Thank you for this great response, a new follower you have :)

@krnel writes really well, as do you and I can see why you've picked up on his work.

I think that marks a decent into the more purely 'rent-seeking' cycle that @krnel alerted me to. My worry is that once we go past a certain proportion of SP being tied up in bidbots, the associated 'regulatory capture' of witnesses will mean that nothing will change until something really drastic happens to the steem economy. Maybe we aren't quite there yet, or maybe we've already passed that point.

Tough to say, I did report that in-excess of 30 million SP is voting x10 a day if you collate all the Bid-bots SP today. That is rather hefty, but I don't know if it's past the point of no return yet.

https://steemit.com/steem/@abh12345/who-will-create-the-content-for-the-bid-bots-to-promote-in-the-future

Check the links at the bottom of the post - these are my more recent bid-bot contributions.

I agree that the steem ecosystem won't hit its full potential, or even survive, if things continue the way they are. Will hf20 and SMTs (whenever they actually happen) fix this, or just kick the can down the road? Too soon to say.

I think a fair few of us are pinning some hopes here - and why not - the idea behind SMT is totally excellent.

I do suspect @ned is aware of these problems - but this is based on him liking my reply to one of his tweets, so I wouldn't get too excited.

I would secretly be hella excited (but not tell anyone) if that happened to me :)

Thanks for the reply, good stuff!