Yeah, I get what you are saying.
Right now we have value subjective voting that does the "mining" / post rewards or whatever you want to call it.. Plus the witnesses that facilitate this.
Not sure we'll ever see POW mining come back.
No worries, It is certainly not the easiest crypto to get your hands on unless you're a highly supported witness, a well voted blogger or someone who can afford to buy STEEM.
What are the rules? In order to be a witness, first you have to be running a Steem node and secondly, you have to get a certain amount of votes? How many votes would be the minimum required?
The strength of the votes you receieve dictate how high your rank is, and how many blocks a day your server can create.
Here is a question. Does a witness earn Steem for mining blocks? I'm assuming that blocks are mined like Bitcoin blocks are mined by miners. I don't want to say Bitcoin and Steem are identical but this is my comparison. If I'm accurate, then that makes sense and I would prefer that over how Bitcoin does it I think.
Top 20 witnesses get 0.21 STEEM per a block. Backup witnesses get ~1.2 STEEM per a block.
This might be one of the advantages Steem has over Bitcoin. I wish Tron the best of luck. Things are getting better for Steemit. My fingers are crossed.