Hi aussieninja, thank you for the comprehensive write up, suggestion, and supportive comment!

We are actually considering running as a Witness, though we are still evaluating our capacity to deliver given the intricacies of setting up a Witness node. Hopefully, the answer is yes and if so you can expect to run some time early next year.

As for running an API front end, that is definitely a solid suggestion and much needed for the network.
However, we want to also ensure that we can deliver this, as we are quite new in this space; we want to ensure that we understand Steem inside/out before we can setup an infrastructure to serve this well. That being said, we are always evaluating what we can do best to serve the community if we were to run for witness.

We've got some ideas in mind that we brainstormed along the way and can't wait to share with the community once we are ready!