An updated guide to witnessing
Back in 2018 when Gulden first released the PoW² system I publish a guide on how to use it.
That guide remains accurate and relevant even still today, however with activation of Phase 4 due this weekend (4th April 2020) bring various new features its time for a new guide to cover the new features.
Basic account creation:
Account creation remains the same as before, however the funding screen has seen a bit of a makeover.
At this point you will be see the initial funding screen for your new account. Which consists of a list of accounts in which you currently have funds as well as the “Fund account button in the lower right”
The dialog is relatively self explanatory; select the account you want the funds to come from, enter an amount that you want to lock, and then use the slider to choose an appropriate time period.
In the past it was important to ensure that your weight did not exceed 1% of the network weight, however this is no longer important as the wallet now contains special functionality to take care of this; so now simply aim to maximise your weight based on the amount/time you are willing to lock for.
At the bottom a calculation of your expected account weight and estimated earnings is displayed. Note that the earnings estimate is based on overall network weight and therefore is not exact can never be guaranteed and can and will fluctuate over time.
Once you are happy simply push “Fund” to proceed, at which point you will be prompted again about the details to be sure you are certain.
Once past this point your funds will be irreversibly locked in the witness account for the duration of the selected period and will not be spendable under any circumstances, so be absolutely sure you are certain before proceeding.
Managing the account:
Once confirmation is done you’ll be able to access the “Overview” page for the account where you can see a graph of your earnings to date vs expected initial earnings and projected future earnings.
Most of the information is self explanatory however some of the more important ones:
Earnings — The total of how much the account has earned to date.
Lock time remaining — How much longer until the funds in the account become spendable again.
Estimated earnings frequency — The current estimate of how often you are likely to earn rewards based on current network conditions.
Required earnings frequency — How frequently your wallet must earn rewards in order not to be kicked off the network.
New to phase 4 is ‘parts’; for most accounts this will be 1, but for users with larger accounts their accounts may be split at a blockchain level into multiple parts for more optimal earnings, for these users there may be a larger number here.
Also new to phase 4 is the ‘compound earnings’ setting. When this is enabled any earnings that your account makes will be added toward the locked balance of your account with the weight of the account increasing to match.
As this weight is calculated from the initial lock length of the account, and not the remaining lock length, this compounding can have quite a large effect over time for accounts that have a long lock period.
Extending the account:
Some time after locking funds in an account you might find yourself wanting to add further funds, or to increase the lock period.
In phase4 this is now possible with the ‘extend’ button that will appear for you at the bottom right of the overview accounts, clicking it will take you to the extend dialog.
The dialog, (very similar to the fund dialog) is filled in with the current account amount and lock period, simply increase the amount and push extend and your account will be extended to the new weight.
Optimising the account:
If you have a relatively large network account, then as the overall network weight fluctuates over time you might find your account set up in such a way that its parts are either too small or too large to give you the optimal earnings.
Should you find yourself potentially in this situation, the software will detect this and make visible a second ‘optimise’ button in the witness dialog.
To optimise simply select an account to pay the fee from (all witness operations incur a tiny transaction fee) and click Optimize; the software will then reallocate the funds within your account in a more appropriate way for the current network weight.
Rotate key:
The account settings dialog (activated by pushing the cog at the top right of the application); now has a new feature ‘rotate key’.
This can be used to change the ‘witness key’ associated with an account, and exists as a security portion if you have reason to believe your key may have been compromised.
Or if you (for example) have previously used it with a service like gdash-cloud and no longer want to do so.
Witnessing and witnessing devices:
In order to be a witness it is important that your wallet be open and online 24/7. Not much has changed in terms of actual witnessing, so for further information on how to witness please refer to the old guide.
