Savings accounts were created to enable users to hold their funds more securely, yet still maintain a near "liquid" access. 3 days is quite short: it takes me that long to move money internationally.
In practice, most people have ignored the feature, because they don't value the security that it offers enough. This isn't too surprising: look how many people hold their coins on exchanges, despite the repeated losses of customer funds experienced by exchanges over the years. Most people have a hard time factoring in the potential losses from less likely, but still possible disasters. One guy wrote a whole book on this subject, which may have been overkill, but it needed to be discussed I guess.
The proposed change should make things cognitively simpler for cryptocurrency investors: they have an expectation based on the functioning of other cryptocurrencies that they need to stake/lockup their coins to earn interest o those coins.
And as a side bonus, it will likely improve the security of user funds on Hive, by encouraging HBD holders to keep their funds in their own account and to lock their coins up for that small period of time.
I certainly agree that it is baffling how carelessly users leave large chunks of their crypto on exchanges. People seek comfort, I guess.
Why should we create a worse customer experience and include features nobody values? Those users who want to take responsibility are already doing it. Those who YOLO it will keep doing that, regardless of what we do.
I am aware why savings accounts were created. Obviously, almost nobody needs that feature. And it adds extra confusion.
Security features we have:
It is a mess, inconsistent and cumbersome compared to other blockchain projects.
Bank settlement duration has historic reasons. If we want to be compared to banks, we should be better and more convenient. Paypal can clear international settlements in no time. Of course, banks and Paypal have the ability to mitigate human error or fraud in certain cases. It is a deliberate choice with blockchains to sacrifice certain capabilities to offer more interesting solutions.
The addition of savings account is a useful feature. So is account recovery. And they were added in part to address some of the shortfalls associated with a blockchain account versus a traditional bank account.
And I don't think the times for these need to be the same. Practically speaking, I don't think it will be confusing to anyone who actually decides to make use of a savings account, that the time is different than either powerdown time or account recovery time.