My earnings are $0 after 28 days of being a Steem Witness.
Only 96 folks got a block in this time. The list only grew by two further people in the last 2 weeks ago, suggesting anyone say below 150 in the rankings will never ever get a block.
Of the hundreds of Steem Witnesses paying $50-$200 a month to support the network only 96 have got any reward with 90% of those who earned anything receiving very little or nearly nothing.
My conclusion is POS (Proof of stake) is a horrible system open to an ocean of abuse. Proof of stake is the dark side of the cryptocurrency coin dynamics. Beware!
I could write screeds on it but I’ll just say POS creates Oligarchs and peasantry. You don’t have to stretch your metaphors very far to see that.
If you want to live under that yoke, enjoy, but don't expect it to be fair or to prosper. Its a continuation of the old system of money goes to money.
The below is a chart of the STEEM Witness Oligopoly.
This is how the top witnesses get on:
There are many 'WITNESSES' below with no reward, ‘supporting’ the ‘system.’
If Steem wasn’t marketed as a ‘get paid for your efforts’ thing, I wouldn’t mention it.
People shouldn't be lured into wasting their time in an activity with no possible chance of financial success. Now I'm posting this because new users need to know before they go punting out hundreds of dollars out only to discover there is no chance of success.
A Steem witness is not like a Masternode. My Masternodes cost way less and pay-out every day. There is no practical way to get a return from a ‘Steem Witness.’
Full-time STEEM booster, the delightful @jerrybanfield has still not made it in to the oligarchy even though he puts his ‘mighty all’ into the Steem system and prostrates himself mercilessly to get votes out of the community to climb the slippery pole.
So if you are being lured into trying to be a “STEEM WITNESS,” be prepared to blow $1000 of your hard-earned for nothing.
Meanwhile vote for @jerrybanfield, because as far as I know he is not a STEEM insider and really does deserve his slot as an Oligarch.
I’ll keep an eye of this ‘game’ for now. I'm pretty amazed that less than 100 people have made anything from this system after over about a month. That is pretty weak and people need to know.
You seem to equate being a witness with being a miner in other blockchains, in that you can just setup your node and wait for the votes/rewards to come in. I monitor the witness activity fairly closely, and so far I haven't seen you do much besides complain.. There are plenty of witnesses who have put in time and effort to make the platform better and are making rewards from being a witness.
Here's the thing, being a witness can be profitable, and should be for enough witnesses to keep Steem running stable, but there is never a guarantee it will be.
Your "oligarchy" chart confuses me because it is missing quite a few people that should be on there. Not sure how the numbers were calculated though.
Btw, your buddy Jerry has been a witness for just a couple months maybe and is ranked #29. His compensation for such is about $80-90/day for letting a server essentially sit doing its job. The server cost run no more than $50/month for a Steem witness right now.
He is also one of the highest paid authors on the site. Again, after being here just a short while.
Some people contribute more their time and money with things like marketing or open source code. Bug fixes and testing for new features. Etc etc...
You need to make your witness known, campaign for votes, and most importantly, have something to offer the community. It doesn't come easy.
I was ranked #40 but I lost a few places. Shit happens. But even at my current rank, #49, I make around $40-55/day.
Keep at it and just chill, bill ;)
The chart doesnt show every slot, just as many as is readable. Its a excel thing. from an economic perspective an extremely Pareto curve is not going to be a good thing IF you believe in the power of distributed networks. The 80/20 Pareto creates oligopolies... which is why all countries have progressive taxation. Heaven knows what 93/7 does long term.
I can feel your frustration, but being a witness is not an easy enterprise. One factor that we often overlook when STEEM price was at 6 cents, all the witnesses were running their servers at a loss. What kept them going was the confidence in the platform. You should engage in the community, blog more, contribute to get known, gain more followers and earn the voters trust. It's the exact same thing as in politics, to win an election, one must campaign and work hard for the community. I'm afraid with your current state, you should reconsider running a witness. Maybe @jerrybanfield's vote will help you generate enough blocks to at least cover your expenses, but in the long run, you must rethink your strategy and engagements. Good luck.
Agreed @drakos his witness is offline now after a missed block and I am moving my vote for now to another witness! @chillbill if you post another update I will look at voting for you again to help you get the first blocks!
@jerrybanfield,
You made @rival yesterday a very happy man with your witness vote ! :)
He is now stressed you might remove it :D
But we will give him a hand to stay on top of things.
And by the way,
Witness chillbill missed a new block! last missed = 0, new missed = 1Its odd because the witness is running. however I have a message, via steemd.com, saying witness_shutdown which I cant find any reference for anywhere. Any ideas would be appreciated.
check your logs properly, if it's really running or not. restart it if needed.
Apparently blockchain is corrupted... so re-downloading and replaying.
Yeh corruption may happen if you ran out of hdd or ram space, or a misconfigured shared memory size. In that case, redownload/replay is the solution.
Thanks for these suggestions. Reran but no luck. Will poke those variables and see.
It is probably easier to mine BTC if what we want to do it setup nice hardware.
Big part of being a witness is to represent and care for some part of the block-chain or community.
We should care not only about the network infrastructure, also the security part, build tools for our communities, build engagement, take care of the economy (growth vs value) , the human part, teach, learn, care...
I have found so far that in here what pays better is giving, sharing and helping others.
That everyone has something to offer and everyone has a voice, and that here we have a tool for changing what we don't like.
We cannot forget, after all, the NETWORK is just a tool, a tool to build honest human networks, all these concepts, the Block-chain, decentralization, all this... Technical stuff... We are just building links between humans!
we CAN'T forget about that!
Things are what we make them to be!
value is what we want to give things, what matters is people!
We have a platform where we aggregate people and make them communicate.
I love mining. I'm up to my ears in miners. I like getting paid for my 'work.'
Flim-flam, on the other hand, I'm not so keen on. ;)
You make a valid point about how challenging it is getting started as a witness! I gave you an upvote that should help you get your first block which I hope will make it obvious whether it is worth the effort to continue or not!
Jerry the Steem experience has been extremely interesting. As someone Google thinks is a financial journalist and as a Wired alumni , I've really enjoyed diving this idea. But I believe Steem is fundamentally flawed. I think you are a genius but I worry for you that you have your net worth tied up in something you can not extract it from in less than untold months. I would exult you to study 'Gamblers ruin' and the 'Kelly criteria.' They can be found on Wikipedia and seem possibly the missing pieces to your quest for wealth.
Apparently I missed a block, which probably means my witness died of boredom, meanwhile I think the masternode area is exciting and have several running. BTW you should knock out a book and I'll publish it for you. You'd make bigly. Thanks for the vote. You can reach me on chillbill@advfn.com if you want to follow up on the book idea.
Sweet! I've pulled 4 blocks in the last 30 days with no misses. I'll take that as a win.