This is not a joke. After I just announced yesterday that you will be able to generate new Steemit accounts (potentially anonymous accounts) by mining a special type of token, a new paradigm is discussed by the developers of the Steem blockchain, in Github.
What you see in the screenshot below is just a tiny bit from a very interesting discussion happening today on the repo:
So, instead of mining a token that you will spend in order to create an account, you will now generate an "egg", that will be "hatched" into an account via a different process. Each PoW reward will be then translated into this "egg", which means you can have many "chances" at creating new accounts, or many "eggs" waiting to be hatched (if I understand this correctly).
The conversation - albeit quite complicated even for the regular Steemit aficionado - is important because it establishes a new pattern and, as a witness, I think it's important to follow it.
Much of the information is just at the model stage, meaning this stuff may not even come to production, but the theoretical approach is fundamental not only for the security of the blockchain, but also for potential "bad moves" that can, or cannot be performed, by rogue witnesses.
What is basically happening right now is that the anonymous accounts generated by mining are laid out. What I understand:
- witnesses should not be allowed to control the "egg queue" in any way
- a throttle system should be put in place, limiting the rate at which new "eggs" can be hatched both related to time (per day) and to actor (per witness / regular account)
- under this system, a new account can be created for somebody else, in which case the owner and active keys of the newly created account must be invisible to anyone except to the owner of the newly created account (much more complicated than it sounds)
As you can see, this is difficult stuff. It's the kind of stuff that happens 90% of the time behind the curtain made of pompous statements and marketing campaigns and which actually keeps the entire cards castle from falling down.
I will follow this conversation closely and update if there is some new consistent development on it.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me 
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If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):