact opposite.

It is a lot harder to ensure that stake holders contribute i.e. once yearly in accordance with our/their responsibilities, than to just cast a vote and forget about it as if there are no changes going on with anything or anyone relevant to the chain, tokens or business aspects of everything that our governance affects.

Apart from that, fully agree with everything you wrote, especially for those out there who are "complaining" all the time instead of looking at how to make things work better for the right reasons.

nhf, we've all done it, as far as "putting everyone in the same basket", mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa. So I am not throwing a stone your way, just wanted to point out that some of us want to see things move forwards and can justify some changes that will definitely help in the process/path.

Cheers.

That's a fair point. I personally don't think there is really a good argument to be made for vote decay (outside of the cases I talked about in the post), but I agree it is probably not right to throw everybody who supports it into the same bucket. Thanks for pointing that out.

A stakeholder's votes could be removed if they have not used their active/owner key in a period of N days (for some very large N, such as 365 days).

I was actually thinking about something like this. I fully agree.

Great post, I agree with you on most counts. You're still a top witness, for me, and I hope one day you'll get back up there.

What about the fact that the witness list on Hive is totally stagnant because Justin Sun attacked us and everyone blindly cast their votes for the top 30 to defend the chain?

The vast majority of these votes have not been taken away. Until they do it actually is "impossible" to get into the top 20. Votes need a reset due to the attack.

I disagree, and feel that is the wrong approach. Everyone who cast votes within the past few weeks is obviously still an active stakeholder. Stakeholders are responsible for adjusting their votes accordingly, and I certainly don't feel we should start going down the path of trying to overrule their decisions. It may take some time for some of them to circle back and re-review the witness list, but again - if you take a snapshot of who is there right now and come back in a year, I will bet money that the list will have changed significantly.

Everyone who cast votes within the past few weeks is obviously still an active stakeholder

It's actually great counterexample to the claim that a lot of less active stakeholders "never" change their votes. When it is important enough, many will (though obviously not the ones who are dead, who lost their keys, etc.). Nearly all arguments about how often stakeholders are supposed to change their votes are being made by someone who doesn't like the decisions stakeholders make (including to be less active, change votes less often, etc.) and is trying to gain an advantage by changing the rules.

Yes, that is 100% correct, your comment here confirms the need to tackle the issue of "dead" voters.

For ALL the right reasons and not for gaming the system.

Plus the fact that user awareness and responsibilities that go with holding stake in a PoS (DPoS) ecosystem need to be promoted in all ways possible. The Alt and blockchain markets are moving at light speed and the changes that come with that require awareness levels and responsibilities that are way above what many can ever fathom.

Again, here is one person who isn't complaining or looking for "an edge" but rather a means to comply with the real needs of our ecosystem.

I think one year isn't enough, but five years seems a little much, how about two or three?

I don't like golos powering down accounts, but witness votes is OK, to me.

I think community control over bad witnessing has been clearly demonstrated.

I'm fairly flexible in terms of the number. 1 year was just an example that I came up with. If we get to the point where there is consensus around the idea and we are actually at a point that we will be implementing it, I suspect a lot of discussion and debate will be had in terms of the specifics.

Thanks Hive account@timcliff. Great to see you on Hive. Let's catch up sometime soon.

there're 20 top witnesses and users can vote for 30 witnesses.

a)
why for 30? what is the history/reason for this number?
are there better options for the blockchain protection?

b)
why are there 20 top witnesses? what is the history/reason for this number?
are there better options for the blockchain protection?

a) Having more votes than the number of witnesses was originally by intent. In fact the original number of votes was unlimited. It had to be limited due to an expoit having to do with backup witnesses (but having no effect on top 20), so in order to avoid making it smaller than 20, it was set at 30. The idea of having more votes than top slots is that you want a top 20 that is "hard" to get into, for exactly the reason stated in the post:

In my view, the fact that it is so hard to make it to the top is a good thing. This helps to secure out network against attackers. It also separates the strong from the weak, and helps to ensure that the people who make it to the top actually have what it takes.

If there are 20 "good" candidates, you want all (or at least most) of the responsible stakeholders voting for all 20 so that it becomes that much harder for a "bad" candidate to work their way. in fact, if there are 30 or even 50 "good" candidates, you still want them all getting voted by responsible stakeholders, to serve as firewall that keeps bad candidates from rising higher than 31 or 51. (In fact all of the responsible stakeholders can't vote for all 50, due to the 30 limit discussed above, so this is actually a bad think about the current limit.)

b) I believe the main reason considerations are: 1) decentralization (preventing a "small" number of parties from taking control of the network; 2) difficulty of coordinating updates, including emergency updates; 3) burden placed on stakeholders to evaluate "good" candidates (recall from above that we want responsible stakeholders to vote for at least 20 "good" candidates and if 20 were higher than it would be even more effort to do this); 4) time taken for irreversible blocks (IMO this is relatively unimportant, but I'm including it because Hive account@timcliff mentioned it, and it is correct); 5) amount of rewards received by each top witness.

Now with regard to a), we obviously recently had a situation where the network was "taken over" by a single actor with a lot of votes. It is often claimed that by reducing the number of votes, such a takeover would be harder to do. This is only partially true (a large actor could split their votes into two accounts, and since everyone else would be splitting their votes too, the vote totals on the top 20 would be quite a bit lower, likely close to half), but it also isn't the only security concern. Maximizing the height of the "firewall" to keep hostile actors from voting in any witnesses is also a good thing.

The large actor having a massive (more than 2x everyone else voting, at least prior to takeover when there were fewer votes) stake is something that is supposed to be an exceptional circumstance that is very hard to pull off, and in fact it was an exceptional circumstance, so I remain unconvinced that reducing the vote total is a good idea overall. I'm a little bit more favorably inclined toward the "1 SP, 1 vote" idea where you can split your vote but the strength of each vote is then reduced by 1/N. In that case: a) it doesn't reward splitting your account to be able to vote for more witnesses, and b) all responsible stakeholders would still be able to vote for all "good" witness candidates and keep up that firewall (good), though the vote totals aka "firewall" would still decline a lot (mostly bad).

thank you so much for taking time to provide all this explanation/info.
!ENGAGE 10

a: I can't answer the reason for 30 votes, it seems to predate Steem back to BitShares. It would seem that a number less than consensus witness slots would be a better option, given what happened on Steem.

b: The number of witnesses was explained by Dan Larimer a long time ago as a trade-off between blockchain security and decentralization and being able to properly compensate those witnesses. The more witnesses there are, the smaller the slices of the witness rewards are.

thanks for clarifications
!ENGAGE 5

I don't know the reasons behind the original decisions.

In terms of why there aren't more than 20, the more "consensus" witnesses there are, the longer it takes to form an irreversible block.

True, but in order for Hive to reach Instagram/Facebook volume sharding might be necessary anyway, right?

I'd like to see 63 consensus witnesses via a "beacon chain" (rip from Ethereum) and two shards. In my opinion, DPoS is outdated and we should look at other projects to improve upon it. Validators being required to stake the coin at risk of being slashed is an improvement upon DPoS. That's how Loom works now, with their DPoS chain.

Do you know if the Steemit Inc. devs still plan to develop a new social blockchain or did Hive kill that project?

Sorry for the late reply. Sorry, I have no idea what Steemit, Inc's plans are.

thanks for clarifications
!ENGAGE 5

Majority of the Hive users are not github users nor staring on a terminal screen. We are more readers, we appreciate content related to your works and to your life and how it benefit the community and the entire blockchain. Doing everything in the background and not declaring it to the entire community for scrutiny is a point of selfishness. To all aspiring witnesses be proud of your work, make regular announcements of your progress, be with us, we are just here, maybe lurking but intelligently placing our bets to people that we really love to support.

Be strong. Yes, make your splash, make us wet!

a common bee-

Hive account@jesta was the first witness I voted back in 2017, second one was Hive account@furion iirc

Thanks a lot for this breakdown, it is insightful to see it from someone like you who has been in the top 20 and then out. I agree with you regarding witness vote decay. Also, I think it can lead to lots of problems, including potentially jeopardizing the network's security by requiring people to perform voting every once in a while. In the IT world, when someone places a vote on something, they expect that to stay in place until they make a change. Vote decay will, I think, lead to less and less people renewing their voting so the governance participation in effect will decrease, making it easier to overtake the network.

What are your thoughts on removing the ability to proxy witness votes? It seems like people proxying leads to more centralization of power to those that get selected as a proxy. Whereas without proxying everyone has to decide who they vote for.

I still see it as a useful feature, but ultimately the responsibility falls on stakeholders to use it properly - just the same as witness voting.

There is danger of people who just "proxy and forget" or cases where a proxy uses their power in ways that the users who trusted it to them would disagree with. If people are going to proxy their vote to someone, it is my view that they need to take the responsibility to at least periodically monitor and check in with their proxy.

I mostly agree with this but I would definitely include proxy setting in the "lost account" expiration feature. I suppose one could make the case it should have a longer lifespan, but still should have some lifespan shorter than forever.

Great post! Inspiring.

Seems well written for those who might be considering the role of Witness Hive account@timcliff. Your thoughts certainly are derived from a lot of first-hand experience.

"... I'm a pragmatic optimist."

Yep. While I self-identify as a "realistic optimist," for all practical purposes, they are the same thing. I have never been a fan of delusional thinking ...

I still have a number of unanswered questions stemming from the "Big Split," part of which led to my removing of support for you as a Witness. But ... It really doesn't matter now. It is done.

For most of my "journey" inside these fascinating blockchain "worlds," I have supported you as one of our all-important Witnesses. Accordingly, I have changed my voting here on Hive and am now, once again, supporting you, with the +31 MVests under my control.

Hope to see you back in the Top 20 in the near future!

Quit whining about how unfair things are, and go work on your splash.

Not only applicable to the pursuit of Witness votes; this could be applied to everyone on the Hive platform.

If one wants rewards, whatever they might be, it is time to get active.

I think you'll see that many find this post offensive.

Telling people "you are not doing enough" when many have been doing more than some in the top 20 for quite a while is absolutely ridiculous and you know there are factors at play that you have left out of this post.

It's people like you who vote for those currently sitting in the top 20 who are actively doing harm to this chain.

Shame on you.

I think you'll see that many find this post offensive.

Ok..

Telling people "you are not doing enough" when many have been doing more than some in the top 20 for quite a while is absolutely ridiculous

I tried to make it clear in my post, that "doing more than the current top 20" is not enough to make it into the top. Anyone who wants to run a witness and use the current top 20 as their "bar" to overcome is welcome to do so, but in my view that is not going to be enough to get in.

you know there are factors at play that you have left out of this post

In terms of other factors, I honestly don't know what you are talking about. I tried to list everything I could think of in the "Some key things that I often see witnesses doing wrong are" section, and in my view - those are the top reasons why certain backups are not making it in.

It's people like you who vote for those currently sitting in the top 20 who are actively doing harm to this chain.

I use different criteria for voting than you do. You are welcome to vote for whoever you want, just as I am. I do actually pay attention to the backup witnesses, and frequently vote for ones that I think are doing a good job.

There are quite a few that I am already voting for (examples Hive account@ats-david and Hive account@holger80) that I think have what it takes to get in, but they are going to have to work on other elements of their campaign.

Quite a few who I have been voting for (such as Hive account@steempress and Hive account@netuoso) have finally managed to overcome the hurdles and make it in.

One could switch the word 'witness' to 'content creator' here and tell the same story.