So there has been huge demand for our derivative token in recent months, but it's a problem because of a display issue which we could easily fix on the front end?
The extra purchasing power of the SBD is more a benefit than a problem. The display and perception problems can be tackled on the front end before you eliminate one of the central premises of the system. The high price is evidence of high demand for the product. It would be shooting ourselves in the foot to eliminate a high demand token from the system.
Quite right.
These are two different problems that could be fixed by removing the SBD. I generally support simple solutions that affect more than one problem.
I agree that the brokeness of SBD hasn't been catastrophic (so far), but it's still a problem. If there is no price stability, SBD won't ever going to be used in commercial markets. It will stay only in the hands of cryptocurrency speculators.
And our users would have benefited more if they were paid with steem instead of SBD. With SBD they made only modest profits, with steem they would have multiplied the value of their earnings.
Yeah, there is high demand. But doesn't mean we should be serving that market. By keeping the system simple we can focus on the most important things. It's a common mistake for startups to focus too much for anything that seems to get some traction and forget the fundamentals of their business. The derivate markets are not and shouldn't be a focus of Steem.