RE: What the fuck do witnesses do?

While I agree that there needs to be a regime change, this witness vector may have been a misfire. In the end, all power seems to stem from blocktrades and smooth-including control of the 20 witnesses and the dao. Even the lesser big powers are kept in a checkmate because of this.

I am not too familiar with the whole inleo thing, but groups like hivewatchers would kill us small devs-I am a case in point-who uses the chain for data, instead of another blog. you and theycallmedan were speaking about the need of using the chain for data for an AI database [in violation of hivewatchers "post it on hive first rule"], and the impossibility of storing images to hive (you can). No, I am not a dev asking for work, and I am sure your own devs can figure simple things like that out; It's rather easy, just convert the data to base64 (or maybe something else more efficient) and develop a chaining mechanism to piece longer files together.

Reaching out to the dash (and other) community is one of the many things that steem should have been done nearly a decade ago (and i don't mean the obyte air drops). Many things in business comes down to the proper marketing, and part of that is the ability to network both internally and externally. Those who focus on internal marketing tend to be myopic and have tunnel vision and blow thousands of dollars on projects that don't add value while also harming hive as an investment. While they focus exclusively on Chrony capitalism on the DAO throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks at a cost of millions of dollars (which has proven to be ripe for abuse), you have welcomed in another chain (in what capacity, I don't know). You are right for calling out the "governance"-but the witnesses aren't really the governance. They are just hand selected block processor at the behest of a single governor, king blocktrades the unready. There is no decentralization at all; those claiming hive is decentralized perhaps could be liable for fraud.

You, splinterlands, and actifit seems to have a lot of use on the chain, and the latter just seems to be yet another front end. I could be wrong, but with your developments (which I am not familiar with),I see that as translating into that you have a lot of power both in terms of people and ability. If you were to fork, or move to another steem based chain (even steem), on an exclusive basis, I think that could be a serious dent in the hive ecosystem, as well as free marketing in their outrage. I am not advocating that you do that, I am just illustrating a threat/weakness to the ecosystem.

However, if you were to team up with the other serious projects, and try to bring in more investors during the next bear market, it might be possible to bring and end to the kakistocratic reign of blocktrades. Even getting investors working with you, for a single purpose of usurping the governance later, to staking hbd now for the 15% returns might achieve this the next time hive drops down to a dime (just watch out for the hair cut rule). Also think of it this way: if you were to usurp the governance, your team would have full control of the dao much like blocktrades pretty much does now.

But before then, it would be handy to learn what the contributions are from the witnesses-and develop a witness notification system for your own witness node so you can be ready for a takeover. Some witnesses have mission critical projects, so best not to pee them off. Some of the people you might have peed off could be allies in a successful coup; it is best to eat crow while it is young and tender.