I know for a fact that the witnesses have zero intention

Good to know...

unless a large enough population mobilizes against them which I don't see happening.

Me neither... One correction here: It's not the size of the population that matters but the number of vests that you can mobilize. That is what drives the witnesses, because your vote for witness only counts as much as you have vests.

I didn't have time to look up the vest structure, which is basically equal to the ownership structure, but I have a hunch that the vast bulk of vests are in the hands of users who don't respond to the SBD issue (or maybe profit too much from it and don't want to change it).

So, I guess the next step would be to look up:

`users` ORDER BY `vests` DESC

;-)