Here's my savings post for this week... @alonicus/saturdaysavers-club-progress-week-20-48
The whole risk / witnesses thing is something I've been thinking about quite a bit recently. I do vote for witnesses, although I haven't used all my votes up by any means. I tend to vote for ones who I think are doing good things for Hive. But it's pretty unstructured; mostly it's if someone asks for a vote, then I'll go and look at what they're up to and if I think it's worthwhile.
I think the witness system is good, but does still have some weaknesses. The pool of 20 active witnesses produce plenty of great proposals for the community to vote one, but what we don't see is whether there are back-channel conversations going on between them, or much of an idea of how well they co-ordinate and co-operate. I have to admit I'm split on this one; if the active witnesses are co-ordinating well it creates resilience in the event of technical issues, but if they are co-ordinating too well it could create a dominating clique.
I haven't studied how stable the 20 active witnesses are in terms of changes, but I suspect it's a pretty stable group. Most Hivers tend to vote for a witness and just leave it there. Again, this could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how it goes.
From the perspective of drawing people over from Web2 to Web3, the lack of a figurehead in the mould of a Dorsey, Musk or Zuckerberg takes some getting used to. It's probably a barrier to adoption, but once you get used to the idea, it's actually a good way to illustrate how decentralisation works to "outsiders". There isn't one dominant ego, so although the way it's run can sometimes feel a bit "woolly" and reaction to an emergency might be a bit slower, there also isn't the risk that one person could run away with all the money or commit some social faux-pas that endangers the ecosystem.
Aaaand I've written an essay... sorry !