📝 What is "State of the Witnesses"?

State of the witnesses will be a regular update provided to the community on the status of the Whaleshares witnesses. The intent is to keep members informed of what is happening on the platform and what witnesses are doing. It is important that members of the community vote for witnesses that represent them and are driving the platform in the right direction. These updates are not intended to be all inclusive, but should only be a portion of the information used for your decision making.

In addition to the overall status, each update will also feature one witness in the "Witness Spotlight". This will allow the community to get a deeper look into the person/group behind the witness and how they play a part in the Whaleshares community.

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📈 Status

Things continue to run smoothly on the witness front, there has been no updates needed since Full Launch 🚀 We have picked up 3 new witness since the last update and lost 1 (@spain) bringing the current total to 46. There has been some juggling for positions, but the largest gain goes to @lexiwitness which jumped up 10 spots. @merej99 & @lexikon082 have been very active in the community and the results of their efforts are paying off.

Rank	Prev Rank	Owner	Missed Blocks	Votes	Weighted Votes	Created
1	1	powerpicswitness	1	211	2773191459438	8/13/2018
2	2	krazywitness	2	267	2249055825026	8/14/2018
3	3	bushkill-witness	18	197	2072430910337	8/14/2018
4	4	artwhale-witness	44	147	2064982723107	8/13/2018
5	6	bangzi	2	71	1755735399527	8/17/2018
6	5	clockwork	2	72	1754002898782	8/14/2018
7	7	jepu	14	149	1671096392857	8/14/2018
8	9	beyondbitcoincas	700	183	1660886361724	8/13/2018
9	8	intelliwitness	29	115	1621123078372	8/14/2018
10	11	nepd-witness	12	116	1435683825929	8/14/2018
11	12	startail	45	58	1393159060857	8/13/2018
12	14	dbread-witness	12	89	1280525626463	8/21/2018
13	13	whalebook	34	64	1264281691998	8/13/2018
14	19	black-man	30	232	1241959661392	8/13/2018
15	10	ienrikex	436	136	1232148384823	8/17/2018
16	17	contests	6	58	1073046229132	8/14/2018
17	18	blckchnd	2	67	1035186611611	8/14/2018
18	20	nsfwizard	19	79	1026448923179	8/30/2018
19	21	chronocrypto	0	83	1021292751652	9/6/2018
20	22	yensesa-witness	0	126	894990274877	8/16/2018
21	16	kennybll-witness	29	68	845040695644	8/13/2018
22	15	sahkan	5	55	789960429084	8/13/2018
23	24	wls-africa	0	149	678731010455	9/1/2018
24	25	csxcommunity	6	33	621984372753	8/21/2018
25	23	solaceworkshop	2	32	613558535929	8/14/2018
26	36	lexiwitness	21	67	575039156214	9/11/2018
27	26	lucashunter	63	49	557005422438	8/25/2018
28	27	hemangmehta	3	29	460930831404	9/4/2018
29	28	cyberdust	129	33	446230481827	8/14/2018
30	30	god	97	110	432254993505	8/30/2018
31	32	altruistic	0	82	421591567536	9/8/2018
32	29	aquacy	0	48	418654823171	9/8/2018
33	31	kwaskoff	5	36	396315549364	8/31/2018
34	33	tnam0rken	268	42	325001083230	8/20/2018
35	34	cuttie1979	3	26	280801194685	9/1/2018
36	35	finteh	981	21	219085799410	8/31/2018
37	0	fiasteemproject	0	12	218800718699	10/4/2018
38	39	ceruleanblue	0	28	196446787953	9/24/2018
39	37	triton-witness	3	18	176613850439	9/25/2018
40	38	vadbars	68	19	142768169156	9/3/2018
41	40	comedyopenmic	0	25	79085715176	9/18/2018
42	0	deranged-witness	0	8	65892013791	10/14/2018
43	41	t3ran13	0	18	62433404462	9/15/2018
44	0	semasping	0	6	7079122274	10/4/2018
45	42	spanish	2	10	6583993286	9/24/2018
46	44	walterjay	0	3	1113365975	9/26/2018

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⭐️ Witness Spotlight - @jepu ⭐️

📌 For those who don't know much about witnesses, in layman’s terms, can you give your thoughts on what is the job of a witness?

Most people probably think that being a witness is someone who just sets up a server and that's it. What most people oversee is that being a witness is someone who is for the community, someone who listens to the community, resolves conflicts within the community and ultimately make it sure that value is added to the platform.

📌 What brought you to Whaleshares?

I stumbled on the Whaleshares discord server when I was just starting out on Steemit. Being new to the platform I was looking for different ways to get my post noticed, but what I found was a great community that was much more than just sharing posts and making quick money. To make a long story short I stopped using Steemit after a few months and just decided to hangout on the Whaleshares discord.

📌 What is your background and how does that make you a good witness?

I have a bachelor's degree in computer science, and currently working at a outsourcing IT company in the Philippines that produce quality softwares for various clients. Being a software developer by profession means that I spend most of my day staring at a computer which means I am able to run and maintain a Witness server both effectively and efficiently.

📌 What excites you most about being a witness?

Exciting? Nothing gets your heart racing like doing maintenance work on your witness server and seeing all red. lol

But seriously though, I get excited with the thought that I and the other witnesses have an opportunity to do something great which in turn could change a lot of lives.

📌 Are you running any projects on Whaleshares?

I currently support two different initiatives with my WhaleToken Midas, which you can sort off call as "projects".

The first one is the daily contest that @mindblast does. @mindblast is a good friend of mine who loves sports. So he decided he wanted to run a sports themed contest and he reached out to me if I was willing to support him for the contests. Of course I said yes! You can check out his latest contest here.

The second one is a rather new initiative by @jillfeint and his team which aims to support gaming community. I personally love playing games so it was a no brainer for me to support this project. You can check out their introduction post here.

📌 Do you have or plan to have a WhaleToken? If so, tell us about it.

Yes, I currently have an active WhaleToken named MIDAS. Basically, what I aim to do with MIDAS is support different initiatives that bring value to the chain. So if you have a initiative in mind and want support, reach out to me on discord and let's talk it over.

📌 What are your goals as a witness?

My personal goal as a witness is to be able to help out as much people as I can with my Whaletoken and make sure that every decision made by witnesses as a group would be better for the platform and community.

📌 What do you see as the biggest challenge for Whaleshares and how do you think it should be addressed?

I think plagiarism is a big issue that needs to be addressed but can't be done alone. I personally won't think twice to flag someone with stolen content. I'm trying to think of a way to stop plagiarism and one idea would be a team dedicated to search for stolen content.

📌 If you had to vote for only one witness (not yourself) who would it be and why?

My vote would definitely go to @krazywitness made by @krazykrista. What would a platform be without a strong community leader? I believe that every platform needs a good leader that handles the community just and honestly and I know krista is that type of person. Also, she makes a good costumer service representative xD

📌 Tell the community why you deserve their vote?

This is a rather hard question to answer, mainly because I'm not the type of person who likes to talk much about myself. What I can say though is that as a Witness I promise to always put the community first before and personal gains and I promise to not tolerate any wrong doings on the platform.

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💡 Previous Witness Spotlights

- Spotlight #1 - kennybll-witness
- Spotlight #2 - artwhale-witness
- Spotlight #3 - black-man
- Spotlight #4 - beyondbitcoincas

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📰 Witness News!

1. @nepd has started a companion to *State of the Witnesses* called *Witness Roundtable* where he will ask a single question to all the witness and compile all the answers into a single post. This is also another great way to learn more about the witnesses. Check put the latest roundtable here.

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🐳 Get Involved!

• Want to learn more about the Whaleshares platform? See the Whaleshares whale paper.
• Interested in becoming a witness? See the Whaleshares Witness Announcement.
• Stay tuned with official updates and announcements on the Whaleshares Discord channel.

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📚 Thanks for Reading!

• If you find this information helpful, I hope you will consider supporting me (bushkill-witness) for witness.
• If you are a witness and are doing something to support the community, please use the tag #witness-update in your post and it may be selected for mention in the next witness update.