My exception to that would be @davemccoy's - what we actually want is free interaction. If users have to pay to comment, you'll have a few whales who feel like talking to each other, but most comments will be limited to those the author feels will be profitable. Which means by and large no one will actually interact and build relationships.
Part of what has made Steem successful, as much as it is, is the large stakeholders' willingness to subsidize relationship-building. They've now stopped that by creating a resource market, even a half-assed one, and it will only get worse once trading RCs becomes a thing.
I agree with you 100% x as much as there exists... This is the point I've been trying to make all day. I know the whales can't see it, but charging people anything to legitimately engage will discourage that activity. Plus it is also a bad message to send. "those that have money can speak freely"... "those that don't are limited" ... I think it is absurd to think that anyone will pay for the right to speak their mind. I know I wouldn't consciously, so I suggest they bury that fee and collect it some other way.
Yes, that's a potential issue, but I think it would be an edge case in practice.
We know there ain't no such thing as a free lunch, which is what RC has been all about. So given that, where do we go from here?
In the method I am exploring above, I think the vast majority of transactions in the near term would occur at zero cost on an excess capacity basis. These transaction costs would only emerge as a necessary element when there are enough users to fill the blocks beyond what is subjectively reasonable.
Just for arbitrary numbers, let's say that's 1 million active users. At that point, the witnesses would have a choice to make between expanding block size to keep a reasonable number of spots free for the small fry or to limit new user growth. Or maybe some combination of the two.
We already pay a voluntary tax to subsidize low-SP users. That's what the witness earnings are. So that might also be an adjustment for when blocks become full.
It's not the fullness of a block that they're worried about, as I understand it, but the total size of the historic blockchain. (Which is where most of the literal resources go, why witnesses need substantial and expensive servers, nodes are even worse, and replays take forever.)
Hmm. That would imply that keeping the chain in RAM is the constriction. On a text-based chain like STEEM with a growing user base that creates a square-law geometric progression.
If that's the case then it's an absurd design.
I think I'd need to talk to aggroed to see if that is the constraint.