Nominating a Contingency Coordinator Witness? Reducing STEEM/Steemit platform fragility with a pledge based contingency (planning) infrastructure.

Time to make things concrete. What do we need to put in place as a contingency infrastructure in case Steemit Inc would go belly up? Again, I'm not suggesting Steemit Inc is about to go belly up, nor am I suggesting we should bet against Steemit Inc crawling out of its current slum. The point is, as is, Steemit Inc as a pivotal entity in the STEEM ecosystem that happens to be a private company, is a single point of failure that makes the STEEM ecosystem way more fragile than it should be. Investors get nervous about fragility, and rightly so. This means the fragility of STEEM as an ecosystem will drive the price of STEEM down, actually hurting Steemit Inc, while the act of contingency planning for the demise of Steemit Inc should greatly reduce fragility of the platform, and as such support the price of STEEM and by proxy should actually be beneficial to supporting Steemit Inc as an entity.

Contingency planning for the demise of Steemit Inc thus conversely isn't betting against Steemit Inc, it is a healthy strategy in support of both Steemit Inc and the whole STEEM ecosystem.

So what should we do to get #steemcontingency planning started? I definitely don't have a full picture for that ready, but I would like to lay down some ideas.

A contingency planning coordinator (witness)

The first thing we need is a coordinator. A witness. It shouldn't need to be a top 20 witness, in fact, maybe it would be better if it was a top 50 witness not part of the top 20 crew. Someone with enough in crowd knowledge to coordinate contingency planning, but also someone without a top 20 spot to lose at the whim of Steemit Inc when it comes to it. The coordinator should be like a supreme judge. Get appointed with the support of a majority of the top 20 witnesses, but once appointed for a given number of time, able to maintain independence in the service of platform continuity. If we look at contingency planning and response, the mandate for the coordinator should be to coordinate continuity guarantees that take into account the scenario of Steemit Inc at one point going belly up, but also scenarios like an even worse HF disasters than HF20 roleout. It should be in the interest of all stakeholders to have a contingency coordinator witness election. Maybe we could have users nominate a coordinator from the 21-50 witnesses and then have the 1-20 witnesses vote between the nominated witnesses.

A contingency planning task list

Once we have a contingency coordinator witness with a multi year mandate from the top 20 witnesses, the coordinator could pick up his/her task, first by creating a contingency planning task list. I would suggest to create a GitHub project for this and use the issue tracking system that comes with GitHub projects. Everyone with an idea could submit an issue that the coordinator could than chop up in bytesized tasks and prioritize.

A contingency planning Utopian category

I don't think that contingency planning could become a success without the support of utopian. I think a new #steemcontingency category for utopian, moderated by the contingency coordinator witness would be a good way to do this. I would suggest the utopian crew and the coordinator cooperate on a way for stakeholders to delegate to utopian in a way that allocates only part of the delegated voting power to contingency planning, but in return, provides extra voting leverage in case of an actual contingency (or depending on the contingency, in its aftermath .

Contingency planning pledges

While a list of tasks that anyone can pick up can work to an extent, it would make the work of the coordinator a whole lot easier if (s)he could assign the work load according to pledges of time by people with particular skills. I think it is good to also consider the possibility of making 'in case of contingency' pledges. Maybe not just for hours, but possibly also for delegation.

Let me give an example by wording my own pledge.

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I hereby pledge the following to the (future) contingency coordinator witness:

1. To delegate 300 SP to utopian in a delegation marked as #steemcontingency as soon as utopian and the coordinator come to an agreement.
2. Up to four hours of my time a week, either in a role of security or computer forensics specialist, or in a role of C++ or Python developer.
3. To delegate 700 SP to the coordinator in case of an actual contingency.
4. With the caveats of prior obligations, up to 12 hours a week in case of an actual contingency.

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I really believe the coordinator could become a force to reckon with if enough users and stake holders pledge hours and/or delegations like this.

Maybe pledging contingency hardware could be a useful addition to the list.

Step 1, nominating a contingency coordinator witness.

So first things first, could we, Steemit users, nominate 21-50 witnesses for the coordinator role and put the nominees up for a vote by the 1-20 witnesses? Would the top 20 accept our nominations and give mandate to the coordinator? I truly believe we could make the platform ready for disaster this way and show investors a much less fragile platform is possible. A platform that could survive and thrive even if Steemit Inc were to fail. And remember, being ready for Steemit Inc to fail should raise confidence in the platform for investors, and by that potentially increase the price of STEEM to a level where failure of Steemit Inc becomes increasingly less likely.