It has been more than a year since I become a witness. Blurt is the first platform where I became a witness.
In this post I want to give you an idea of what I think is the role of a Blurt witness.
Note: Everything I write here comes from my own experience as a witness here on Blurt. All views expressed here are my own.
What's a Witness?
A witness in my opinion is a member of the Governance team that decides what ideas to implement and what ideas to discard.
Witnesses decide what features to implement and what direction the Blockchain goes.
Discussions, debates and ideas
One of the key job is to discuss, debate and make policies for the blockchain.
This is critical part of becoming a witness and to be honest no one tell you this.
People think and assume that it is all peaceful and a walk in the cake. But this is far from the truth.
Witnesses have to talk, discuss and share ideas. Without talking, without generating ideas how can you guide a blockchain to success?
Fights
And yes, where there are discussions there are agreements, disagreements, arguments and fights and then a lot of emotions.
If you want to become a witness then be ready to handle the stress of lengthy debates, fights and sometimes even personal attacks.
Personal Attacks and Grudges
Most of us become witnesses because we believe in a vision. I joined Blurt because I loved the freedom of speech Blurt provides and Blurt started with a vision to be better than the mother chain and the sister chain.
I became a witness because I believed in the decentralised vision of Blurt. I firmly believe in ideas that make Blurt worth our time.
With belief comes conviction and with conviction comes the strength to work hard even when things are going beyond our control or go downhill.
Sometimes when everyone else gives up we hold on to our ideas and ideals.
Anger & Loss of Focus
Sometimes there are heated discussion and fights. People lose focus and act in ways that go against the ideals we all have build together.
Many people say that a platform is like a family but I think that a platform such as Blurt is like a bunch of families living on the same land.
A big example of this is the recent incident that happened here on Blurt. People had disagreements and arguments were thrown around at each other and it broke a few people's heart and a few decided to leave the platform.
This shouldn't have happened but it happened because both the parties stood firmly with whatever they believed.
Two groups of witnesses, and users divided that resulted in loss of the months and months of growth that Blurt has achieved is now gone.
We lost some good people that were around since the first days on Blurt.
Broken hearts and loss of friendship
This is something that no one prepares you. This is a harsh truth of becoming a witness. You will lose friendships because of a fight.
Emotions run high and people say things that they wish they had never said.
In my opinion people must solve their problems even if they do not wish to stay on the platform.
War or Peace?
There's a war going on in the world and instead of helping the innocent people suffering we chose to fight among ourselves. It is very unfortunate. The way we acted and reacted is not ideal.
We, including me were busy fighting, defending and arguing among ourselves while the innocent people out there were hurt and lost.
We could have sent humanitarian aid in the form of food, medicine and other useful things but we were busy washing our dirty laundry.
This is not how we were supposed to act. We should have kept our differences aside and thought of helping the innocent in some good way.
Anyways, what happened has happened and cannot be undone. But what can be done can be done and has to be done.
We lost a golden opportunity to send humanitarian aid to them. We must plan and help those in need.
Conclusion
There are a lot of things that no one tells you and I thought of writing a few things today. Whatever the situation I suggest that we stick together and learn from our mistakes.
Vote for our witnesses
- https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=imransoudagar
- https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=blurt.live
- https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=kamranrkploy
- https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=zahidsun
- https://blurtwallet.com/~witnesses?highlight=tekraze
Posted from https://blurt.live
That is also a deep problem with DPOS especially, but also general POS cryptos - that witnesses are both technical operators and decision-makers. The two roles are very different and can lead to decisions made that support witnesses but not necessarily the whole ecosystem. There is no solution to this - as yet.
Yes, witnesses are both decision makers and technical operators. But seperating the both would mean that we need to elect decission makers and that is a huge task.
Can't be worse than having a bunch of people voting against the chain's best interests.
Crypto governance strikes me as a con - like democracy.
what do you believe in ?
what are you willing to fight for ?
what limits (if any) do you believe should be placed on "free-speech" ?
Witnesses should only focus on producing blocks and maintaing a good node. We should also have 100 Consensus Witnesses which would most likely end any future hard-forks. This would then shift the role of goverance to the front-end developers, because large stakeholders would no longer be able to influence the top Witnesses.
So, if an exploit is found and there is no consensus because some users can use that exploit, then that's fine IYO?
mmm... "governance" means "chain governance" - "front-end governance" is meaningless and obvious, as front-ends can do as they please but cannot change the core code.
Front-end Governance is when you block delegations, execute COAL blacklists or prevent users posts from appearing on the platform.
Where can I find the Chain Governance for Bitcoin?
Have you never heard of Bitcoin forking?
Yes, although I don't know how many times it has forked.
"Exploit" is a very subjective concept. I'll give you an example: 20 Consensus Witnesses can execute a soft-fork or hard-fork and freeze your account. That's an exploit that exists on the chain that all Witnesses are aware of, but have never dealt with because it is a necessary "exploit" to maintain power in the hands of a few people, and avoid external forces from taking over the blockchain.
and that's a bad thing?
Which part: the freezing of accounts or the maintaining of power?
Greetings my friend. Although I am new to this platform, I have already a few years being a member of a community, maybe it is enough to understand some things. That said, I think that discussions are important to the extent that respect is maintained, we will never all agree 100%; the important thing is to think about what is best for the project and that its direction is solid, and not just for your own benefit. I hope everything is resolved because I am contributing to this blockchain, I like freedom of expression. Best regards!
Pd: I don't speak native English, which is why I use an online translator.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Yes, it is important to discuss and we should not take things personally.
This is a beautiful piece here @imransoudagar.
T - Together
E - Everyone
A - Achieves
M - More
What needs to be done must be done.
I hope that all broken hearts 💔 will be mended to form beautiful mosaic, all broken spirits will be re-energized and together everyone can achieve more.
I stand with the blurt family. Lets do what ought to be done.
By the way, I hope to grow to be a witness someday on blurt because I totally believe in the blurt family 👪.
Thanks for this writeup.
Cheers!
Thanks for sharing this. Yepp, because of so-called war, which was not required. I also lost some friends, and some not friends but nice people who helped blurt before me and from start.
I can only hope things get better.
I totally agree with your opinion. all hope for peace. Hope everything will be fine
the presence of witnesses in @Blurt is certainly very important. their role is quite large, as described in this post. I think everything explained is for the sake of the development and running of this platform.
Also, keep in touch with Blurtconnect-ng family on Telegram and Whatsapp
I am very glad to see ur effort.your post is very good.you describe everything in good way.everybody wants to stay with goods.everybody wants peace.everybody wants freedom and safety.
Yes, live free and live happily
I like your article, I hope everything will be fine. I agree with your valuable article. Thank you.
Thank you
yes, your opinion is directly right. we should think about this matter.
Congratulations, your post has been curated by @dsc-r2cornell. You can use the tag #R2cornell. Also, find us on Discord
Felicitaciones, su publicación ha sido votada por @ dsc-r2cornell. Puedes usar el tag #R2cornell. También, nos puedes encontrar en Discord
Congratulations, your post has been curated by @techclub
Manually curated by @samhenrytenplus
Everyone who is on BLURT should Vote for our Witness and we will start moving everything Forward.
This is our New Witness
https://blurt.blog/blurt/@tracy55/new-witness
If other Witnesses could start speaking with her, we are about to be doing Token Bounties for BP Votes, and generally creating new Programs on BLURT, some as Witness Rewards to use the Revenue to bring value to Voters, so even more Democratic than just the Vote, following Witnesses in the Market and earning with and from them.