What do you know about Hive Witnesses?

The Hive Blockchain can be somewhat complicated for newbies, especially those who aren’t that fluent in crypto lingua.

Reading through the Hive Naija weekly engagement #19 it became pretty obvious that while there are a lot of people thriving on the Hive blockchain. Not many people know a lot about how the entire system works.

What do you know about Hive Witnesses?

Hive Witnesses are over 100 individuals from different aspects of the Hive blockchain who have a hand in the governance decisions on the Hive blockchain. They run nodes on the blockchain and are in constant flux. The top 20 witnesses play major roles in making the major decisions.

While a lot of people understand post rewards and curation rewards, how do we explain things like Hive Witnesses to a regular Joe? How can we simplify this topic to the point that a crypto noob would understand?

How can we explain to a newbie who a Hive Witness is, what they do, why it’s important to vote and how exactly to go about the entire voting process? Is there a guide for these things or do we just expect the newbies to wing it?

From the Hive Naija weekend engagement responses, I understand that not many people have a proper understanding based on some of the responses I got from the weekend conversation:

This question is timely because I just saw a notification on my wallet and an account is asking for my vote. I am scrolling his blog trying to make sense of why a witness vote is important

I know I have been voting or updating my witness vote whenever hivebuzz asks for it. Sincerely, I don't know what it's about and why we should vote

I just keep voting hivebuzz every time he asks because he helps me keep track of the activities on my account. Like number of posts I created, comments I receive and give, upvotes, power up, badges, etc…

@iskafan

I'm not really sure of all the specifics of how witnesses work, but what I know is that the witnesses run various nodes that make up hive's server. Then whenever there is an improvement that has to be made they create proposals which we vote for . Then whenever a certain number of votes is reached the funds to implement are released from the decentralized hive fund….

@b0s

Sincerely i didnt know what this witness go was all about till i read the first comment on this post.

But even without knowing what it's all about i did vote for a lot of witness 2 months ago, this are the people that i think are popular and brings more fun, help also to the betterment of the entire blockchain…

@uzuka

From these comments, it’s safe to say that the majority of individuals who are on the Hive blockchain, both new and old, have a limited understanding of what Hive witnesses are all about.

This post by @slobberchops is so far the only proper post I’ve come across that explains Hive Witnesses in detail.

Recently, there’s a rumour that the Hive witnesses voted for a 20% APY on HBD.

I have updated my witness parameters to signal for 20% HBD interest. Previously I was signalling for 12% interest.

@themarkymark

These sorts of information affect everyone on the Hive blockchain, yet not that many people know about the kind of power the witnesses wield in deciding the fate of their activities on the blockchain.

There are a lot of complicated things on the Hive blockchain, fortunately, we have people like @forexbrokr for putting out @cryptoguides on a timely basis, however, we might still require a more self-explanatory crypto guide that can help users, especially on Hive, to properly understand a lot the jargons we use here.