The system is broken in so many ways it is silly.   There needs to be vote decay on the witnesses as well as a system that will rotate them out of the top 20 for a period of time if they have been in that position for over six months.  A lot of them are just hanging out using this as a funding mechanism for their other projects specifically EOS related stuff.   I get why they are doing this.  They are already in a position of power and don't have to do much to maintain that.   If I had to vote for just one witness it would be  @good-karma because he has continually worked on making this blockchain more accessible and usable and has taken on other team members.  He isn't just "witnessing" blocks.   The bad initial distribution did effect the Proof of Brain mechanism because so much power was accumulated by people that didn't really care about the platform as a social / content platform.   They treated it like I treated Ripple.... as a use it and loose it scenario.  I don't care about Ripple.  I think it is garbage and just rode a hype wave and then peaced out.   That is how a lot of people who garnered a ton of power here treated this blockchain while the ones that have stuck around for a couple years and have fought for this platform can't really get into a position of influence because of the messed up initial distribution and no vote decay on the witness votes among other problems.  At this point the witness stuff can't be corrected because the top 20 witnesses won't adopt a change that takes them out of power.  Those in power will always seek to remain in power.  

If some people were given the opportunity to get the type of rewards associated with being a top 20 witness they would treat it as a full time job.  It actually cracks me up how some people keep telling me to launch a witness on this blockchain and see if I can get the votes.   That is a quick way to be further unprofitable on this chain.  I'm a witness on another chain and it becomes a very tight group with everyone jockeying for position to become God kings who will rule the blockchain for the entire life cycle of it's existence.   It can quickly throw off the balance of power within a few weeks.   On this chain there was the ninja mine and a few other factors that have skewed things into eternity.  

 Overall the STEEM blockchain has been a great success because it made the founders richer and Steemit INC has the development funds to continue to work on the codebase / hang out for the next 10 years.  There is nothing wrong with that.  You guys had the ability to solidify your future.  It will always survive but there are a lot of reasons we don't see it thriving like it could.  There is a reason it has slipped from the #3 spot on CoinMarketCap clear down to where it is now.   The market has spoken.... it hasn't been a very good experience or investment for a lot of us.   We are then looked at as complainers to the 50 people who made a solid amount of money here.   Every time I have powered up here I have ultimately regretted it.  My biggest power up was 0.5 BTC in December.   I was willing to risk that but ended up regretting it once again.   A lot of people feel the same way.   I have never felt that way about EOS or even stuff like DigiByte or Litecoin or Monero.   

In my opinion technologically STEEM is the #1 blockchain..... even better than EOS because of the 3+ years of development but I can't recommend it as an investment because the risk of being dumped on really badly is way too great.  It will devalue a person's time like no other blockchain.  Then you have risked your capital and your time.  Double whammy.   

I don't mean this in a negative way but I feel that you have grown up in a wealthy environment and therefore there is a large disconnect between your thought process and the thought process of a common person.  It is all relative what motivates people but I feel like you are far removed from anyone who would have to do manual labor in a field or who has struggled to a point where they don't have enough money to fill up their gas tank.   It is imperative for a large percentage of people to see value in the system for it to really get the numbers to thrive.   

Again I'm not saying it is a bad thing but it just appears to be true over the last couple of years.   STEEM is in serious threat of becoming like Friendster, BETA Max, or the Sega Saturn.   

If you read all of this don't take it as a negative tone.  STEEM is pretty cool and again technologically it is #1 in my mind.   You guys have succeeded in becoming more wealthy so it has served its purpose.   The clones are coming online confirming the admiration for what has been built here.   

I have looked at what I perceive as the missteps of STEEM, Golos, WEKU, Whaleshares, VIT....etc.  

STEEM is really a production level testnet and more 3rd party applications will go to their own chains and more competition will come online that are clones of STEEM and others that are being built on EOS.   It is just simply reality and honestly I don't think it is anything you need to really worry about.   You guys have generated enough wealth out of this system to ride into the sunset if managed correctly.   

It is odd that when I was in Sydney as a mentor for the EOS hackathon that Block One employees actually though I had interesting things to say and agreed with me one the issues of why STEEM has never thrived and isn't a good user experience.   
 
Over here the 50 or so people who are founders / ninja miners / top witnesses just act like I'm some complainer nobody.   It is strange.   Actually I just don't think any of you care.   

![](https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmc3detoibYvoonn9ERavXDoJy1myGNZxZGxTuFot8eg2m/image.png)

It is good to see you active here.

**Proof of Brain is not working at Steemit; it is more like Proof of Power, or Proof of Engineer, or Proof of the Elite if you will**.

We all know, the mechanisms at the Steem Blockchain in combination with how the post channels are implemented in the Steemit UI and other Steem blockchain Apps and UIs, and the freedom given to build whatever service, are favouring distributing money to a few, rather than spread it more.

Bid Bots seems nice so that the smaller SP holders can get some rewards, but the reality with these bid bots is that:
1) Proof of Brain is over and done with
2) More money to a selected few
3) no to very little return on the bid bot investment (return in terms of everything, not only looking at the investment per paid vote, but also the longer term aspects of it).

That said, those who like to be in a real human based community are seeking their chances somewhere else. Did you realise many Steemians signed up, are leaving quickly again, especially those who came here for the community, and for the Proof of Brain? Scorum (mentioned somewhere else in this chain of comments) is just one of them; But we have so many other crypto based social communities out there, either based on Steem/Steemit code, or taking the good, removing the bad and implemented on new code. Weku, Whaleshares are a few of them. But what about Sola and even better ONO? ONO took a real close look at what works and what doesn't work at Steem/Steemit, and implemented mechanisms to prevent abuse, and promote the good, including a complete governance system to fight the bad, and promote the good.

My point of view is (and we all see the realities hence my point of view is probably more generic and real): **combining value blogging with money means, attracting a lot of money hunters therefore value blogging comes under pressure**. The only way to be able to try to keep value to a certain level is to discourage doing bad. And you know how Sola and ONO are doing this? By not having channels in which the top highest payed posts are shown. Even SteemHunt saw the general behaviour of voters is to vote for the top posts in a lists, when they introduced their Hunt token and ordered the post based on Hunt value, therefore they introduced a button 'show post in random order' and get Hunt tokens for using that button, ie promoting the idea of having different post (not based on Hunt value) in the top.

I know, Steemit is just a UI to kickstart the Steem blockchain, and STINC may not see it as their responsibility to develop further and leaves it to others to create better Apps and UIs, but the reality is
1) majority of the users are still using the Steemit UI and
2) we all know Steemit UI is owned by STINC and therefor whatever te UI shows, is setting the standards for other App builders.

**Lets make a couple of small changes to the Steemit UI to start with:**
- Remove General Hot and Trending channels.
- Introduce a general Random channel.
- Remove Hot and Trending channels for the tags
- Introduce Random channels for the tags

When implementing these changes, let STINC monitor what happens, use Big Data analyses, good reporting systems and all. And added to that, provide data/ graphs and analyses of the changes (high level and detailed) to the community, ie be very transparent **>** Create a button in the Steemit UI that bring us straight to a website with all this information; A website with some form of forum so we can discuss things in a much better way than here at Steemit, **such forum need to be moderated**; That is a key aspect! With such external website, you could also implement community voting; present us an idea, and let us ask and discuss about it and vote about it. Such vote from a Steemian should be a single vote equal in weight to a vote from another Steemian; No SP based weighting or something like that. Sure, some rules can be thought of to leave abuse out; Let us discuss in such, to be developed website (call it "co-community strategy and tactic building") what the rules will be, what consequences are expected and what is viable to develop.

I certainly hope you will not only consider the above, but action this before spending all time on bringing SMT to the market. A Steem blockchain with a Steem token that is in the hands of a very few, will not support making Steem SMT a success. Competitors are out in the market already today, and more will come to market in the (near) future. I'm pretty sure competitors are learning from Steem and Steemit (and can see proof of that already) and they will change things for their services to be more successful.

**Steem doesn't have a monopoly anymore!**

> Peoples money should never be taken from them.

This is an opinion I do not share. Perhaps money should never *unjustly* be taken from them, but that's a far cry from **never**. When the very rich abuse their power and the poor suffer, the very rich should have their wealth taken from them to empower the poor.

This is true both on and off the blockchain. There's a gray area of where "abuse their power" begins and ends, and we should have some clarity before anybody does have their money taken from them on what constitutes "abuse", "power", and "wealthy", but the blanket 
> Peoples money should never be taken from them.

should not be our guiding principle.