It might also very well prompt a massive increase in the rate of digging. This digger very likely sped up his digging in response to talk of a fork that would prevent him from digging the rest. If a big increase in the staking rate is proposed, others will likely accelerate their digging as well.
That's OK. I would prefer inflation now over lingering uncertainty.
Instead we should leave well enough alone, stop creating more evidence in support of the law of unintended consequences, and allow confidence to recover. With the damage that is already done that will take some time already, but it can happen.
It's not clear to me how much of the drop in price was due to fear of the digger dumping and how much was due to potential buyers being put off by the talk of a change to the rules. I suspect it's much more the former than the latter, but I know you think the opposite.
1) We don't have to break any promises. "If you owned BTC you may already own CLAM!" stays true. The 4.6 per address that you "may already own!" stays there. We aren't accused of deleting people's property.
No, you will be accused of diluting people's property instead. Congratulations.
True enough. It's impossible to please everyone.
What happens when support subsequently changes after the 50% support is reached? Coins change hands, opinions change and suddenly something that had 50% support last week doesn't this week. This week being an excellent example since apparently 200K+ coins have apparently changed hands.
That's an issue with this CLAMour thing. It's possible to buy votes, in the form of CLAMs. You need 500k CLAMs or so to get 50% support for your petition, so maybe for a million dollars you could get your petition some attention.
The most meaningful proposals will be ones that are ready to implement quickly if supported. Otherwise the voting should continue and the 10K window be viewed as just that, an ongoing "window" into current opinion of stakeholders. Or alternately a second vote can be held at a later date to reaffirm, once an implementation is ready.
This of course won't be an issue for uncontroversial proposals that will get significant support regardless of the time window. It is my hope that stakeholders are enlightened enough to decline to vote for controversial proposals where the inevitable conflict will cause damage to the community even if they personally believe the idea is a good one (and instead work to educate the community such that if the idea really is a good one, support can be achieved). This will force those putting forth a proposal to craft it in a manner that gains overwhelming support instead of trying to use the voting mechanism as a PR tool to legitimize a 51% attack. I'm not entirely optimistic, but we will see.
Yes, "we will see" sums up how I feel about it pretty well.