I agree that a shorter staking period would likely make STEEM somewhat more attractive to investors. On the other hand, the security of having a long staking period should not be discounted, especially given that a) active keys are handled frequently, b) there is currently no hardware wallet support, and c) I'm not aware of good options for notification services to help warn users of an unexpected powerdown. Also, taking the experience of EOS into account, we should be concerned about the possibility of exchanges voting with user stake.
With these things in mind, currently I would caution against entertaining anything less than a 4-week powerdown. Even then, I would personally want to see a) some good notification services, and b) a powerdown schedule that is back-end heavy...e.g. 4 increasing weekly powerdowns of 10%, 20%, 30%, and 40%. That way users still get 100% in 4 weeks instead of the current 13 weeks, but the new risks are mitigated fairly substantially, and without adding much complexity, compared to 4 equal weekly powerdowns of 25%.
Lastly, I see the benefits of having some kind of dynamic staking scheme with variable APR, which could enable staking options both shorter and longer than 4 weeks (where longer staking periods would come with more voting power). But obviously this is more complicated and would take more time to come up with the most sensible (and simplest) possible scheme, and to code/test it. Not to mention, I would not favor enabling any staking periods shorter than 4 weeks without first having hardware support in place.
P.S. I get that items such as notifications and hardware support are not core level changes.
@tombstone thanks for your feedback.
I have just added PD notifs to the Ginabot notification service roadmap for you.
I think 4 weeks is perfectly balanced and no need to go lower, if we are worried about exchanges voting we can add an exchange blacklist/oracle that prevents known exchange accounts from voting.
I iike the incremental pd idea over 4 weeks, starting low and increasing but I'm going for the simplest method with least code for this HF which is just a parameter change from 13 to 4 weeks, we can go fancy on next HF if needed.
I can facilitate trezor support, will require proposal approval of 20K USD to list steem on shapeshift, then Exodus wallet can integrate and finally, trezor can support steem with a bit of development cost.
@tombstone and @therealwolf both offered valid suggestions but you rejected all of them in favor of rushing a 4 week Powerdown in this hardfork.
If the issue is with SMTs, why not ask @steemit Inc. to add in a 4 week Power Down option for SMT's?
That might be better.
SMT's can't have less of a PD period that the reserve currency STEEM for reasons of not circumventing the parameters of the main token, it is also interesting that you brought that up because by reducing to 4 weeks that gives more options to SMT's down to 4 weeks, otherwise SMT's that use PoB have to have at least 13 weeks staking period and may deter some projects starting on Steem.
As far as I know, the reason of SMTs not being able to Power Down to less than 13 weeks has nothing to do with it "circumventing the base token" but everything to do with Steemit Inc. not yet creating that feature since they want SMTs to be released ASAP.
As far as I know, shorter timeframes will be possible with future SMT's, even if Steem's Power Down time remained 13 weeks.
P.S. I brought up the SMT issue since I read in one of your comments that it is one of the reasons why you are in favor of a 4 week Power Down for Steem 👍