Lately, I have read a lot of comments regarding Steemit Witnesses.

A lot of people think they are paid employees of Steemit, or there is a huge monetary benefit to becoming one.

Witnesses are people just like you, who decide for a variety of reasons that they would like to support the community. Some of these reasons are selfless, and some; Selfish.

Of course, I would love to sit here and tell you that the number 1 reason I am on Steemit is that I am philanthropic; But this is not the sole reason. I am here, like you- To try and create a better future for myself, and my community. Myself first.

Charity starts at home, and the sooner people accept this as not being selfish, the better off we will all be. For instance; The more successful I am, the more I can give back to the FIlipino community via my Witness projects.

In my opinion, there are 3 different Witnesses

• Technical Witnesses (Create different programs like Steemd, Steemnow, Steemvoter)
• Social Witnesses (Run contests, hold events, provide support)
• Silent Witnesses (Those who maintain a server, but are not active on the platform)

I am a social witness. I have projects planned for a certain community and am working on a smaller yet more personal scale. Since I have lived in the Philippines for over 5 years now- And have received such a warm welcome over this duration; In my heart, I want to help this budding, struggling community.

I see its potential and would love to be apart of its success.

Right now, my witness rank sits at 96. This means I am only a backup Witness, and receive one block per day. One block is worth about 0.97 Steempower, so you can do the math on that. For the record, I pay about 150 SBD a month for my server and its maintenance.

There are many technical reasons why Witnesses are crucial to the success of Steemit; They are responsible for maintaining and securing all the servers which handle all of our data. Every upvote, every comment, and every SBD you send within, or off platform... Runs through a Witness server.

This is what keeps Steemit secure, and decentralized. With a corporation like Facebook, which started innocently as a way for college students to stay in touch- Has now turned into an absolute money-grab. Every 5th post is a sponsored ad, and your information is sold to the highest bidding companies.

If Steemit wanted to make changes like we have seen with Facebook over the years, there would have to be approval from the top 20 witnesses, before these changes are made. When members of the community disagree about major changes, this causes a hard-fork which can change everything.

So, when you vote on Witnesses-Always vote for those that you believe have your best interests in mind. Cast your vote for community members you can trust. Witnesses that make Steemit a better place, and are there for you when you have questions or concerns.

As part of my Witness pledge, I still vow to never power down my Witness account. I see Steemit 10 years from now being a rock-solid community, where those who stuck with it from today- Will reap the benefits together in the future.

As always, I preach to reinvest 100% of your earnings back into yourself. It is not worth powering down now, when Steemit is still in beta. I am expecting some excellent news coming from Steemfest, and we should expect to see a huge boost in the community following this.

And if you believe I will be a good Witness for Steemit;

Step 1; open this link- https://steemit.com/~witnesses

Step 2; type my name rcarter.witness and click on vote :D