Thanks a lot for this breakdown, it is insightful to see it from someone like you who has been in the top 20 and then out. I agree with you regarding witness vote decay. Also, I think it can lead to lots of problems, including potentially jeopardizing the network's security by requiring people to perform voting every once in a while. In the IT world, when someone places a vote on something, they expect that to stay in place until they make a change. Vote decay will, I think, lead to less and less people renewing their voting so the governance participation in effect will decrease, making it easier to overtake the network.

What are your thoughts on removing the ability to proxy witness votes? It seems like people proxying leads to more centralization of power to those that get selected as a proxy. Whereas without proxying everyone has to decide who they vote for.