Steemian.info provides a very good description of the steem witness role and the expected tasks a witness needs to fulfil.

Witnesses are elected by the community to witness the production of blocks on the Steem network. In other words, they run and maintain nodes (servers) that generate the blocks containing all transactions (i.e. posts, upvotes, comments, transfers, etc.), which are added to the blockchain. Without witness nodes, there is no Steem blockchain.

This description might be sufficient for backup witnesses but I think every(first 21) who gets nicely rewarded by the STEEM blockchain should be expected to do more than that. Let's see how much a top witness receives in rewards (Steem Power) before we continue.

Thanks to the great post from @timcliff I learned that a top witness receives 0.1874 STEEM per block. You can use that amount to calculate the witness reward.

Calculation for blocks per day:

(60 s x 60 m x 24 h) / 63 s = 1371 blocks

Calculation for monthly witness pay:

1371 blocks x 0.1874 SP/block x 30 d = 7707 SP/month (or 92493 SP/year)

The monthly salary (7707 SP) for a top witness based on todays USD/Steem value is around 18,000 USD!





Awesome! That was my first reaction. Witnesses have a very important role on the STEEM blockchain and I am fine with the rewards they receive. What I like to address however is my expectation that in order to receive this kind of reward, just hosting a node/server that produces blocks is not enough!

In order to be a top witness someone should tick the following additional check boxes in my opinion.

Build apps for the STEEM ecosystem.

Actively works on STEEM related github repos (e.g condenser) to fix issues and enhance development.

Shows his activities to the community on a regular basis.

Suggest improvements and follows them through until completion.

These are a few that came to my mind. I am sure you can think of more activities you like to see from a top witness.

Another thing I noticed is that there doesn't seem to be a central place (witness activity website) where people can go to and check what each of the top witnesses are working on or have done for the STEEM blockchain.

Lets build a website that shows witness activities so it is very transparent and easy for everyone to decide which witness deserves a spot at the top.





A few activities I know from witnesses are:

@timcliff (SBD print rate)

@blocktrades (steem /sbd exchange)

@aggroed (Steem Monsters)

@jesta (Vessel)

@roelandp (SteemFest)

@good-karma (esteem)





While the witness report from timcliff is a good start, I think we should see witness activities at any point (build a witness activity website) so that the community knows which witnesses are dedicated to move the STEEM blockchain ahead. This should also help the community to vote only the most effective and capable witnesses into the top 21 spots.





What are your thoughts on this? Please let me know in the comments.





