Witnesses Main Priority: Protect The Blockchain
The is often a lot of questions from newcomers about what Witnesses do and what their responsibility is. In this article we will cover some of the basics along with how important their role is.
At the most basic level, a Witness on Hive is a block validator. Each block, a different node validates the transaction, which is then coordinated with the other nodes.
It is a service that is very similar to miners with Bitcoin. Witness nodes defend against the double-spend situation, ensuring that any Hive or HBD transferred it actually there. At the same time, transactions on Hive can include voting, posting, and custom JSONS. All of this runs through the Witnesses.
They are the ones who run the blockchain. These nodes run the software that powers all which we do. As we can see, it is a crucial service.
Protect The Blockchain
We are starting to see some issues arise around the cryptocurrency world where some communities are coming to odds with the founders. One such situation is with EOS. Since I am not fully up on what took place, we will not go into the details. The general situation was the fact the community was not receiving what it was promised by Block.One. For this reason, people decided that paying the company for services not rendered was not in its best interest.
This is obviously an internal beef. It is, however, something that is likely to become commonplace. With so many founders have huge stake and Venture Capital money rolling in, it is easy to see how community interest and those entities will differ. Basically, this is the problem with much of Web 2.0. In the early days of an application, all is well. The platform is expanding in all ways. Users are benefitting. Sadly, at some point their interests are overridden, usually for the VCs who want to be paid.
Internal conflicts will have to be dealt with by communities. What happens if there is an attack from the outside?
We saw this arise with the Justin Sun situation. Some of the decisions by the Witnesses were disagreed with by sections of the community. Hence one of the reasons why there was ultimately a fork.
At the core of this was the idea of freezing funds. This is certainly a sensitive subject. Trust is one of the most vital aspect to any financial system. Blockchain operates on the idea that "code is law". What is programmed in the chain is what goes.
If block validators simply go around changing things, trust instantly evaporates. For this reason, decisions can (and should) be slow in the making. Hard forks do not occur regularly, allowing communities time to discuss what is being done.
Of course, all this goes out the window when a threat arises. Here time is lacking. Decisions have to be made, some of which go against the grain of what is described here.
So what is to be done? In my view, the protection of the blockchain is crucial. Thus, we see the Witnesses main priority. Even if undesirable, it has to be done.
Hive Power Is Essential
One thing that became evident with the attack by Justin Sun is how crucial Hive Power really is. This is often overlooked these days, especially as more options on Hive arise. There are plenty of areas to focus our time and resources.
However, the main defense mechanism comes from having Hive powered up. This is what generates our influence with governance. It is stake weighted voting. Controlling of the Witnesses is what is sought. Obviously, the goal is to have Witnesses who are intent on defending the blockchain.
Smaller accounts end up being crucial. It does not seem like one's vote has much impact yet, as we saw, when thousands of smaller accounts start to band together, the collective impact is noticeable.
It is also where responsibility arises. We often bypass the idea of getting more Hive and powering it up. After all, of late, it acted more like a stablecoin. There are other projects we have an interest in. Certainly there is nothing wrong with supporting different communities or applications.
That said, it is crucial that everyone spend some time seeking to increase their influence on Hive. We never know when that will be required. This will have a direct impact after 30 days on one's Witness voting.
Resiliency
The key is to make the system as resilient as possible. There are somewhere around 100 Witness nodes operating. The top 20 are consensus with the rest serving as validators on a rotation basis. Those in consensus are the ones who are responsible for the decisions concerning the software.
Just as an aside, they are also the ones responsible for the 12% APR on Hive Backed Dollars (HBD) that are placed into savings.
Resiliency is obviously crucial when it comes to network architecture and some of the procedures of the system. However, the most crucial aspect comes from the community. It is here were resiliency is taken to an entirely different level.
There is great power in distribution and decentralizing. Those who work to increase their influence via stake are helping to spread out the power. As HP goes into more wallets of those dedicated to Hive, that is helping to create a stronger defense against future attacks.
So while it is a priority of the Witnesses to protect the blockchain, each of us has to also think in those terms. Our role in this is to amass Hive Power which feeds into the governance of the chain. Smaller accounts can play a crucial role here since they have the ability, over time, to increase their stake by large percentages. Going from 50 HP to 500 is a 10x. That gives that individual roughly 10 times more influence than before. A large account is not likely to 10x.
It is imperative that we each do what we can do to protect our "home". Here is where HP is essential. For all its attributes, one of the most vital is helping to protect the chain.
And this ultimately falls to all of us.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
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honestly as a beginner on have this platform. I feel like everything is sf I can't understand too much is there a simpler guide for beginners?😅
You can check the Hive's FAQ it will guide you.
https://wallet.hive.blog/faq.html
Thank you very much for answer😀
Just take it piecemeal.
There is a lot to it. So take it one day at a time and keep learning.
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Yws so I will do thank you very much
It was overwhelming when I started, and things were a lot less complex then. No communities, no side-chain tokens... Don't worry too much about that. Take your time, poke around, lurk in threads where people are discussing the serious workings, and you'll absorb it in time.
of course I will study thank you very much for your encouragement
This is very informative for the new one on here as well as the old folks in the the community, HP has enormous power to it and it is crucial everyone makes it a priority in growing their stake.
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I agree with you. Each should look to keep consistently growing his or her HP.
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@vegancheflx
It is worth noting that casting Witness Votes (or setting a Proxy voter) is also important for all that Powered Up HIVE to be effective in governance.
Without a doubt. Having the HP and not engaging in governance activities misses the point.
So yes people need to vote for their witnesses.
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Always good to update periodically.
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Yeah I keep forgetting about it lol
I know there's some head butting on this chain which honestly is going to happen anywhere people are involved. I think what would make hive more powerful however is more transparency and perhaps more witnesses. I bet if you pulled the numbers of who is actully voting for witnesses the amount of "accounts" would be stupid low and that worries me.
I would say you are probably correct. All should vote for Witnesses and engage in governance.
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I'm protecting the blockchain, my witness node is run on my home computer on my home network. It's not is some datacenter controlled by some big tech company who could just suddenly say 'oooo ToS!!! account banned bye bye server'
Communities I run: Gridcoin (GRC)(PeakD) / Gridcoin (GRC) (hive.blog)| Fish Keepers (PeakD) / Fish Keepers (hive.blog)
Check out my gaming stream on VIMM.TV | Vote for me as a Hive witness!
Things like that help spread it out even more.
As stated, we all have a role to play.
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Being a witness is good, feels so good and have some earning. Hive is in good hands now, development of hive is too good.
We saw this arise with the Justin Sun situation. Some of the decisions by the Witnesses were disagreed with by sections of the community. Hence one of the reasons why there was ultimately a fork — this situation really opened my horizons to what witnesses really are and what they are capable of doing on a blockchain . If the witnesses main priority on hive is to protect the blockchain then that’s really a way to go.
The Witnesses did come together in that situation and project the chain as much as they could.
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Great Post!
!1UP
This article was definitely very informative. I still have a lot to learn on Hive and recently, I started learning and exploring witnesses so yeah, this came in handy.
Thanks for sharing!
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So much thanks for letting this piece of information out,I never really know what witness really does but now its clear of the role they play in ensuring the smooth running of the blockchain.please I want to ask this,is there any way the total number of hive user can be known most especially computing the daily population of hive users.
@arcange and @penguinpablo put out posts each day with a lot of data on users.
Hopefully you can find what you need in there.
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Ok thanks alot,i really appreciate
Great aticle this is an eye opener, on why we need to have Hive powerd up. If we truely love what is going on here
Great article and eye opener as to why we need to have hive powerd up if we truely love whats going on here.
It's something that I didn't care about until I learned more about the blockchain. After I did, I do think witnesses are very important as they have control over a variety of parameters like the HBD savings interest.
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HIVE!D
I would add only that those uncertain about who to support as witness can always set another trusted user as their proxy, ensuring their vote power is used without having to dive into the morass of politics and tech talk. Of course, that means trusting your proxy to do that instead, but it's a lot easier.
This article really taught me a lot because I don't know anything about it.
I am new on Hive and yesterday i learned about the hard fork that happened because of Justin Sun.i am glad,without previous knowledge, that i am on this side.Now i am gathering info about the witnesses
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Sometimes I wish I were a dev and run my own witness server. Would love to contribute to Hive in that way as well. Hopefully, one day I will be able to hire someone to do it for me but until then, I keep building and contributing in other ways. I feel that we need to have lots of witnesses supporting the chain, that would increase more security and decentralization.
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You just make everything simple. Thank you for the information.
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Do you know where I could find a good list of all the witnesses that tells who you have voted for and be able to vote from? That uses hive keychain to vote. I keep getting errors when I try to vote from the individual hotlink that witnesses have. I'm not sure if the error is because I already voted for them. And I am not sure how to get Hivesigner to work.