Withnesses are one of the most valuable members of the Steem community, without whom the Steem blockchain wouldn't function. They are expected to run a block-producing Steem node running 24/7/365 and provide a correct ongoing price feed of the value of STEEM in US dollars, set the mininum Steem Power deposit to create an account, set the APR% for the Steem Dollar interest rate and many other things.
It's of crucial importance that you:
- Inform yourself very well about the withnesses before voting (who they are, how trustworthy are they, what did they do for the Steem blockchain, did they create any dapps for it, etc)
- Spend all of your 30 withness votes
Why?
Because only if all, or at least most Steem users have handed out their withness votes can we assure that our top withnesses really are really the most trustworthy and valuble members of the community which have nothing other than the success of the Steem blockchain on their mind.
If you don't excercise your right to choose a withness, some that don't deserve to be ranking high on the withness list might get there.This is very important as the top Steem withnesses make a huge amount of money and we wouldn't want to have someone that doesn't have the best interests of our community to be raking in so many rewards. Wouldn't we?