I agree with most of what you're saying, and especially some of the parts of "requirements" of witnesses, although I feel with little research one can quickly determine which ones are out there bringing value/doing stuff other than just producing blocks. While the security of the chain is important and I'm not trying to take anything away from that, I never really agreed with some who use that as an excuse (you're voting us to trust us with the security solely) to just go afk or maybe pick up a couple codes and mash them together once every 6 months pretending to have been doing things.

The sad part is some of them have personally told me they've pretty much given up on Hive but price is too low to sell so they're just gonna stick around and see what happens. I'm of course not going to mention who cause it was a private conversation, but I feel like that's most likely not the only one. I'm of course not voting for them as I've removed most of my votes from the top20 aside from a few I think still deserve a spot there and may be close to falling off as the rest of my votes go to lower up and coming witnesses which I also wish were doing or at least trying to do something more.

I've already commented on my view of HBD in a couple other witness posts so not going to go into that now, it's getting a bit late here for my rhythm anyway, but I respect people's choices to vote out those they don't agree with even if it's something about this.