Well said. Even though I don't know what brought this up but I agree to less brings more productivity and competitiveness. When there is a competition to join the witness list, that will be when each witness will be on his or her toes to make sure that they deserve the chance they have been given. 

Also quality is better than quantity. if the numbers aren't helping, let's go for quality rather than quantity. Thanks for letting us know.

I convey that 20 witnesses are good enough to ensure consensus on the Hive blockchain. Still, I think that some witnesses at the top are there just because they have big Hive Power which probably is delegated to their witness as well. I would propose for example that witnesses not to be able to vote for themselves in order to have a true decentralized trusting election.

>I can expand into much greater detailed on this subject, but I find bitsized, direct to the point blogs can be useful for many to absorb the content better.

I appreciate this, Dan. As a new-ish person to Hive and the world of crypto in general and a non-developer I still understand so little of what it takes to run this platform. 

So bite-sized pieces like this make it possible for me to take in what you're sharing and create a willingness in me to read more of your stuff because I feel buoyed by the idea that I might actually be able to understand it.

In short, thank you. Keep up the bitsized stuff for all the many people like me who need to vote for witnesses but will never get into the nitty gritty of being involved in the actual running of Hive.

The consensus mechanism of Hive is something unclear for me. This post clarifies in part my many doubts. I agree that efficiency and quality is important, and quality witnesses are needed.

In an ideal situation, we should have a high number of equally qualified quality witnesses serving the blockchain. This shows that the chain is prosperous and people are running their businesses here and have a substantial stake. 

I read the comments and sense the sentiment that people seems to want more spread of the duties and rewards. Perhaps it’s something good for Hive, but only when the time is ripe. 

!PIZZA

I could make an argument for at least 2 or 3 random witnesses each block instead of one.

Firstly from the security perspective, I can imagine situation when after years passing group of people might be in position to overuse their power, still there is 17people needed, but I can imagine someone saying it's entirely possible for them to cooperate maliciously. Especially when stake is larger and larger. However, at this point I don't see that threat, it's just a matter of PR.

But secondly, even more importantly IMO, it creates greater incentive for backup nodes and spreads earnings a little bit more. This one will be lesser and lesser issue with a growth of an ecosystem.

Interesting, I never thought of it this way yet makes perfect sense and now realizing we have several with thousands of missed blocks... makes me think if I am supporting the chain now or not as I recently achieve rank #93 and have plans to improve the hardware and more...  

I don’t even fully use the 30 votes. I’d hate to think about trying to do 100. So many witnesses have put out zero blog post statements in 2023 let alone some kind of end-of-year 2022 post regarding their witness. Making it even harder to do any research on their current activities. 

The average person can’t be expected to go beyond the last couple of blog posts to try and track down what they have been up to. You would think there be more of a current effort by people trying to break into or hold their spot in top 20 by making it easier for people to research them. 


Even after a vote is cast it needs to be a reasonable enough number that people can check in from time to time about the people they are voting on. 

Some days I’m tempted to just yank all my votes and start over again after giving it a few months to think over. 

Well said