I'm still trying to get my head around the relative power of SP in relation to how many witness votes we have....
If one needs 17 witnesses to control the blockchain then...
- If you give one account 17 or more witness votes this means that one account can hypothetically control the entire chain with sock-puppet witnesses if that account has more vested stake than all other accounts. This situation also makes it possible for one account to have absolute control if it controls 50.0000001% of all SP. (OK this is kind of stating the obvious!)
- If you give one account a maximum of 16 witness votes, then you immediately reduce the 'governance power' of that 'dominant' account's stake by a factor of 2, because 2 actors are required to control the chain. One actor can still control the chain, but they would now have split their Vest across two accounts, and to have absolute control they would have to own 66.66.....7% of total SP.
- 8 witness votes per account reduces the power of our hypothetical 'dominant account' by a factor of 3, because then three actors are required to control the chain, or one actor would have to split their stake across 3 accounts or control 75.00001% of all SP.
- By the time we get down to 4 witness votes per account then it would require five actors to hypothetically control the chain, and one actor would need to control 80.00001% of all vested Steem for absolute control.
- 1 witness vote per account, to give the extreme version of decentralization, would require 17 actors to combine to control the chain, or require 1 actor to control over 95% of total SP.
And I know it's not THAT simple!
In reality a wealthy actor can split their stake across numerous accounts in various ways and work with any combination of smaller accounts to gain greater influence, but all other things being equal the above stands.
Even bullet 4 above doesn't sound that decentralized to me
If a hypothetical maximum of 5 people could control the entire chain, it still sounds like a funny sort of decentralization!
The problem with fewer witness votes per accounts
While having fewer witness votes per account would be very protective against one rogue capitalist controlling the entire chain, in reality it would probably mean nothing ever getting changed.
Imagine a chain where we really do have 17 accounts all being supported by 17 different interest groups, because in reality it's not going to be one person supporting each account, but multiple people.
You'd probably never get consensus on anything, just stagnation.
So maybe 4-8 witness votes per account would be a nice compromise. It's certainly decentralized, and yet allows the potential for agreement.
30 witness votes.... where did that come from?
I'm sure there have been numerous discussions around this, but I missed them all! I'm guessing this is in line with the whole squared rewards curve philosophy - the higher up yo go, the more you earn, which seems similar to giving people MORE witness votes than are required to control the chain - this would give one wealthy actor MORE power to defend their control.
However from a governance perspective I REALLY don't get it!
P.S. I think we're going to get fucked
I noticed today that the exchange accounts have been transferring more Steem in and this doesn't seem to be to cover their customers' withdrawals. They're now holding more than 1M Steem between them, suggesting a quick power up and fork to a 24 hr PD.
A fork off I think is a possibility and hence why I'm thinking through what meaningful decentralization might actually look like, for when we have to start over with our tokens worth less than our Tesco rewards points.
Not that any of us shop in Tesco of course, because that wouldn't be very decentralized either.
Support your local farmers market instead, or grow your own. Better off out in the fresh air ATM anyway if you ask me!