I have considered this issue at some length, and agree strongly that stake alone as influence on governance cannot prevent what happened to Steem from happening to Hive. An additional metric(s) is necessary.

The entire market cap of even BTC is less than the wealth of various persons and institutions. Given a willingness to spend as necessary to capture Hive in order to censor the community as was done on Steem, and enough patience, nominal stake will eventually do so.

Further, while this will ruffle feathers, the present governance of Hive is oligarchical, and potential of hegemony, due to the inequitable distribution of stake. While the extant plutocrats remain willing to so effect governance that Hive is censorship resistant, and it is demonstrable that they are extraordinarily committed to censorship resistance - so much so that Hive exists at all - our benevolent overlords are not as permanent as their stakes, nor Hive itself.

A fact about institutions, such as Hive, is that they are immortal, and people, no matter how benevolent or wealthy, are not. Therefore eventually those benevolent overlords will inevitably pass their hodlings on to other parties, and this will change the specific policies of the overlords of Hive. It is certain that benevolence is not permanent.

I hope I have worded the above nominally to avoid maligning anyone, as I did intend.

You point out that the community is necessarily requisite to governance other than as stakeholders, and mechanisms other than VP requisite to centralization resistant governance, and this is the bare fact. Absent such mechanism(s) sufficient stake will inure to some party sooner or later to enable that party to effect governance of Hive at their sole option. Given the global and potent push of censorship ongoing, by parties that have demonstrably expended $B's to do so on all enemedia, the WHO recently meeting with such platforms to cause nominal censorship to prevent the 'infodemic' it claimed was an equal threat to the pandemic, and the present ubiquitous dramatic reduction in human rights suffered across all jurisdictions on Earth, the nominal funds to censor Hive cannot credibly be unavailable to those intent on doing so.

I am confident work is ongoing to do exactly that. If as is often claimed, and seems certain, Sun Yuchen is an agent of the CCP, his present actions on Steem reflect a partial success - that Hive has managed to stave off, frustrating the purpose of the CCP and it's allies. I am unaware of any suggestion that the CCP just gives up when initially stymied achieving it's goals, and I don't think they did.

'The Art of War', by Sun Tzu states:

"18. All warfare is based on deception."

"19. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

It is not apparent that Hive is presently under attack, but that does not mean it is not. I believe it is.

Given the mechanics of the recent attack on Steem, the one-month delay in powering up may not suffice to permanently preclude that same means of attacking Hive. I strongly suggest applying the restriction of voting rights code to both the HPS stake, and stake held on exchanges asap. I believe virtually all stakeholders on Hive can agree neither of those stakes should exercise governance.

OpenLink is coming near to release, at least an MVP. It may be a suitable mechanism to enable community discussion in real time of governance of Hive, and would like to hear from @andrarchy and the OpenLink team, as well as anyone with thoughts on the matter, regarding the institution of an instance of OpenLink for that purpose. I reckon that may serve better than extant means of undertaking HPS for this.

Finally, it has been often suggested that rep, or rep and account age, or limits on the number of witnesses an account can vote on, 1t1v (VP for witness votes depletes 100% and does not recharge), 1a1v with oracular prevention of a user voting with more than one account, and more, might suit augmenting stake, as means of preventing Sybil attack that cannot be prevented with stake alone, in order to robustly ensure decentralized Hive governance.

It is clear we need to rationally consider our options, discuss them openly and in a timely way, and implement a functional means of preventing nominal stake from successfully attaining solitary governance of Hive. I have personally broached the subject with many, including some presently exercising consensus witness roles, and have noted the reluctance of most to challenge the status quo. Obviously when one has succeeded via the status quo, changing it threatens that hard won success.

However, there is no possibility that the status quo regarding Hive governance will permanently prevent the rise of nominal stake to centralize governance of Hive, and given that fact, I am confident that even the most self-interested wannabe overlord (a hypothetical party, and not an implication of current oligarchs) must find it in their self-interest to prevent a hostile takeover that will eliminate their power to influence Hive governance as part of the decentralized community.

Thanks!