Thank you for the reply, just to be clear: API nodes serve data from blockchain to services? If there aren't any public ones, any service wishing to use Steem blockchain would need to run their own node?
I'm glad to hear Steemit Inc is taking steps towards minimizing these costs, as a long term investor in blockchains, I expect the ones I'm active within to be running for forever, or at least 100 years. Otherwise there's no point if the system can't handle that.
Should we require top 5-10 witnesses to run public api nodes and increase their pay if needed, after Steemit Inc has done their upkeep reductions?