I've posted a similar comment on Tom's post here but I felt it would be a good idea to make it into a post. You can read @donkeypong's post here!
- Some top witnesses surely run witness servers for other projects. Maybe they should be forthcoming about all of it!
- They either run bid bots or delegate their witness pay to bid bots which have made a mess out of this place. Large delegations have reduced voting influence, and curation rewards for smaller users. Steemit Inc is also partly responsible for handing out massive delegations which has also reduced influence for us all. Organic votes from whales on community projects is history now as many have delegated to bots.
- Then some of these stakeholders are the same ones crying foul about people like Haejin and all the while expecting minnows not to self-vote or expect everyone to vote on burnposts, while their own stake is delegated to bid bots and they profit by all means necessary.
- There is no disclosure if any of the witnesses are employed full-time or are on a retainer with Steemit Inc.
- What if these witnesses are also running servers that benefit other projects? Irrespective of contractual obligations is this not a conflict of interest? None of my business they'd say but I think the community deserves to know!
- Frankly, you can never know how many projects a dev is working on unless they are honest about it. When money is involved, why would anyone be honest?
- Some of the top witnesses are really good with code and are also helpful to the community, but so are some of the backup witnesses engaged in community building but don't earn a 10th of what these top witnesses do.
- Top witnesses make ~8000SP/monthly which is $20000 at current rates.
- That's 240K/annually when Steem prices are at their current lows and yet I've heard some complaing of not meeting their costs sometimes. I find that rather amusing to say the least!
- For programmers running a basic witness server is child's play. Even an RPC node is easily run if the knowledgeable dev has enough time for it. If you can pull whale votes, it's easy money as well which they will maximise further via bid bots.
I'm not a dev and I stayed away from running a witness server for the longest time. I used to think running a witness server was the most complex thing in the world until I found out it's not. My server makes me about 11SP-12SP/day compared to 250+ for a top witness. It certainly helps me stay afloat around here and pay for some of my time promoting the platform, technology and token.
I've managed to run my nodes (primary, seed and backup) without any issues or missed blocks in 3-4 months of witnessing. Maybe I've had a lucky streak. But running a standard witness server is no rocket science! Full nodes are complicated though but people with ingenuity have overcome harder things in life.
Considering the amount of money top witnesses earn here, I think it's fair that they focus more on Steem blockchain, promote it and continue building apps or support community initiatives on a priority basis over any other project. I suppose this is a good time as any to revisit some of my witness votes. Maybe everyone should do it as well!
Some of the top witnesses have been holding their positions from ~2 years and in the first year they've earned about ~1370SP per day! I'm sure their servers were doing a good job. But some of these older witnesses have accumulated about $100K monthly at current prices of about $2.4-$2.5. So if they still own that stake, I'm sure that'll take care of the costs for a long time to come and that's motivation enough to stay put and work on improving this place.
I have no issues with people profiting. It's a free market, no one can stop anyone from earning money here. Thanks to bid bots, passive income has never been as great as it is now. Earning $$$$ is the whole point of this platform anyway as it was designed from ground up to provide monetary value in multiple ways. It's upto us how we can make some money for ourselves really and that's what everyone is doing including the top stakeholders.
However, I don't think it's wrong on part of this community to expect loyalty to this project from the top witnesses and major stakeholders.
Many of us have spent a lot of time contributing to Steem/Steemit's growth and sometimes making next to nothing for it and then be forced to watch some people at such high positions of trust complain about not profiting enough or not having enough work to do around here or the time to contribute here and ergo feeling the need to diversify.
Ultimately it's all about the money folks. It would be foolish and naive of anyone to think that anyone is here in any capacity simply because they are an altruist and want to do good for others without any interest in earning money. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. We're all probably hypocrites if we think so. So let's admit we're all here for the money as much as anything else that keeps us here!
It would be good to have some competition to Steemit. Maybe because it will prompt all major stakeholders to up their ante to take this project to the next level. Hopefully, large stakeholders will take care to prevent further dilution of user influence on the reward pool. There's no point in constantly powering up only to find out that all that effort means nothing in the end.
Well, all of this is new and we've got a long way to go. Some hurdles are expected and feathers will be ruffled for sure. Let's remain focused and hopefully in a year or two this place will be refined and provide a better value for all our time and effort.
Kevin Wong has written an excellent post, 'Time To Wake Up and Fix Steem's Voting Problem' which I recommend all to read!
If you like my work kindly resteem it to your friends. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- Let's Watch This Fun Video From International Steem Meetup #1—Malaysia
- Why You Should Vote For @firepower As Witness—Witness Campaign Post From India!
- Steem.Chat Contest #28