Alright, here are my thoughts. They may get buried in the comments, but Ill post it anyways.
- I'm REALLY happy changes are being made. Regardless of what they are, change is good and organic. One of the biggest issues people have with other cryptos is their inability to change. So kudos to Dan, Ned and the crew.
- Changing the inflation rate and the long term SP holding is important, I'm happy about that.
- Witness Pay - I need to echo @smooth on this because him and I are on the same boat. Right now as a top 19 witness I get paid 1400 SP per day. The time it takes to power that down at current rate it comes out to $100-200 a week for me. All of my witness pay goes towards funding witness projects. People see @smooth power down and don't realize he funds a dozen projects for Steem. Currently, I'm using the witness pay to pay @garethnelsonuk a full time salary and hosting for my witness. We have developed a number of apps at SteemPower.org and working on SteemDeck right now which should be a new way to view and vote on Steem content. However, I do think these changes WILL increase the price and since witness pay is in Steem, it makes it a lot more liquid to fund development. All in all, I agree with this.
- However I do like that more witnesses will be getting witness pay, the more the merrier!
- The 3 month vote removing for witnesses is odd. It will create politics and campaigning and many people will just use autovote bots anyways. Right now, if a witness isnt proving him/her self, they can easily be removed. Whats the point?
- I think these changes should be implemented, but maybe some of them phased and not immediately. Why? I'm worried another HUGE pump could hurt STEEM. I'd rather see slow organic growth than another pump.
-Charlie
When trouble shooting a mechanical problem, especially an intermittent one, it sometimes requires one change at a time until the problem is isolated and repaired.
A witness vote is removable, that is true, but it doesn't mean that they are actually removed with changes in the witness work. Removing the votes after 3 months is good because with infinitely valid votes inactive users' votes are a risk (they don't re-evaluate).