Great write up, Wolf.
Here is my take on making Steem more investor-friendly:
Fiddling with the inflation rate makes us essentially central bankers. Changing the rules of the game midway will do much damage to investor confidence.
Reducing voting during power down is a great idea.
I would also add that reducing the power down time-window down to something more reasonable, like 1 month, is a good idea. Institutional investors don't want to be stuck in a position they can't liquidate at the drop of a hat! If we want investors to power up, we need to make it much easier for them to power-down in an emergency.
Maybe one option to disincentivize powering down while still allowing investors to liquidate their SP, is to implement a fee schedule for "express power-downs"
1% of the power down SP amount as a fee to get it converted to liquid Steem in 30 days.
2% for full power down in 15 days.
3% for full power down in 7 days.
etc...
- Implement curator rankings with additional incentives!
If we want people to invest in SP and the community, we need to make it much more profitable and rewarding for quality curators to filter out the junk.
Curators are just as important, if not even more important, to the long-term health of the Stemmit ecosystem. Think of what Reddit would look like if there was no mods, or really bad mods.
Imho, the current curation reward algo is completely flawed and doesn't provide the necessary incentives to retain and maintain a broad base of full-time curators. And without dedicated curators, the real content creators either leave eventually, or have to start playing the bid-bot game to gain exposure.
I would love to see a curator list like the one we have for witnesses, but instead of curators being voted to the top by Steemians with tons of SP (Steemit's oligarchs), weighing of votes could be determined by age and reputations of the voting account, as well as other metrics that are harder to game.
Tell it to @steemalliance?
That might be a good idea.