 cycling to produce blocks.</p>

<p>Every round of block production begins with the shuffling of 21 witnesses: the top 20 witnesses (by vote), plus one randomly-selected standby witness.  Each is given a turn to produce a single block at a fixed rate of one block every 3 seconds.  If a witness does not produce a block in their time slot, then that time slot is skipped, and the next witness produces the next block.</p>

<h3 id="steem_max_permlink_length"><code class="highlighter-rouge">STEEM_MAX_PERMLINK_LEN