I am unaffiliated with @blocktrades. My views are my own.

Thanks for mentioning another mechanism for sourcing funds for development. I note here I failed to acknowledge that interest has been mentioned, and I apologize for that failure.

@burnpost and promotion sending upvotes and fees to @null is anti-inflationary, which is the point of them. Therefore extracting funds from those sources increases inflation. It is the same thing as increasing the inflation rate and leaving them be.

Decreasing inflation increases rewards, and this provides incentive to create content, which attracts folks to Steem. Rewards are pretty much Steem's marketing department.

Increasing inflation decreases rewards, so taking from @null to fund development is essentially a tax on marketing to fund development. We need marketing, and more of it, because that is what makes the market grow, and that increases the value of Steem - which is the goal of investors.

Your stake is at risk. Is it actually beneficial to you to do that, or would it be reasonable to consider directly funding development with your personal stake combined with that of others to improve the blockchain? Considering that doing so would enable you to personally hold developers accountable for spending your money, I suspect that would prove more rewarding.

I can see why the latter course is naturally objectionable to you. However, funding needs to come from somewhere, and offshoring those costs isn't avoiding impact on your stake. It's just making it harder to reckon.

Decreasing spending on marketing is going to hit you in the wallet, just not directly, in an obvious way. You want your stake to grow in value? Then you sure don't want to decrease the marketing of the product that is adding value to your stake.

You might even want to find better ways to market Steem, and the dapps that are growing the market for it.

Stinc isn't going to be the only source of funding anymore, and continuing the direct spending of stake but diversifying the accounts providing that funding may well be far more palatable not only to the marketing department, but the investors that will benefit from gains such development effects.

If you want to take your chances, you have to pay the money. There is no new source of funds. Every bit of funds in the system are acting to effect the value of Steem. Which are more increasing the value of Steem, rewards, or your personal stake?

As your stake is going to increase or decrease as a result of how this is done, you may prefer to directly control how that funding is spent, by providing it on your own terms.