my totally unimportant view of this. we could make a sister chain or he could sign a contract. if he really does not want to be the ruler of the chain he will not have a problem with it. contract that he will not use his stake for voting or witness manipulation. That he will continue development of steem for x time and finish SMT. apology for calling as all Hackers. No more crazy talk about steem coin swap and migration. Also their plan of development. All signed and checked by the lawyers. That would be a hard fork with no hard forks. Thik this would be ok from both sides.
Also important thing. talking to ex steemit employers. Do they want to work with steemit on development. they know the chanin the best.
As for exchanges, i don't know, i would like to see them sweat for a bit, but i think part of that pushing the meeting early was the pressure from exchanges.