Removing the delegation feature entirely would solve many of the problems Steemians are complaining about. It has been, by far, the most harmful feature introduced into the ecosystem. In my IMO.
If delegation would be removed:
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The bidbot business as it exists today would die out, and instead of creating passive income by delegating to bidbots, stakeholders would actually need to actively participate again. On the flipside, if one were to still choose to run a bidbot business, he or she would have to fund it with their own STEEM Power.
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In general, having a say on the blockchain would depend on one's willingness to invest into the blockchain - instead of knowing the right ass to kiss. Why did people ever figure delegation was a good idea, to begin with? One of the key points to making STEEM an attractive buy was to gain a voice on the STEEM blockchain. That was the whole point: to incentivize buying the token. You dumb dumbs. Delegation simply meant that you can gain influence and completely bypass buying STEEM. Why buy STEEM and take a financial risk when you can just kiss ass for free and get the same end result? There's just no good justification for that feature. INC agreed to stay impartial in the voting of content on the site, yet delegation allowed them to skip that promise, and play favorites by delegating to the chosen ones. It never made sense to me.
Also, think about this way:
If you were to start a business, and instead of lending you money (that you'd have to pay back) the bank would just delegate you money, would that impact your drive to take care of that business in a positive way, or nah? Why bother trying because you can just play business owner with the delegated money, and when it doesn't work out, oh well. That's how I feel about a lot of the failed dApps on the chain. A lot of announcement posts were made, and upvoted to high heaven with delegated STEEM Power, but what came of them? Outside of a select few exceptions.
My biggest mistake on this site was not coming up with a project (not a product, a project) that I could have whined delegation for, announcing it, and maybe posting an update here or there to milk the rewards. I really do regret not being that smart when I had the chance, but oh well.
A lot of other people were.
All of this talk about the new hardfork to revive this site, but it still seems to be missing the biggest potential fix that could be made.