The system is broken in so many ways it is silly. There needs to be vote decay on the witnesses as well as a system that will rotate them out of the top 20 for a period of time if they have been in that position for over six months. A lot of them are just hanging out using this as a funding mechanism for their other projects specifically EOS related stuff. I get why they are doing this. They are already in a position of power and don't have to do much to maintain that. If I had to vote for just one witness it would be Hive account@good-karma because he has continually worked on making this blockchain more accessible and usable and has taken on other team members. He isn't just "witnessing" blocks. The bad initial distribution did effect the Proof of Brain mechanism because so much power was accumulated by people that didn't really care about the platform as a social / content platform. They treated it like I treated Ripple.... as a use it and loose it scenario. I don't care about Ripple. I think it is garbage and just rode a hype wave and then peaced out. That is how a lot of people who garnered a ton of power here treated this blockchain while the ones that have stuck around for a couple years and have fought for this platform can't really get into a position of influence because of the messed up initial distribution and no vote decay on the witness votes among other problems. At this point the witness stuff can't be corrected because the top 20 witnesses won't adopt a change that takes them out of power. Those in power will always seek to remain in power.

If some people were given the opportunity to get the type of rewards associated with being a top 20 witness they would treat it as a full time job. It actually cracks me up how some people keep telling me to launch a witness on this blockchain and see if I can get the votes. That is a quick way to be further unprofitable on this chain. I'm a witness on another chain and it becomes a very tight group with everyone jockeying for position to become God kings who will rule the blockchain for the entire life cycle of it's existence. It can quickly throw off the balance of power within a few weeks. On this chain there was the ninja mine and a few other factors that have skewed things into eternity.

Overall the STEEM blockchain has been a great success because it made the founders richer and Steemit INC has the development funds to continue to work on the codebase / hang out for the next 10 years. There is nothing wrong with that. You guys had the ability to solidify your future. It will always survive but there are a lot of reasons we don't see it thriving like it could. There is a reason it has slipped from the #3 spot on CoinMarketCap clear down to where it is now. The market has spoken.... it hasn't been a very good experience or investment for a lot of us. We are then looked at as complainers to the 50 people who made a solid amount of money here. Every time I have powered up here I have ultimately regretted it. My biggest power up was 0.5 BTC in December. I was willing to risk that but ended up regretting it once again. A lot of people feel the same way. I have never felt that way about EOS or even stuff like DigiByte or Litecoin or Monero.

In my opinion technologically STEEM is the #1 blockchain..... even better than EOS because of the 3+ years of development but I can't recommend it as an investment because the risk of being dumped on really badly is way too great. It will devalue a person's time like no other blockchain. Then you have risked your capital and your time. Double whammy.

I don't mean this in a negative way but I feel that you have grown up in a wealthy environment and therefore there is a large disconnect between your thought process and the thought process of a common person. It is all relative what motivates people but I feel like you are far removed from anyone who would have to do manual labor in a field or who has struggled to a point where they don't have enough money to fill up their gas tank. It is imperative for a large percentage of people to see value in the system for it to really get the numbers to thrive.

Again I'm not saying it is a bad thing but it just appears to be true over the last couple of years. STEEM is in serious threat of becoming like Friendster, BETA Max, or the Sega Saturn.

If you read all of this don't take it as a negative tone. STEEM is pretty cool and again technologically it is #1 in my mind. You guys have succeeded in becoming more wealthy so it has served its purpose. The clones are coming online confirming the admiration for what has been built here.

I have looked at what I perceive as the missteps of STEEM, Golos, WEKU, Whaleshares, VIT....etc.

STEEM is really a production level testnet and more 3rd party applications will go to their own chains and more competition will come online that are clones of STEEM and others that are being built on EOS. It is just simply reality and honestly I don't think it is anything you need to really worry about. You guys have generated enough wealth out of this system to ride into the sunset if managed correctly.

It is odd that when I was in Sydney as a mentor for the EOS hackathon that Block One employees actually though I had interesting things to say and agreed with me one the issues of why STEEM has never thrived and isn't a good user experience.

Over here the 50 or so people who are founders / ninja miners / top witnesses just act like I'm some complainer nobody. It is strange. Actually I just don't think any of you care.