Ulog No. 5: "My 'Witnesses Vote' Journey"

I have been blogging here on Steemit for quite some time now and I must admit, there are still lots of things that I am not familiar with. One of these things is the role of witnesses for the growth and stability of this platform, and of course, as some of you must have also asked this question:

What's in it for me?

Because others voted for the witnesses they mentioned in their posts, so I thought I should also do the same thing. Haha! So much for having been blessed with a brain, and yet could not think for myself that I had to follow suit.

I voted for witnesses and mentioned them in my post which was seen and got upvoted by some whales and witnesses, even the ones that I had not upvoted yet. As you can see in the screenshot above, I voted for 6 witnesses. They were the first witnesses that I voted when I started to learn how to do it. It's not hard, but why I voted for them is a different question. Anyway, the post I am referring to is:

How do you Help your Children Build a Rich Vocabulary Day by Day?

I wrote this post two months ago, which got a total of 350 votes and a total payout amounted to $56.030. The top voters were the following:

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It was such an exciting feeling to get a @curie vote. To be upvoted by @hendrikdegrote is also a great motivating factor to continue posting on Steemit, not to mention his/her vote value is high. @mahdiyari and @liberosist also upvoted the post. I wonder who is @meerkat whose vote value was pretty high. I was over the moon. Of course, as a newbie, when I got recognition like this, it was really overwhelming and made me feel so excited. I expected that my next posts would also receive the same reception considering that I also exerted the same effort and spent a considerable amount of time to produce a quality content material.

Slowly, I have come to understand that it doesn't happen all the time. Or it may not happen anymore.

I did not give up. I must admit, it feels rather frustrating when you only see a few cents or a maximum of a couple of dollars next to your well-thought out posts. At that time, I had no idea that the SBD I received could be used to buy Steem Power. I could have done that had I known. So because I was getting frustrated because my succeeding posts could not get upvotes the same way that post had received, I started using the SBDs to pay bots to resteem my posts. Until I finally had none left --- resteem bots helped me with my visibility, though, and I also paid some bid bots thinking that most of it would get returned.

Another reason why I have not given up because of @hr1 and @bitshares101 (whoever they are) because they have always been helpful with their upvotes since the start. @surpassinggoggle and @arcange have also always surprised me when I see their upvotes, even long before I have even known their good reputation on Steemit.

For the first time, @pharesim upvoted my 19th post, which is Poem: The World Owes you Nothing. He has been upvoting my posts since then.

I am also glad I have been part of @dynamicsteemians because through this Discord, I have also met another witness. @quochuy was able to explain in simple words why Steemit had so-called witnesses. What are they here for? He explained:

"In the real world, when there is a transaction involving a contract between two persons, there is usually a third person that witness the contract being signed by the two persons involved. On the steem blockchain it is a little bit the same. As a witness, I run a server which runs a witness software. Every time there is a transaction going on (post, comment, upvote, transfer) one witness will be signing the transaction and generate a block (a package full of signed transactions, like a folder full of signed and witnessed contracts). Another important aspect is that the witness servers are holding a copy of the actual blockchain, so no witness = no blockchain = no Steemit!" ~ @quochuy

He added:

"In other cryptos, miners are doing the same thing but their software relies on their CPU power to try resolve a math problem as fast as possible to generate a block. Then when a block is created, all other witnesses stop working and verify the block is valid or contains a fraudulous transaction. But because Steem is a blogging platform, it cannot afford that time that it takes to mine and verify a block. So Steem is using a method called DPoS (Delegated Proof of Stake) instead. The witness is a trusted person so no one needs to verify his/her work. What does trusted means? This means a lot of users (the people in the Steem democracy) are trusting him/her and cast their vote to approve his witness using their stakes (vests or SP) as a weight." ~ @quochuy

Though the explanation was still a little bit technical for me, I can somehow understand the crucial roles that witnesses play on Steemit. They represent us, Steemians, and our interests at the expense of themselves.

But I still hope I will be able to fully grasp this whole witness voting aspect on Steemit. I don't like it when I'm in the dark. Slowly, slowly, I'll get there. In the meantime, I will continue writing, which I enjoy doing, and at the same time, continue to connect with a lot of people. Thank you @dynamicgreentk for giving me a task to curate 3 introduceyourself posts daily. Reading the introduction posts allows me to learn more about a person, their style of writing and appreciate the dynamics of the whole Steemit community.

How about you? Which witnesses do you vote for and why? Please leave a comment below as I would love to know your thoughts on witness voting. Thank you for reading.