Stratos will be, in a way, ninja-mined. In the beginning ~half the stake will be given to SP holders and ~half to yours truly. But I hope to fairly quickly sell off my stake as the network matures as a sort of mini-ICO.

I can see Steemit’s perspective - they are the sole developers, the sole creators, etc. And they could deserve their own share. But also I do think that they should have given away their last share of the ecosystem years ago. Maybe put it into some sort of reward pool like Stratos is doing for developers.

This whole thing is so much drama... already many witnesses have pledged to not complete freedom 21 unless the power-down is stopped; there will likely be no freedom 21 fork in the end. If the fork was ever proposed and there was a chance of it going through, as long as Steemit Inc retains their SP they can just spin up 20 witnesses and vote against.

I don’t know, I like the idea of the power-down but the side effects could be catastrophic.