I have no problem with the creators making as much money as they'd like on their creation. Why shouldn't they? They built it, it was their ingenuity, hard work, and skill. Quite impressive, to say the least.

HOWEVER, I do understand peoples' concerns because it has consequences for the system.

From what I can tell if you powered up in the first week 1 mvest was 1 steem. Today it's 292 steem per mvest.

That means vests are 292x more expensive now (strictly in terms of steem) than they were in the first week. And this is not up to market chance, this is by design.

For example, the first person to power up was "faddy." He did so with 357 steem on March 25th. 357 steem has a market value of $421 presently, but since he powered up in the first week that translated into 357 mvests worth over $100,000.

The issue isn't that early adopters are rewarded (they should be), it's that the balance of power has been so massively skewed that I'm not sure it can ever recover.

The Steemit account powered up 264,662 steem in the first week @ 1 steem/mvest. If I were an investor that would make me really nervous because now that account alone has 60% of the steem and 51% of the steem power. That's kind of a big X factor. I mean, I think they have a long term interest in the platform, but what if the price starts to to go south? Would they dump their coin? Or weather the storm? Does anyone know?

In addition to all of this, when whales (and anyone actually) power down, the same number of vests converted each week result in progressively more steem because the steem per mvest conversion rate is always increasing. They are able to grab and dump the freshly minted steem from the vesting pool onto the market, i.e., they get to take advantage of most of the inflation, and sell it at a steem price which reflects the fact that, at present, only 4% is liquid.

And given that each week more and more liquid steem will hit the market due to the rising steem per mvest ratio that will place a downward pressure on prices. I think that's what we are seeing with the slow decline in price.

My overall point, with respect to your article, is that while it wasn't a pre-mine, and I don't feel that the creators have done anything wrong or committed any kind of fraud, the system is designed, because of that increasing steem per mvest ratio, and huge off-market inflation, to favor early adopters at such a scale that it's unclear whether the balance of power will ever really change significantly.

That all being said I also know that the Steemit community is a strong one and I expect to see lots of creative solutions to whatever problems the steem network encounters.