The job of witnesses is to: a) faithfully sign blocks (not to sign blocks which would serve to impair the good functioning of the chain); and b) exercise good judgement in the interests of the blockchain and its stakeholders to vote to activate hard forks and set witness parameters (block size, APR, account fee, etc.). As far as I know all top 20 have been doing this. One could certainly question judgment in some cases, but that is pretty subjective.
Perhaps by "do anything meaningful" you are expecting witnesses to go beyond the above and provide some sort of bread and circuses, but that is not the job of witnesses, nor should it be. To the extent that witness elections devolve into a contest over who can do the most or spend the most, it destroys the security margin of the blockchain.
As a stakeholder I will vote against witnesses I see doing this. Likewise, I recommend that stakeholders focus their witness voting on evaluating the suitability and performance of witness candidates in performing the critical and irreplaceable functions described in the first paragraph of this comment.
I fully recognize that many stakeholders do not understand this and will vote otherwise, (most likely) unintentionally undermining blockchain. This makes me not all that optimistic about DPoS unfortunately, but wishing it were not so will not make it not so.
To bring the topic back to this post, I'm told that the very reason Bitshares implemented worker tasks was to ensure a clear division between witnesses (who do the essential witness tasks, see above) and workers (who "do" all sorts of things, as defined by worker proposals). (Bitshares breaks down the role even further into witnesses and committee but that's a discussion for another day.)
Interesting point with witness voting by stakeholders for me because how can someone MEASURE the performance in a very easy and transparent way? Because this is the basis for securing the chain. But if a stakeholder (regular user) can just do this based on gut feelings great marketeers will win which could be fatal long term in my point of view if the silent witnesses just do the crucial and most important things right (how to value for non-techie?) but seem lazy in the public view. It seems there is something wrong with perception of this task, how to solve this? How to value a good witness, reputation.. big no, could be fake due broken rep system, good posts, guess no because not the task, big stake.. big no because Intention not clear.. any useful key measures and numbers for that in a way everyone can easily evaluate to make the right decision without circle jerking and similar bads.
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You are right. Big flaw in DPoS IMO. As you say marketers who have no idea what they are doing may win (and we seen that on Steem) and worse buying votes, cartels, etc. It seems that other DPoS chains have had more problems for whatever reason, but you are right to identify this as a concern.
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What i wanna say is for the regular user it is almost impossible to get a full understanding why he chooses a witness or not. In my opinion you must be an Steem expert (just like a witness) with much time to dig deep with steemd, SteemWorld or direct data request from the db to get a comlete picture of the person you voting for. I guess many like myself just voting because we read something, heared something about one, which looks good without any deep knowledge and maybe we are often wrong with our votes for someone and there are much better choices, people who really deserve our witness vote.. but who knows? What is a good witness? How is a good witness defined in a objective manner?
We have this blockchain, all the data right around the corner, BIG data.. basically this is wonderful and because it could be fully transparent but it isn't because of the massive data which needs to be visualized, aggregated to get something like a short profile.
If you think of a profile sheet with some bars, key numbers (which is already too much) and finally like stars valuation but with key numbers which cannot be manipulated like the reputation value (which is insane btw in my eyes, when i came here i was saying "wow what achievement, he got 72.. but after a while i realized that there are many individuals which achieved that not with reputation more like badupation.. but the public view can't see that).
What would be measures, key numbers (pro community, pro chain stability, pro curation) to build a Top 100 of witnesses based on hard blockchain data, not bought votes or something, simply a mix of real proof. Maybe i missed such things 1.5 years because i'm blind, but to me it is very geeky to vote for a candidate because i would end up searching all day long for proof of witness of hundreds of accounts. If i missed something because i'm blind please let me know. It is not about nobody wants to vote but how it should be done for a regular user who just give his 2 cents with a post, comment for vote.
If i look to my voting list, i realize some witnesses are gone, but i found this by accident and my vote is still active. Nobody cares about after chosing the witnesses or thinks about, it would be nice to have something like a monthly report about witness activities (whatever they are) in different categories to see the real facts on the chain and not assumed facts.
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You're right on many points and you raise a lot of complicated issues with voting generally including to cost of informed voting, and whether it is even feasible to elect experts because to properly evaluate an expert you probably must be an expert yourself (related to the well known Dunning Kruger Effect). I don't know the answers.
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im quite a new here.
i could say that there are zero information in public place who are witnesses and why ibshould vote gor them
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With the grow of the chain witnesses should become "institutions" rather then "people".
Imagine a country where 19 people are gaining 10% of GDP, that doesn't looks right.
So later on I expect to see a witness to be a team of marketers, tech people and so on, later on it might even become something like some political party
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reasonable enough
thanks
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I'm not sure you can equate 10% of inflation with 10% of GDP. At most it would be 10% of growth in GDP, but that assumes that the economy doesn't grow any faster than the money supply.
Anyway, I agree with witnesses being institutions in a large system. As for what form institution, I wouldn't even venture to guess.
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double post deleted
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In other words, witnesses should not speak out in favor or against worker proposals? Even if proposed a decrease in rewards for the witnesses?
Interesting, you should spread your opinion more often.
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It sounds remotely plausible to me but I'm not entirely following your reasoning. Please elaborate.
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Forgive me if I'm wayy out in left field with this, but isn't it fair to compare Witnesses to basically what the miners do for the POW chains, (but witnesses are for 'brain-chains'??)
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It is similar yes.
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