Great and relevant thoughts given the latest experiences we have had. While I think we are headed the right direction, I completely agree the need to create a way to incentivize retention and development over a longer term here on the platform. I see you mention it various times and it immediately had me thinking about the Dash treasury function which allocates a certain percentage of each block reward (or reward pool in our case) to fund projects that would result in promotion or value addition to the protocol. This could be here by the rewards pool or by the dust that remains in many iterations of the process on Steem. This could provide a pool to attend to the needs of projects, developers and communities that focus on adding value to the ecosystem over time. One big question would how it is governed and while the witnesses is the obvious answer, we know that more is needed to hold them accountable for their decisions as seen in the latest Hard Fork. When I think of Corporate Governance, there are typically committees composed of Board members that would focus on these issues. A potential solution would be to increase the amount of top witnesses and create sub committees of witnesses to focus on areas of concern like code, promotion, retention, etc. of which the funds established could be used to support. Just a simple thought that came to mind as I read your post. Thanks for sharing!