I've recently made the decision to focus primarily on supporting development oriented Witnesses with my Witness-Approval.
I believe that developers are crucial for the success of Steem. Without them, we wouldn't have a blockchain in the first place - in addition to all these great apps on top of it (dtube, dlive, utopian etc.) and I'm not even talking about the possibilities through SMTs.
Additionally, while Steem has its strengths - other blockchain projects like EOS, NEO, Nano, Ethereum & the whole blockchain-sphere are developing so fast, that Steem needs constant improvement.
We do have a motivated and skilled team with Steemt Inc. who is - as @andrarchy explained it recently: working 'round the clock.
But I also believe that Witnesses have a great incentive to be valuable contributing developers for Steem as they get rewarded with Steempower for running a witness-node - and depending on how valuable their input is for Steem: the more votes they will receive. (technically)
Smartsteem Proxy
I've also decided to use @therealwolf as a voting-proxy for @smartsteem. So in total I currently have a voting-strength of 45k SP to support my fellow development oriented witnesses.
You can of course also choose me as a witness-proxy (https://steemit.com/~witnesses) and I'll make sure to vote on witnesses to the best of my knowledge & belief .
Witness List
I currently vote for 26 Witnesses - of which roughly 80-85% are developers.
Witness Developer Reason @therealwolf Developer Developer of Smartsteem.com & Steem Messenger @jesta Developer Experienced developer & witness who has created Vessel (Steem Wallet), chainbb, steemdb.com and is currently focusing on Vessel 2.0 (afaik) @gtg Developer Very experienced Witness - running 2 RPC Nodes @someguy123 Developer Very experienced Witness and also the CEO of @privex - the greatest hosting-company that accepts cryptocurrency - runs 1 RPC Node @thecryptodrive Experienced witness and a very smart business person - owns 1 RPC Node @netuoso Developer Experienced witness, SteemDevs founder & decentmemes.com developer - owns 1 RPC Node @smooth.witness ? Very experienced witness @pharesim Developer Experienced witness & developer of steemdice - runs 1 RPC Node @lukestokes.mhth Partly Very experienced witness @followbtcnews Developer Experienced witness that runs steem.chat and steemtipper.com - owns 1 RPC Node @blocktrades Developer Very experienced witness & developer - owns and developed blocktrades.us @xeldal ? Very experienced witness (and also the witness with the most produced blocks) @riverhead Developer Very experienced witness and former developer and owner of steem.chat @utopian-io Developer One of the greatest apps on Steem that also pays developers working on Open Source projects. @teamsteem Great community witness @yabapmatt Developer Experienced Developer @blockbrothers Developer Team of multiple Steem-users - creators of Steemify (mobile app) @reggaemuffin Developer Experienced developer & witness - developer of minnowbooster @themarkymark Developer Wizard of Python - runs 1 RPC Node @nextgencrypto Witness who is doing things differently @steemhq.witness Developer Interesting witness project - owner is a good developer @dragosroua developer Great community & developer witness - one of the few people I'm following who posts often and good @asbear Developer Great and motivated developer @swisswitness Partly New community witness consisting of 3 steemians @stoodkev Developer Great developer - developed the steem.plus extension @samrg472 Developer Very smart developer - developed steemdunk @felixxx ? Experienced Witness @mahdiyari Developer Great Witness who is running two projects on Steem and is also notifying witnesses if they missed any blocks on steem.chatIf there is invalid or outdated info - then please let me know and I'll edit it.
Share a Witness
If you know a great developer witness who deserves an approval-vote, then please let me know with a comment below.