RE: STEEM governance: An open future question?
Over the past year, the EOS ecosystem (which employs a similar dPOS) model has had the leadership positions change from mostly community and independent developers to large exchanges
Guess this makes sense. If they have to run a node anyway, they may as well get paid for it. Now that you mention it, I'm sort-of surprised that most of the exchanges don't seem to be running Steem witnesses. I wonder if Platform Independent State Files will change that...
To be honest, I'd almost prefer that to having a bunch of semi-anonymous witnesses, who - for all I know - might even be multiple identities for an even smaller group of people. No matter who the witnesses are, I think "back room dealing" is unavoidable, but I hope it will have less reach and impact as tribes and communities start to take hold.
Well... I guess they don't as it yet as staking as a service is still a new thing... and to be brutally honest, STEEM just doesn't have the profit incentive for them at the moment as it is so low in price!
The top witnesses are a bit weird at the moment, as they are mostly unknown... but hopefully as the ecosystem develops then we will get community leaders or known developers who are actually contributing to the long term health of STEEM... there is nothing wrong with have exchanges also being there, but they do have a different interest in what it means for them.