Changing the payout timeline for SP from 2 years to 3 months is a rather dramatic change, and one I believe would have many heading for the exit sooner. I fail to see how such a change would entice people to stay.
Such a change is not an adjustment or "tweak" and will totally reset the steemit experiment. As someone above mentioned, this significant change to the vesting period does suggest that perhaps the "big" investors might be looking to curtail their losses and exit the platform.
I TOTALLY disagree with eliminating the long term investment incentives associated with SP. Perhaps "the steemit experiment" needed to define better measurement metrics so finer grain adjustments could be made as the experiment progressed. What I've seen proposed here appears to be guesswork and overcompensation.
Why was 2 years chosen for SP powerdown in the first place? Why was 3 months proposed as a "solution"? And while I'm thinking about it, why is "a fixed instantaneous annual creation rate of 9.5%" chosen?
As for features and improvements, I think the biggest "bang for the buck" will be in the area of UI / UX to retain users. From some of the posts @dan made I get the impression he has become bored and has mentally moved on to other backend challenges. We went through a similar shift of focus in BitShares too.
BTW, is there some type of formal schedule or roadmap to serve as a guide and checkpoint on development progress? If so is it being updated to keep it current?
As for changes to the witnesses, some type of vote decay might be an improvement, but 2 things should happen before any such changes are implemented:
- Make sure witness compensation is adequate to cover server costs and the time to maintain them
- Come up with useful metrics and a plan to monitor any changes implemented and what criteria must be met to make adjustments
I'm a bit surprised that little progress appears to have occurred in defining the witness role since BitShares. Many discussions have taken place in the past about witness monitoring, including automated monitoring of crucial indicators such as missed blocks.
The changes proposed to the ratio of payments made to PoW miners, standby witnesses and the 19 "primary" witnesses do sound good tho. And I think the witness role needs to be better defined, and criteria established about witness partnerships and reporting requirements.