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RE: 🚨 The "Witness Situation" 🚨
Excellent. One question you might want to look into is, how much SP/vests is needed to push any user up into the top 20 witness list, and whether it's possible. Is it possible for there to be a "revolution", if we make it easier for smaller stakeholders to monitor and update their witness votes.
Another way to look at the problem now is that it's too costly for each individual to monitor witnesses relative to the marginal benefit coming in, i.e. the principal-agent problem. In listed companies, we instead have a board of directors who are meant to act for shareholders and monitor executives. If we do the same here, can we move the needle towards more productive witnesses?
I've done that math and buying your way in is possible, but it is an exorbitantly high number
What's the number? Or a very large number of small stakeholders? I can wait for your post too if you don't have it now.
Most users don't vote because they don't bother monitoring witnesses. Monitoring is an expensive activity, and also a public good - because you gain equally from the efforts of others who monitor witnesses, even if you don't bother putting in the effort, you can free-ride on the efforts of others, so there is complete market failure. The end-result is that most users don't bother monitoring and voting, and the smaller you are, the less likely you are to vote.
One solution is to create a Steemit "board of directors". Copy and pasted from another comment I put up...
Last time I quickly calculated the cost of buying a top witness position, it was about $15 Million USD (but the price changes constantly).