Increased interest rates don't come for free. It's at the cost of Hive inflation and inflation related risks. At the same time we rely on the witnesses as stewards of this setting, to be responsive to market changes. While the overall rate of HBD savings is low, such interest rates can be sustained, but we could easily and quite quickly reach a savings rate where 20% interest means a substantial increase or risk related to Hive inflation.

Another case where we rely on witnesses as stewards of a consensus setting is the price of Hive accounts. When demand for Hive accounts rose earlier this year, along with the cost of accounts due to the price of Hive, witnesses allowed no changes to the base price of a Hive account to allow for the continuation of onboarding of a large number of users.

I am not totally confident that witnesses will be responsive enough to bring down interest rates when they need to in the future.