Imho, protocol changes shouldn't be decided just by witnesses. There aren't enough witnesses for that not to be a really flawed way of doing it. It makes sense for nodes to be the main voters in bitcoin/ethereum, but doesn't make sense for Steem, since the purpose of Steem is the Dapps built on top of it, which are meant to be inclusive social communities, fostering interaction. To just change back and forth based on what witnesses (who, might I add, have completely different incentives potentially than other people) vote for isn't the right way to do it.
RE: Witness consensus status to fix the actual steem’s economic flows (ENG)