While I don’t think 7 are enough. Could 30 are way too much? It could create a very profitable farming source for someone who has enough SP to control who will even make it into the top 10 let alone the top 50. What is there to stop them from saying running 30 witness accounts themselves? At that point, comes how cheap per witness can you run it per month and is that profitable. Then it is simply a time thing running it for 5 to 10 years.
They would have more than enough voting power at that point to run an information war on trending that they are our savors and if you just proxy your witness votes to them why every month you would get x amount of upvotes in value based on your rshares to their cause. They could even start their own Dapps fund it with upvotes and offer higher votes if you have a proxy to them.
Let’s face it there are a lot of investor accounts on steemit who would sell anything for the right price even more so if they are profiting from it in the form of more coins (short term thinking). If they want to stay invested for 10 years it does not matter for a while what the current price is. All that will matter to them is how much they can amasses for next 5 to 8 years.
I went from having 30 witnesses before HF20 down to just 15. That to me is a more manageable number. It allows enough control without a single account dictating everything. Everyone is different that just a personal choice I've made.
While it does mean a single person can buy into the top 20 cheaper than it is currently. That can already, in theory, be done with the amount of liquid Steem out there. Besides even in times like these where there very few options to even buy Steem from someone. With enough wealth, and connections they can just make the trades without an exchange.
Add that into current situation where there are massive accounts that have never said a thing on the blockchain that vote. That no one even knows anything about them outside of what I can only assume are a couple of people at best.
Most people have their price point they are willing to sell Steem at. Maybe they will never admit it but the higher it goes the more sellers you are going to have. Same goes if the price takes a massive dump. People panic and want to sell out as it's not working for them either.
Either way, we have to think long term what is the best number of witness. Perhaps I’m wrong and there something built in that somehow stops a single person from just setting up a bunch of accounts and running them as a witness. I think that asking a lot for what goes on already on Steemit.
Would be interesting if someone with the skillset to run what happens if everyone had only 15 witness and all those people kept their highest ranked witness. Would we have a situation where $1 million buy-ins would get you into the top 20?
Frankly, there are just too many unknowns. While 30 are not ideal as it stands I don’t see why it needs to be changed one way or another. It has kept the blockchain running more or less as it is. While we don’t always agree we seem to be moving forward even if it seems at a snail pace. As it stands it is just not very economical either to buy into the top 10 let alone 20 witnesses. Unless you were a company that was already profiting other ways off the blockchain; such as, using upvotes to fund payroll along with accepting Steem as payment to further fund development in that way.