I do understand what decentralization is about... and the issue is nothing to do with it.
The circumstance is that a strong foundation was built, then because everyone was benefiting, nobody did anything while the termites started coming in. Some people did try to point this out, and it was always an excuse to not consider it a problem.
Now, the structure of the house is rotting and the solution is to add more attachments to the house so that the load gets spread out.... there's still termites at the core, and since all extensions to that structure are connected. It becomes like trying to pretend there are no termites by just giving them more wood so the infestation doesn't appear as bad.
- What's the deficit in revenue?
- How is adding more nodes going to increase revenue?
- How to increase revenue while usership is dwindling (you might argue spreading out, but no... except for whales and investors the platform is dying... where the new feed was seeing 5-10 articles a minute, depending on time of day I've seen it drop to 5 minutes between posts.)
- How to add value to a token that has dropped in value significantly more than the market has performed in general?
It is something of a shame really, there really was a great opportunity to build something great. Unfortunately, greed got in the way. Now, we get to witness this downward spiral.
5-10 articles a minute of mostly rubbish, often bot generated, now fewer, higher quality posts from real people.
But Steem is not just about posts. More importantly, it is about apps.
Have a look at Steem Monsters figures here https://beempy.com/steemmonsters
1 million games played in only 8 weeks with 3500 player and rising fast.
When the issues bottom line to not enough revenue to sustain the nodes, that's really irrelevant.
You know what you call it when you offset losses (or generate revenue) by putting the cost to newcomers?
PONZI SCHEME!!!!
That is the answer to the problems of the platform that I've seen repeated by many. Interestingly, ponzi schemes RARELY begin with the intent of becoming a scheme.
Ultimately, it's poor planning, poor decision making and poor implementation. So, NOW the solution is to cast a wider net... except that's not going to increase revenues, that will increase strain on the nodes... So then it becomes a push for a wider net and again and again until some of the decision makers are being given their perp walk.
Actually I am a legal expert on the difference between a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme and a legitimate business and Steem is most definitely the later. I was the General Counsel and main intellectual driver on this landmark case on the issue.
The solution when revenue drops because of outside forces is to cut costs, which is exactly what Steemit Inc is doing. It is cutting costs for EVERYONE who runs a witness or full node by moving to RocksDB etc.
Legal experts are fun, they always manage to interpret whatever they want to be true, even while telling you what they want to be true is false.
Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes are similar but different. Pyramid schemes directly rely on new investors to supply the return to earlier investors. The ponzi scheme is more about using esoteric "investments" (like investing in steam power, investing in building a witness node as an "independent representative", investing via software development to draw in new investors).
So, the "offsetting costs" is to get new "investors" to absorb those costs under the promise that there are rewards under the success of the platform.
Anyway, this attempt is just going to start the death spiral of the platform, since the measures to offset costs are really only a stop gap measure when the solution requires increasing the value of steem coins, but that can't happen in that current environment and the things that would are going to wind up increasing the costs making the platform even less viable.
Funny, eh ? Poor planning got steemit in a situation where the cure is the poison.