Yesterday I generated my first block as a **witness**. But what does it actually mean?

Blockchain, just as the steel chain consists of many pieces joined together. In the case of steel chains these are small pieces of metal and in the case of blockchain these are blocks of data. Each block can store information about transactions, posts, comments, votes or operations like follow/unfollow.

The block I produced contains among others,

* vote for post https://steemit.com/howtomakeabreakfastpizza/@howtodo/how-to-make-a-breakfast-pizza
* new post https://steemit.com/photography/@khalidbinwalid/2eqnqz-photography
* follow operation, user @zahidmonir started following @nickerrienz
* and much much more,

If you want to explore the blockchain and see what is inside you can use **[Blockchain explorer](https://steemdb.com/block/17418585)**.

All blocks are unique and can be identified by id,

**block id**: 0109c95999d16fc380fc380fc6db019390b450b455bdaab1e1e
**block number**: 17418585 (always in ascending order)

Thanks to the fact that each block has unique id it is possible to "weld" them together. In practice, it looks like the new block contains a reference to the previous one and this build a chain called blockchain.

<center>![block.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQPm7s4eG3UKNMoSXJwCcjssKgCckQfUHhwgujyYfvQji/block.png)</center>

But what is the role of witnesses in this process?

One of the main duty of witnesses is to procude new blocks. In Steem this operation take place every 3 seconds and every 3 seconds one of us have some job to do. 

Top 20 witnesses (the position depends on the power of [votes](https://steemit.com/~witnesses) we got from stakeholders) generate ~95% of all blocks, despite the fact I'm not in top 20 I was lucky enough to be elected by the algorithm and produce my first block ;-) 

yuppi!

***

### Vote for me as witness, 

* go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses
* scroll to the bottom of the page
* enter my name **jamzed** next to the @ symbol and hit the **VOTE** button ;-)

![witness.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUhzMLBxrESBZMKuWDATfo4GVfaMid5kqVpsHF7S7d3Rj/witness.png)

Thank you.