Looking at the witness list top 100 today, we can see that many witness accounts were disabled in the aftermath of the long blockchain shutdown yesterday. What happened?

The following witnesses have quit:

@clayop
@furion
@teamsteem
@aracange
@asbear
@firepower
@adsactly-witness
@liberosist
@dragosroua
@felixx

In total 10.

What happened?

What ever the reason, I think its a good moment to reflect on the responsibility of the witnesses AND the responsibility of the community to elect them. The witnesses are the ones that keep the blockchain running which is why the community has to make sure the right witnesses are selected. Any long time damage to the blockchain will result in a loss of price value. Like politics its important we keep updated about the witnesses and at the same time it is important that the witnesses let us know what they are doing and how well they are doing it.

@Fulltimegeek just announced that he would be running for a spot in the top 20 Join Fulltimegeek on his journey to become a top 20 witness.

The abilities of the witnesses

Yesterday it became clear how important it is that the top 20 witnesses should have the right technical skills. The incident of yesterday was caused by a constant being changed in the code that should have not been (from the official steemit blog). Although it's near impossible that such mistakes and bugs will happen in the future it is important that we have capable witnesses to go through the code and fix it as soon as possible, and in the best case prevent it from ever happening.

What I have learned from this

I have been already been more consious about the votes I give to witnesses, and have already unvoted a few. After yesterday I will be more stricter with my witness voting. After all the vote will count for the well being of the Steem blockchain.