That's a pretty nice list, but I expect much more.
For example, for a top 20 witness, I would like to see each run a 24x7x365 availability operation. I.e. they would need to hire a part-time team from different parts of the world so someone or the other is on call to get a backup server up and running in case there's a failure. I'd also like to see all top 20 witnesses offer an array of RPC nodes. Given that a top witness is paid $130,000 per year (granted, deferred by a few months), such an operation should be well within budget.
If the Steem network were to go viral, that witness reward could be approaching a million dollars a year, and at that point I'd fully expect every top witness to show a full time commitment to not only running high availability infrastructure, but hire developers to advance the Steem network, hire economics analysts for reasoned decisions etc. This might mean the top 20 witnesses should be organisations instead of individuals.
Doing things for the community is great, but ultimately subjective. They also have their own set of rewards by the recognition and reputation they bring. Indeed, most of the top community builders are not witnesses. I don't think the primary technical goals have been sufficiently accomplished by many, if any, witnesses.
I think it was lpfaust that once said there are only one or two witnesses worth voting for currently. I'd agree. I hold Steem to a far higher standard than the current witnesses offer. That might sound overly harsh, and I do apologize, but it's the logical conclusion. I'd also like to point out that I consider myself a nearly worthless witness. A $400 million network (and it could only shoot way up) deserves better.
I think the issue is, to do anything useful with a witness, you need the active key. But once you have the active key, you're now able to move funds at will.
Unless everyone transitions to "yourname.witness", then STEEM needs to have a new type of key. A key which lets you change your signing key, and publish a price feed, but nothing else. Right now, anyone helping out with your witness will often end up needing full access to all of your funds, as they need your active key to change the signing key in the event of a failure.
I agree that a witness key would be beneficial. However, it's not too much of an issue currently.
a) Collaborate with people you trust.
b) Since all rewards are paid in SP, you always have 7 days to react to any moving of funds.
c) You can set a power down withdraw route to a different fund account entirely, so the witness account never sees any liquid funds. Should someone change the withdraw route, you once again have 7 days to fix the situation. That'd be enough of a deterrent so no one tries anything funny.
d) Multi-sig. I don't really know how that works, but I know it's there on Steem and @steemit uses it.
@liberosist I too just voted for you as witness and I appreciate your ability to express yourself about this topic.
@liberosist I love your feedback here and completely agree! Your post here motivated me to make a vote for you as a witness because now I am motivated to get help with making exactly what you shared here!
Wow. This is a big statement, one that makes a lot of sense. Seems like a huge opportunity for the right individuals to create worthy witness operations, along the lines you describe, to earn that prize of $100k+ per year.
This is an opportunity for serious money... I hope that the competition to be a top witness becomes intense as time goes on. We should have plenty of amazing options with that much cash on the line.
@liberosist I disagree with you imposing this suggestions to the Top 20 Witnesses. We don't know what they're doing behind the scene beside typing on keyboards commenting or answering question in the witness thread.
The STEEM Blockchain is distributed by design to many different servers across the Globe. They are operating 24x7, if any of Top 20 witness server failed, the backend will continue to run and no one will notice. Because we have 300+ Witness Servers waiting to get their chance to process a block.
You're making it more difficult to ordinary John Doe or Mary Smith to bring up their own Witness Nodes and be part of this community. We want all entrepreneurs and investors to be part of this network, not just those with deep pockets.
Though I agree with you for Top 20 Witnesses, they all should provide Full RPC and Seed Node up/running.
The Witness should be independent operators + some of added values listed above.
Cheers,
@yehey
@Yehey, you said witnesses should be more independent, apart from the votes. I am thinking about whether I want to agree with that. I like the act of voting for witnesses. I think Bitcoin is a little different in some ways. But this system that Steem has may be better. I am trying to be open to different ways of doing things for cryptocurrencies and blockchain systems. I like constitutional, representative, republics over democracies for example.