Do you think future chains/projects of this kind will start out with a % of the 'inflation pool' allotted for maintainance / dev / marketing / etc in the form of WP?

It seems like an oversight not to have started out this way, but perhaps I'm being harsh with hindsight.

After reading some of the comments here I wanted to share a system I've been working on for @ocdb. Could probably be the added donation proposal but it could include some inflation and burning and I would love to hear others thoughts on it.

An account that receives donations  and votes, it will never sell but instead delegates them to a distribution bot. Donations and votes get powered up and the returns from the bot are collected for funding. This would take donations, inflation through ROI and when/if the time comes it is not needed anymore it would power everything down and send to @null. 

I realize that this will not be a lot and there's an extra step to use the ROI instead of the donations directly, but if voters know they are effectively burning Steem in the future they may be more interested to allocate a percentage of the rewardpool through votes. Same thing goes for donations. Maybe we could add "promoted" and "declined rewards" to go to the funding account as well as @theycallmedan mentioned. Add some gamification and statistics plus leaderboards for most donated/beneficiary share that week or an actual minigame that costs Steem to play and it'll add up quickly.

So the reason I prefer this method is cause the incentive is that you burn Steem later, over time that Steem has funded things through generation of ROI from bid bots/distribution bots and later when/if prices are a lot higher it will benefit everyone that the Steem gets burned when the fund isn't needed anymore.

Having said that it's not easy to visualize the difference between this and taking a cut from everyone's rewards and it may not be the best way to kickstart it as it needs some runway. 

Opinions are welcomed.

Donations should be possible, both targeted (for specific proposal) and general (to reward pool), however there is no way this would suffice for any serious development. The funding needs to be more predictable. Therefore taking part of inflation is the way to go. The question remains which one of current inflation targets is to be reduced to make way for development fund.

Witness rewards pay for upkeep of the servers and for work of witnesses. This is the backbone of the whole ecosystem and therefore cannot be touched.

Interest part of inflation sets optimal level of vesting. If the ratio of vested Steem to all Steem is lower than percentage of inflation going to interest, then those with vested Steem gain purchasing power, if the relation is opposite, owners of vested Steem lose purchasing power, just a bit slower than those with liquid Steem. Note that liquid Steem can be, well, liquidated much easier than vested, therefore interest has to outweigh the risk of keeping Steem in ice. Whales are naturally restricted in movement of their funds, they require deep market to operate, however their operations have profound influence, therefore it pays to give them incentive to keep their Steem frozen. Minnows on the other hand should not have any strong incentives to keep their funds in vested form because it is damaging in two ways. First: vested funds cannot be used as currency. If minnows (that are much more important target for merchants than whales) keep their funds frozen, they can't spend, which thwarts development and recognition of Steem as viable mean of trade. Second: interest going to vested funds of minnows is not an incentive for them (because it is too small), yet due to sheer numbers it cuts interest going to whales, reducing their incentive for freezing funds. To sum it up: interest part of inflation cannot be cut, if anything it should be increased. The minnow part of argument will be needed later.

Commenters are basically authors, just publishing in different place. Authors are the meat of Steem. Steem would be just another crypto if not for authors. While there is plenty of people that will create content for free, for recognition alone or to vent their creative spirit, real professional quality content requires money. If Steem has an ambition to attract content on the level of f.e. YouTube, it has to pay the authors on the same level. It is extremely far from it (IMHO the 7 day limit is responsible in big part) and yes, it needs to grow first. Reducing rewards paid to authors would be a step in wrong direction.

That leaves us with curation rewards. Many people feel these are small, which is true, because there is a lot of curators. In fact, in order to pull anything noticable from curation mechanism, one has to resort to use of bots. The question is what value does curation have to be worth paying for? The answer is: **none**. Running around and clicking "like" button is not work, passing your voting power and relying on algorithm to choose the content that is likely to give maximum payout instead of what you actually like is not work either. Zero work deserves zero pay. In all systems that have "likes" people use them with no monetary incentive. In fact I'm pretty confident that users would still use "likes", even if that transferred small amount of Steem from them to the authors. After all people actually pay for content they consume.
Did it rub you the wrong way? You are not a curator like that, you scan through the content and read everything personally to choose only the best, "most deserving" posts? There is a solution for you. Start making aggregate posts, f.e. if you curate posts about nice places to travel to, make posts that link to posts describing such places, organize competitions, build your recognition and if you are as good a curator as you think you are you will be rewarded from the pool for authors. There is no need for curation rewards.
Curation rewards can be wholly consumed by pool for development. This will kill the curation bots, make the flow of "likes" more reflect actual popularity of the content and decrease the incentives of minnows to keep their funds in frozen state (see above).

Congratulations @blocktrades!
Your post was mentioned in the [Steem Hit Parade](https://steemit.com/hit-parade/@arcange/daily-hit-parade-20190207) in the following categories:

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@blocktrades   very bad idea what author will earn from steemit.

it is a bit vague. in this vote you asked people to choose if they want that  Steem Proposal System has more funds or less funds. well of course everyone will say more funds. 
it is like asking children would they like to give 1 chocolate to a friend or 10. they will all say 10, but if you say to them form some of them we will take your chocolate to give to him, would the answers be the same?

I don't think donations alone will be enough to sustain the Steem Proposal System for the long term. Inflation pulls from the funds of the entire blockchain (everyone holding Steem is essentially paying in proportion to their Steem holdings), whereas donations rely on individuals. 

My concern is that basing the system on donations only will lead to a situation where a few people don't feel they should shoulder the costs of proposals that benefit all Steem holders. 

It would be possible to design the SPS to initially only take from donations, then later add code to take from inflation if donations are insufficient. But this would require a second hardfork, so it will increase the cost and put more burden on exchanges to update their wallets twice, rather than once.

If a donation system is implemented, how would it be different from existing crowdfunding mechanisms such as Fundition?

I will go with first one
A proposal system that only recieves funds via donations would be a good system.

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Take a cut from evryone:
- authors
- curators
- witnesses

And plus donations.

In this way everyone will be equaly unsatisfied, that is a sign of a good deal :)

Is there a way the proposal system can generate revenue? Some sort of fee for proposing? Some sort of mechanism where people can bet on the probability of a proposal being accepted? Prediction markets?

I believe the host of this poll has a significant conflict of interest.

If the percentage is taken only by authors to focus on programmers then it is denied to the account of marketing and writers and the whole system can fall. Costs are reduced, but few users focus on marketing and promotion of the whole system, there are few such authors on the whole Steemit. I am an entrepreneur all my life, without promotion and marketing, nothing can be done. 
When the mass of users who have an interest is attracted then we have a lot of investors, that's the whole point, and I'm just listening about the programs and developers and these stories are totally uninteresting for the average users. 

How can it be for money? Can I attract more clients?

Can it be done on Steemit affiliate marketing that will bring new users and investors to Steemit while at the same time motivating customers to invest in Steem Power? 
The only promotions are the applications that are being made, the point is that the money and profits from the writing work are never shortened, it is best to be equal and to introduce a marketing progressive affiliate from one part of the profit. 
I think we have a lot of focus on reducing costs, but little about strategy and marketing. We need to separate the system that will reward promoters and this will help all of us and Steem blockchain that the Steem value grows as well as the number of users and investors. 
The most important thing is that we all sincerely say our experience because in this way we can find the best solution.