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Witnesses and DPoS

Status: Live

21 witnesses scheduled on 2026-11-03; up to 21 elected, 1 required. Figures were read at block 979,298 on 2026-10-08, after hardfork 30, and the schedule, pay and feeds again on 2026-11-03.

Witnesses are the accounts that produce the Pixa chain's blocks. They also publish the price feed and, through the median of their votes, set a few network parameters. Stakeholders elect them with their Pixa Power. The system is called delegated proof of stake (DPoS). This page explains what witnesses do, how they are elected and paid, who they are today, and how to vote.

What witnesses do

Task How it works
Produce blocks One block every 3 seconds. The elected witnesses take turns.
Make blocks final A block becomes irreversible once a supermajority of the scheduled witnesses have confirmed it.
Publish the price feed PXS promises no price. Each witness publishes the price of one Big Mac in PIXA, the reference PXS is oriented toward, and is expected to update it every hour. It prices the Big Mac of its own country, in its own currency. Conversions use the median of the feeds over 3.5 days, and a feed older than 7 days stops counting (rules, how the median is made).
Set network parameters Each witness publishes values for the account creation fee, the maximum block size and the subsidy for account tickets. The chain uses the median across the scheduled witnesses.
Approve upgrades A witness approves a hardfork by running the new version and signalling for it (Protocol Upgrades).

What witnesses can and cannot do

  • One witness can delay a transaction, not block it. A witness can leave a transaction out of the blocks it produces, but the next witness in the round can include it.
  • A majority can do more. Witnesses acting together can refuse operations of chosen kinds, or from chosen accounts. A majority of Steem's witnesses did this in 2020 (From STEEM to HIVE to PIXA).
  • Rule changes need most of them. A change to the rules activates only when a supermajority of the witnesses run it. It reaches users only if the nodes and apps that serve them upgrade too.
  • No witness can sign for your account. No witness can spend the fund without votes, or change a parameter alone.

How witnesses are elected

  • Who can vote. Every account with Pixa Power can vote for up to 30 witnesses. Each vote carries the voter's full weight; votes are not split.
  • The weight. It is your own Pixa Power, including stake you have lent out, plus the weight of any accounts that named you as their proxy. Stake you power up, or receive from the allocation accounts, counts only after 30 days (Pixa Power).
  • Who cannot vote. The allocation accounts pixa.rex and pixa.team cannot vote.
  • Proxies. You can name a proxy to vote for you on witnesses and on DPF proposals. Naming one replaces your own witness votes. A proxy can itself name a proxy, up to 4 levels deep.
  • Expiry. An account's witness votes, proposal votes and proxy are cleared if it takes no governance action for 365 days. A governance action is voting for a witness, setting a proxy or voting on a proposal.
  • The schedule. Up to 21 witnesses are elected to produce blocks, and the chain needs only 1 to run (Chain Parameters).
  • The approval floor. Since hardfork 30, a witness is scheduled only once accounts holding at least 1% of all outstanding Pixa Power have voted for it.

How witnesses are paid

Witnesses receive the witness share of issuance, 15%, paid as Pixa Power to the producer of each block (Issuance):

  • Per block: about 0.141 PIXA on 2026-10-08, the nominal share.
  • With fewer than 21 scheduled, every block pays the nominal share: on 2026-10-08, each of 8 witnesses produced about 3,600 blocks a day, about 507 PIXA.
  • With a full schedule, as on 2026-11-03, Hive's weighting applies: a block by one of the 20 elected witnesses pays 21/25 of the nominal share, 0.119 PIXA, and a block by the timeshare witness five times that, 0.596 PIXA, so each round of 21 blocks pays the nominal amount in all. Each elected witness then produces about 1,371 blocks a day, about 163 PIXA (producer_reward in condenser_api.get_ops_in_block).
  • Missed blocks are not paid.
  • Before hardfork 30 Hive's weighting spread 21 blocks' worth of pay over the witnesses present, so each block paid about 0.329 PIXA and each of 9 witnesses earned about 1,050 PIXA a day, 2.33 times the nominal share. Since 2026-10-07 every block pays the nominal share while fewer than 21 witnesses are scheduled.

The pay is for running nodes and publishing feeds, and it arrives as stake, so it adds to the witnesses' own votes on posts and in governance.

The witnesses on 2026-11-03

On 2026-11-03, at block 1,722,911, 21 witnesses were scheduled: a full round of 20 elected and 1 timeshared. All ran version 1.30.1, and all published a maximum block size of 2,097,152 bytes and an account creation fee of 20.000 PIXA. Their price feeds differed: each witness prices the Big Mac of its own country and reads PIXA's market its own way, so the 21 feeds took ten values, from 31.731 to 70.792 PIXA per PXS, and seven were still the placeholder (what the feeds read). 23 accounts had cast every witness vote (database_api.list_witness_votes; Decentralization and Safeguards). Five of the scheduled witnesses also run a public API node (Architecture).

Four weeks earlier, on 2026-10-08, 8 witnesses were scheduled, all on 1.30.0 and all publishing the same feed, 51.833 PIXA per PXS, the agreed placeholder. Seven accounts, five of them with stake, had elected them.

The live list, with each witness's last block, is on the witness status page.

How to vote

  • In the app: open Governance, then Viability Management, and choose the tab with the ballot-box icon. You can vote for up to 30 witnesses there, or name a proxy (step by step).
  • With any Hive-compatible library: broadcast account_witness_vote with approve set to true or false, or account_witness_proxy. Both need your active key.

Your vote counts in proportion to your matured stake. You can change it at any time.

Becoming a witness

A witness runs a block-producing node, registers it on chain with its block-signing key, publishes a price feed every hour, and asks stakeholders for votes. Become a Witness gives the steps; pixa.org's node operator guide covers the same ground for a witness and an API node together.

Inherited → changed

Aspect Steem / Hive Pixa
Slots per round 21: 20 elected and 1 timeshared same; 21 scheduled on 2026-11-03
Witness votes per account 30 30
Witness share of issuance Hive: 10% 15%
Approval needed to be scheduled none 1% of all stake, since HF30
What the feed states HIVE per HBD, one US dollar PIXA per PXS, one Big Mac
30-day delay on new governance weight Hive, since HF24 (2020) from genesis

Sources