As it's said now it appears to be a goal to swap out steem for a tron token, which rubs me as hostile where as an airdrop seems voluntary. We'll see how this develops.

Either way. Witnesses, apps, and others can continue running steem nodes if they don't voluntarily choose to follow Ned's sale to Tron.

This is how I’m reading the situation and speculating as well. But as to your second point, I’m concerned about if voluntarily keeping Steem going will be an option. With a token swap, every user who moves to Tron hands more governance control of the original chain to Tron. It wouldn’t take much to give them full operational control over both chains, and effectively sunset Steem 1.0.

I’d love to see witnesses immediately revisit the idea of 1 Steem = 1 vote in governance voting. IE, 50 million SP can vote 5 million weight on 10 different witnesses, not 50 million weight on 30 different witnesses! That’s an idea that’s always been logical and fair and doesn’t require forking out anyone’s stake, but gives Steem “classic” a real shot at retaining governance seats in the event of a hostile takeover.

In the event this all goes south, I’d much rather keep working on the chain & token we have than be forced to migrate to a cloned chain, rebuild exchange listings, etc.