Whilst he has good intentions, and when in the right frame of mind, probably also the necessary skills, I think elfspice has struggled to properly frame the problem he seeks to address, or at least to articulate it clearly and consistently. He's made no secret of his issues with drink, which might have some bearing on some of these things.
I don't share his opinion about the 'pre-mining' issue, I can't judge, either legally or morally, whether the founders and friends should have their huge stakes.
I am concerned about the impact of self-voting and would like to see the curation percentage increase to 50%, as that would significantly reduce it. I wasn't around when it was previously at that level though, so don't have that experience to draw on. I'd also like to see the power-down period extended as it once was, but again, I'm not sure why it was changed. I'm guessing it was to attract more investment, and raise the Steem price in the short-term.
Recent technical development and plans from Steemit have slightly eased my worries about scalability, at least until the whole thing migrates to EOS, in a structure where the comment data is moved out of the blockchain into more efficient storage ;)
I wish elfspice the best with his project if he decides to pursue it, and if he does rejoin this community, to the interesting and open technical discussion he adds to the platform, from which I've already learnt quite a lot.
Thank you so much for adding your balanced perspective, I really appreciate it.