Are Top 20 Witnesses Voting Each Other? Introducing Witness-voting Factor
Let’s introduce a concept i.e. witness-voting factor that represent the average witness voting each other in the TOP 20. The maximum value is 20, and the minimal is 0.
If the witness-voting factor is 20, it means that all top 20 witnesses are voting each other. This is not healthy as the gap (of votes) between TOP 20 and the rest will be always increasing. Also, since witnesses are voting each other, it is kinda controlled by a group of people who share the same interests - this is centralisation admit it or not.
SteemJs code to compute the witness-voting factor
The idea is to retrieve the list of the votes of the TOP 20, and group them, count the frequency and sort them. Compute the average. The witness-voting factor for Top 20 on STEEM blockchain is 4.5, compared to 12.65 on HIVE.