Golos: Witness witnessing witnesses (Use your own voice wisely!)
Today I've noticed an Issue on GitHub proposing a change that would eliminate witness votes after some time. While I disagree with a way of solving that issue, I agree with @serejandmyself that this is a serious problem, and we, as Golos stakeholders, are solely responsible for that.
My node (gtg) was inactive since the end of 2016. I've left it disabled to not drain block rewards when I had not enough time to keep attention to Golos at all. When I got back two weeks ago, I was still at ~0.5% approval rate resulting in position top 65 or so. Thank you for that trust, but at the time when I was gone, there were witnesses that needed your votes more. But that's not only about my case.
There are witnesses with 2 or 4 times higher approval rate (disabled of course) that had their last generated block in October or November.
Seriously, their last generated block was 5,2 million blocks ago! Golos is not yet 5,4 million blocks old.
There are dozen of disabled witnesses in top60. Fact that they are disabled is not a problem for the platform. Problem is that they are still having votes from community and (almost) nobody cares to change that.
Allocating your votes to witnesses that are active and engaged in keeping this platform alive IS ESSENTIAL
Currently having a runner-up witness node (aka backup) at position close to top60 generates a few blocks per day which gives daily around 4 GOLOS worth of rewards. That is astonishing $3 per month which can't even cover costs of electricity.
Witnesses receiving poor rewards would serve poor quality, maybe except those who thinks about it as an investment and believes that it would pay out in some distant future.
Remember that rewards for runner-up witnesses are shared among all of them them that are not disabled.
What could you do about it?
- Approve those witnesses that you think are worth it.
Which of them are? You have to decide by yourself. - Go to a witness status page https://golosdb.com/witnesses, there's a list of up to 100 witnesses with some additional info that would help you vote for witnesses on golos site
- Make sure you are not voting for those witnesses who are disabled. It would be a waste of your vote.
- Make sure you are not voting for those with outdated price feed, although sometimes it might be just a temporary issue.
- Check their "witness url", usually it should lead you to their introduction page when you can get more info about them.
- Try to find out what they are doing for Golos as a platform. Sometimes that might not be obvious.
Not always the most talkative guys are best for the platform when it comes to maintaining infrastructure, but also just a running a witness node might not be enough. - Check if they are providing seed nodes. Maybe API nodes? Maybe running other services? Maybe involved in development or spreading a word about Golos?
It the end it is up to you. You are part of Golos and you are Golos stakeholder.
Use your own voice wisely!
I will be revisiting my own witness votes soon.
PS
I'm sorry, but despite being your neighbor I was unable to write it in Russian. I would be grateful for someone that could translate it for me to reach more Golos users.
Of course native speakers only.
I hope that my experience from Steem can be of value on Golos.
If you think the same, please vote for me as a witness, every vote counts.
My Golos seed node, golos.rushub.ru is up and running at port 4243.
You can contact me directly at chat.golos.io as Gandalf.