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The instant power down + burn fee could be optional. If you opt-in, you are sacrificing increased security for the ability to exit quickly.

Personally, if I had a second account that was whitelisted for me to withdraw to, an alt account (future could be a light account), for example, that would be fine for me. We can set it up so that anytime that whitelisted withdrawal address is changed, it takes a week before you can withdraw again. So even if my account was hacked, they could not instantly power down and send it to an exchange.

I'm not sure if we can have 2FA on withdrawals? If so, that would be another great feature to have, regardless of instant power down or not. Something like what ledger has, where you need to click ok on your physical device before the withdrawal goes through.

To be transparent, I feel these are changes I would like as an investor, and what other investors might like also. But, people do bring up good points to me how new people would want the instant power down, click on a scam link and get their account drained. And that would be terrible PR for Steem.

So I am not sold on the instant power down from an overall perspective. I do like to try and think of ways to get the cake and eat it too.

Instant powerdown could be an advanced setting for those who are aware of the associated risks.

What about @yabapmatt idea?

In my opinion the whole powering up/down thing should work a little differently. The idea is that if you want to have control over things on the network like witnesses and the reward pool, you need to make some kind of commitment. So that's really what Steem Power is - it's the commitment to stay invested in Steem for a certain period of time.
The problem is that it's not a fixed period of time, it's 13 weeks from when you start to power down. Instead I think that SP should be able to be powered down instantly as long as it's been powered up for at least 13 weeks.
This way, powering up is committing to stay invested in Steem for 13 weeks, and after that you've met your commitment and can power down instantly.

Could be this proposal an intermediate compromise between attract new investors and lesser down security risks?

Hm. Interesting idea. Could also work, but this would most likely require a bigger refactor than other options.

Yep! an interesting idea worth to throw a neuron or two on it right? :)

However, I can't see how this idea could likely require a bigger refactor than other options. I see it way more easy to implement than the many, multiple and diverse that have already been suggested throughout this post. Including those proposed by @steemitblog.

Do you care to elaborate where you see the 'bigger' difficulty?

It might not be that different actually. The logic around weekly powerdowns would have to be replaced with a lock-in for a certain period of time.

Well, those lock-ins for a certain period of time is precisely what I find most interesting and accurate on @yabapmatt optics about how address more directly the solution @steemitblog is posing. Well, at least while commitment never stops being present in the 'algorithmic' equation. Because otherwise, ¿Where's The Love? };)

I would still make it opt-in based or with another security layer.

What if an account is compromised right after the lock-in period expires? Wouldn't that allow the person with access to the account to withdraw all SP at once (assuming all SP is unlocked)?