The problem with removing the payment for accounts in general is the fact we've got named accounts which are worth something in themselves.

I've got no problem with charging for accounts. I give free accounts to my students, but I don’t think they should be free, because of bots and squatters. In fact, I think 3 HIVE for an account is way below the true value.

I would like to see 1- and 2-letter prefixes and suffixes enabled, and the exclusive rights to each sold, perhaps as NFTs. And possibly do the same with 3-letters also.

100,000 HIVE for 1-letter, 10,000 for 2-letter, 1,000 for 3-letter.

That would enable new tribes to guarantee authenticity. For example, I create a new tribe with QED token and purchase the qed.xxxxxx prefix. That way everyone knows that an account starting with qed. is an official account.

More importantly, though, it would enable businesses that want to build on Hive to reserve exclusive Hive account “domains”. For example, Twitter could purchase the t.xxxxxx prefix. Then they could create Hive accounts on behalf of their users that are t.existingtwitterhandle. Twitter could manage the private keys for each user until such time each user is ready to do so on their own.

Having exclusive control over a block of account names could be a big plus for certain future app builders.