The staff seems to be intentionally skirting that question, which might mean that they are considering the idea but don't want to commit to a path on that.
That can be smarter than coming out and saying yes or no on it. If Steem removed the reward pool and SMTs don't perform well the chain is likely going to take such a hard hit to its reputation that it might never recover. On the other hand, if SMTs perform very well, and it seems like removing the STEEM reward pool is a viable path, then it could be a good thing.
Long term, Steem likely needs to remove the reward pool, but doing it too soon can be dangerous.
The reward pool is one of the reasons that the steem blockchain is somewhat less vulnerable to the potential degradation that any DPOS chain can suffer as a result of vote incentivization from blockproducers. That is one of the reasons why I am opposed to eliminating it. @anyx doesn't specifically mention that in his analysis but I think it's a logical conclusion.
https://steempeak.com/dpos/@anyx/how-vote-incentivization-monopolizes-delegated-proof-of-stake
I probably would be ok with a reduction in the percentage that goes to the reward pool but not with eliminating it.
Interesting, but how does it protect against vote monopolization? Also, alternatively, we could solve that problem simply by making witnesses stake STEEM with the potential for it being slashed. DPoS was brilliant in a world where slashed stake did not exist, but at this point in time it might be good for us to take a second look at the witness system and adjust it.
If we changed the witness system we would not need STEEM inflation for posting. Right now we have a system where the top 20 produce blocks and 1 random witness produces blocks but perhaps we could increase the number of random witnesses selected. This could improve decentralization and make the system much more secure against vote monopolization.
In other DPOS chains the majority (if not all) of the inflation goes to the block producers. By offering kickbacks they can ensure that the stake that votes for them grows much faster than the one that does not.
Steem distributes the majority of the inflation to none witnesses thus the block producers have little incentive to offer kickbacks to their voters. After all they need to maintain their infrastructure and the witness pay does not leave much room for such deals (they only get 10% of the inflation).
This does not mean that steem is not vulnerable to such degradation of consensus. It just means that it would take a longer time to playout.
Fair enough, but the risk could also be mitigated by relocating the author/curator/commentor rewards to interest rewards. Currently, author/curator rewards takes up about 72% of the inflation with staked interest at 16.8% and witnesses at 11.2% of the inflation pool.
By cutting the author/curator inflation in half, you could have 35% of it remaining and relocated mostly to interest. If 10% went to witnesses and 25% went to staked interest with 37% eliminated, you could keep staked voters in control while making the witness role more lucrative and thus more secure and competitive.
That would mean interest would receive 41.8% of current inflation while witnesses receive 21.2% of current inflation and a cut in total inflation of 37%. Staking for interest, SP and RC delegations could prove more lucrative for stakers, potentially resulting in an increased demand for the supply.
Reducing or eliminating the posting rewards in favor of staking for interest or RC delegations is not out of the question. However, let's suppose that one or several SMTs are succesful.Wouldn't it prove to be more logical to port that model to steem instead of eliminating the rewards pool? We may need to eliminate the ditribution of steem to content creators sometime in the future but I don't see that happening unless we have something to take it's place.
I don't think it would be for the best. I believe many of us are beginning to see that the POB system is best made for small communities and not as an all-purpose voting system. As a previous Steemit blog article brought up, it is not fair to subject art communities to the stake-weighted voting of a whale that does not appreciate art, while an all-purpose stake-weighted system does this.
Let me put it another way, frequently the people interested in something like a stake-weighted curation system leveraging crypto would be crypto investors. In the case of Bitcoin fans, a very large amount of these members are red meat eating capitalists that might not value vegan recipes. In this case, it would be better if we could separate the vegan fans from the steak-loving capitalists that are only interested in curating moonboy predictions. So, the main solution to this problem is to allow for many smaller, sovereign POB systems.
As far as managing different groups of people this can be addressed with the implementation of communities using hivemind but you are probably right if we consider that value distribution using a single token can be problematic if one community has way more stake than another one. I still think that we need another vehicle to distribute steem to as many hands as possible other than just with block rewards and "interest". Maybe we can reduce the rewards pool to a minimum and just allocated to steem related content.