That would be not offer any real protection against someone going back on their word because the stake can always be moved to other accounts to vote. In the case of exchange accounts which are normally kept liquid, this can be done instantly, and in the case of exchange accounts that are now powering down, they will soon be able to do the same.
There was a good reason that the soft fork restricted transfers as well as voting, because that is the only effective way to guard against the stake voting, as well as guard against the stake being powered down and whisked away, leaving nothing but empty words and broken promises in its place.
Witnesses who ran something so easily circumvented and insecure as a mere vote block without a transfer block would demonstrate lack of understanding of the relevant blockchain mechanics and would certainly lose my confidence.
The ninja-mined stake needs to remain where it is so that there is continued transparency and the community can continue to exercise oversight against bad actors who do not do as they claim they are going to do, and instead attempt to just pocket the funds and run off, as we unfortunately and carelessly already allowed Ned to do. Stakeholders and witnesses are currently in a position of "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice shame on me."
Of course, it can be withdrawn and spent at a reasonable rate as long as funding to develop the ecosystem is maintained (as Steemit did, albeit even then incompetently, at least up until the sham "layoffs"), and as Dan mentioned in the post, SPS can be part of that.
One possible compromise is Justin can own the Steemit Inc stack that he purchased outright but only after a certain length of time. For the sake of argument, let’s say that length of time is agreed upon to be 5 years. It could then be hard coded into the next fork so trust is not required anymore.
The way I see this coded is a continuous line with 0% ownership on day 1 and 100% ownership on day 1825. If on day one, Justin powers down, 100% of the power down goes to the SPS. If after 1 year, 80% goes to the SPS, and 20% he can keep. And so on.
Neither side will like this compromise, which indicates to me that it is likely fair. The biggest negotiable would be the length of time.
This Compromise has several benefits. The first is it is coded so it removes the trust factor. The second is it is a win-win mutual compromise for both sides so we can move on from this together as one. A split of the chain is not a good idea, especially when the exchanges are likely to side with Justin.
This is a win for Justin because there is now an agreed upon time that he can get his “full ownership”. The lost is it will not happen tomorrow.
It is a win for the community because this keeps the chain together and hard codes the trust out of the agreement. It also keeps Justin’s skin in the game. If he wants a return on his investment, he will need to develop it over this time frame. This also gives the steem blockchain more time to dilute the initial mined stake, reducing governance concerns when this stake becomes free for Justin to use as he pleases. It is a lost for the community because eventually Justin will gain full control over the stake.
No one will like this, so let’s all agree that it is truly a compromise.
In five years there isn't much dilution (about 25%). It would still be a massive, essentially consensus-breaking block of stake. Other than that I don't think the idea is all that bad (maybe that makes it a bad compromise!)
Oh yea. The hard numbers I know nothing about. I just made up the time frame.
justin is making > 15,000 SP each week with just 50% of top 20 witness. That's 3 quarter million SP a year. or 750,000 each year.
why in the world would he agree to those terms to lock assets that he already paid 100% with cash for?
note: 750,000 SP with 10 top 20 witness = 1,500 Mvest of votes increases doing nothing each year.
For the betterment of steem which he will do because: “large steem stake x 0 = 0”. “Large steem stake x large value = cash money”
i think the last 4 years of whales doubling, triping, (and in some cast even more) their stake at the expense ofcommunity, not to mention cashing out millions in USD with constant powerdown and selling at expense of steem prices already proofs that very large stake doesn't mean a decision for the betterment of all
besides even if 25%-50% of steemians traffic gets drawn to tron, that is worth close to 10x his ninja stake due to network effect and size of tron, he can benefit a ton with zero Steem price movement even negative, I'm sure you are aware he already have > 1 billion USD funds raised during boom time. The whole steem blockchain could be a tax write off for him, he really wants the power and traffic steem generates...that's the primary value.