[EP96] Why can't the witnesses pay for Steem Blockchain Development...

Hi everyone!
Hope you're all well!

How much do the Top 19 witnesses make per month from producing blocks, and how much does their equipment cost? With Steemit Inc working on bringing the costs of producing blocks down (256GB RAM to 64GB RAM) I imagine we'd see the Top 19 witnesses bring down their own costs and therefore making more profit.

Clearly development needs to happen on the Steem Blockchain, so I'd like to see the Steem Blockchain get to a point where the Top 19 witnesses are the ones who are donating the most to the development and quality assurance of the blockchain code. This makes the most sense to me, they stand to profit the most from a strong blockchain and they're the ones that have to approve and implement any new code.

The Steem Blockchain doesn't technically need any creators whatsoever. It just needs transactions and witnesses... but the value of the Steem token is mainly determined by how valuable the content on the blockchain is seen by the world... so taxing only the content creators by paying for development out of the reward pool... and not taxing the witnesses seems like an odd move to me.

Except of course, the current Top 19 witnesses might never suggest or approve this method of finance.

I totally get that we often use Witness Votes as a reward for witnesses working on some of our favourite apps, and I'm not at all against that... but I think that should only come into consideration after we've established that a.) they're excellent at producing blocks and b.) they're providing or funding blockchain development and QA.

It's also really important that Witness Vote Decay (your vote for a witness needs to be re-established after a period of time) is implemented. How many witnesses are making Steem off votes from people that haven't touched the blockchain or months or years? How many hungry and inspiring witnesses just can't get ahead because of old votes.

Thanks for watching!