It's been two years since the last STEEM hardfork. I've been silent on the initial proposal for HF105, but I think it's time to weigh in.

As you know, the main change to consensus is the removal of all account creation operations. This includes:

• account_create - introduced at genesis
• account_create_with_delegation - introduced in HF17.
• account_create_with_expiration - introduced in HF32
• account_create_with_timelock - introduced in HF51

I understand the rationale behind the Full Adoption argument and the issues of abuse surrounding these operations. But I feel like their removal is like throwing the baby out with the bath-water.

The developers claim they do not know exactly what will happen when these operations are dropped. They say they cannot fully model the economics. We'll still have the account exchanges and that should allow new users to join the platform without account creation.

A vast majority of accounts created these days are controlled by account exchanges and rented by individuals. These exchanges get to delegate stake and dictate governance, to a large extent. Users only get a posting key from the exchanges so they can post and vote. The exchanges get the actual payout and take a large cut.

The testnet has supposedly proven that these operations are no longer needed. I'm not so sure about that. Testnet has always been a contrived platform, especially after the darkwitness takeover. Testnet is nothing but a 4chan playground these days. Of course they'd benefit from the removal of account creation. The testnet account exchanges do not fully model how it will roll out on mainnet.

The developers also claim that once these operations are dropped and account exchanges lose enough stake, they'll reimplement account creation under a completely new model.

My opinion is that removal of these operations will only make the situation worse. At the moment, there is still a way to undercut the account exchanges. But if we remove account creation, this undercut advantage will be gone too.

I really think we need to let this play out further, as is. Therefore, I am formally withdrawing my support for HF105.

Profile Creation Flowchart

_{This one goes out to xxCrazyPixie1987xx}