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The term witness was chosen because it is a legally neutral word that is free from regulation. Traditional contracts often have a place for witnesses to sign. For extremely important contracts, a public notary is sometimes used. Neither witnesses nor notaries are party to the contract, but they serve a very important role of certifying that the contract was signed by the specified individuals at the specified time. In the BitShares Blockchain, witnesses serve a similar role of validating signatures and timestamping transactions by including them in blocks. They are also called Block producers and can be compared to Bitcoin miners, although no mining takes place at the BitShares Blockchain.
Under DPOS, the stakeholders can elect any number of witnesses to generate blocks. A block is a group of transactions which update the state of the database. Each BitShares account is allowed one vote per share per witness, a process known as approval voting. The top N witnesses by total approval are selected. The number (N) of witnesses is defined such that at least 50% of voting stakeholders believe there is sufficient decentralization. When stakeholders expresses their desired number of witnesses, they must also vote for at least that many witnesses. A stakeholder cannot vote for more decentralization than witnesses for which they actually cast votes.
Each time witnesses produce a block, they are paid for their services. Their pay rate is set by the stakeholders via their elected committee (to be discussed later). If a witness fails to produce a block, then they are not paid, and may be voted out in the future.
The slate of active witnesses is updated once every maintenance interval (1 day) when the votes are tallied. The witnesses are then shuffled, and each witness is given a turn to produce a block at a fixed schedule of one block every 3 seconds. After all witnesses have had a turn, they are shuffled again. If a witness does not produce a block in their time slot, then that time slot is skipped, and the next witness produces the next block.
Anyone can monitor network health by observing the witness participation rate. Historically, BitShares Blockchain has maintained 99% witness participation. Any time witness participation falls below a certain level, users of the network can allow more time for transactions to confirm, and be extra vigilant about their network connectivity. This property gives the BitShares Blockchain the unique advantage of being able to alert users of potential problems less than 1 minute after the trouble arises.