I was personally leaning towards pulling a little bit from each of the three inflation sources (rewards pool, SP interest, and witness pay) so that the SPS had around 10% of the inflation. The consensus though seems to be more leaning towards just taking 10% from the rewards pool.
The consensus being among Top 20 Witnesses who would prefer that none of that 10% come from witness pay? 🤔
It was discussed at length. My 'vote' was technically for a 10% reduction in witness pay too (as well as SP inflation). The main reason against it though (that I do agree with) is that it affects backup witness pay too, and a lot of the backup witnesses are already running at a loss.
One of the nice things about the SPS, is that once we have a funding source in place, it is then possible for the community to fund changes. If someone wants to make a proposal to the SPS to fund development + testing for a change that increases backup witness pay, decreases top witness pay, and adds more funding to the SPS - that is fair game.
If the system works as expected / hoped, then we basically have a framework for these types of improvements.
Is there no way to restrict the reduction to only top-20 witness rewards?
It is possible, although it would be more development for Steemit, more things to test, which would mean more time before the fork. There is already a lot of pushback from the hardfork containing too many changes. At this point, most of us want to get something out the door so we can start working within an improved system. There will always be the option of making more tweaks later (such as updates to witness pay), and after the hardfork - we will have a SPS to pay for such things.
Will the backup witnesses still run at a loss with the implementation of MIRA? I assume the effective pay of all witnesses should increase in the near future since your cost will decrease?
Time will tell. From what I've heard, it will not have much of an impact on the costs for consensus (witness) nodes. It's a bigger deal for 'full' nodes and exchanges.
https://steemit.com/steem-pressure/@gtg/steem-pressure-6-mira-ymmv-rtfm-tldr-lgtm
IMHO if top20 witness is not running at loss at this moment then they are doing something wrong ;-)
Hardware costs are negligible compared to time/effort spent to make Steem awesome.
Yes, and I'm one of those. Witnesses are also SP holders, authors and curators.
Currently for one to fund some project, a viable way of getting funds is to post about it and get it from rewards anyway. It is an equivalent to ask people to allocate a vote to a project that will add a value to the platform.