Very happy with the proposed changes! I was a staunch supporter of mining accounts anonymously before it was removed, so I am glad to see this coming back.
Very interesting changes to account creation via burning steem. I think this is a great step to curtail account abuse, and I think will be good in the longer run. I'll have to closely think about the details, as I've already seen some heavy discussion on bandwidth -- but the general idea is great.
I don't think the proposed account mining is a good idea. Mining has become so specialized work that very few people can do it easily. And if it's going to be Litecoin's algo, it means that we will be giving away Steem accounts for people who currently have Litecoin mining power. From them, the value will flow to mining equipment producers and electricity companies.
I really can't see how the Steem community could benefit from that.
Also the account creation with burning steem isn't very good idea. If I understand this right, it will give a right to use the account always. I can imagine that this right can be easily abused. I'd rather keep the current design: if you don't have enough SP, you can't use the blockchain. If you don't have enough SP, you need to earn or buy more. That will create healthy long-term demand for steem and benefit everybody.
Interesting thoughts!
Re: mining - I definitely agree that scrypt is going to be a bad choice. I'd prefer something more CPU focused like (properly implementing) equihash or perhaps cryptonight. The idea is to give an accessible blockchain way to do anonsteem, basically. It shouldn't be easy.
The main reason I support having a small amount of bandwidth that can never leave is the following: if you have 0 SP (because you powered down), you can't even transact to power up. You can't rejoin the community without help or a new account. I don't think an account should be able to freely use the platform without any SP, but I think not being able to power up steem is a bug. They shouldn't necessarily be able to transact much at all, but I'd like them the ability to power up to use the platform.
Burning steem in addition to holding steem to use the platform, makes new accounts more valuable, which I think is useful to prevent account abuse. I think the burning should be in addition to powering up for bandwidth.
I don't think it will be accessible for most people. Like I said, mining has become so specialized work that most people don't know how to do that. If it's used by a few people to maintain AnonSteem-like services, it's quite unnecessary, because we already have AnonSteem.
I'd love to see a way for non-tech people to get accounts easier. For example, whistleblowers and journalists might want to have an anonymous account. Most of them don't have skills to set up mining operation, or time to learn the skills.
I suggested in my post that we should have Steem Account Tokens (SAT). One SAT gives a right to create one account, and it's backed by steem so that the new account gets enough SP to be useful. SAT could be earned as rewards like SBD.
If we had SAT in the platform, it could be used very easily to crowdsource the account creation effort. I can imagine that most of the active users would earn or buy SATs so that they have at least a few of them, so they can be always ready to give a new account to somebody. Technically a SAT works like a code that can be used once to create a free account. That code can be given out in blogs, other social media platforms, email, etc. to people who need it.
That would be quite easy way to get anonymous accounts. If there are lots of people giving out free accounts, it shouldn't be too hard to find a code from a forum or ask for it in an email.
Is this really a problem? There is already an easy solution: just use Blocktrades to buy and transfer SP to the account.
Even if this is a real problem, the ability to make transactions without SP should only apply to steem/SP transactions. You could use the account as a cryptocurrency wallet but not use the blogging/social media features.
Yes... but couldn't SAT's be used to track account creators and depending on whatever metadata might be left behind during the account creation process via a fake or badly setup anon create account system, be potentially used to associate a supposed anon account back to a real identity? Wouldn't direct POW mining, (CPU heavy and not GPU friendly), be more conducive to creating true anon accounts that can't be metadata traced back to a real person?
Question: how can having permanent access to a Steemit account be abused? This isn't a rhetorical question, implying I'm in disagreement, but an actual request for explanation, because I don't understand.
I agree. That burning Steem to buy minimum bandwidth struck me as so simple but genius! The way it makes multiple signups unprofitable while also decreasing the token supply at the same time demand is increasing... sweet.
Recently I also delegated all the SP from a secondary account of mine, forgetting about the whole bandwidth thing until I went to do something from the account... This would indeed save people like me from their own stupidity.
Burning steem has a downside: it will reduce the market cap.
Because the initial SP amount is basically locked forever, it can achieve the same result as burning.