I have been told anyone can fork steem if they want. Steemit.inc is not the only developers on the block chain, nor the only ones with a development team. steempeak has been talking lately about wanting to present a HF proposal after the steemit SMT hardfork was done with. So there is at least one group with a development team. Splinterlands has a team of developers, I am not sure they would want to migrate to a centralized system where they could be charged for every micro transaction done in their game, (we will just have to wait and see).

We will see if the top 20 witnesses really are in the back pocket of steemit.inc or not. As a few have pointed out Tron does not need them after all to run the Tron block chain. I saw on the Tron site they have less than 1,000 nodes, I am not sure how many nodes are part of the steem block chain.

My only block chain/crypto experience is what I have read and seen on the steem block chain so some of my thoughts are likely pretty wrong, but I do like speculation and the hysteria it can cause in some, the knee jerk reaction of others, and the total fear of the future for some. This is going to be one Epic Weekend, and I can not wait for the Monday Night couch potato quarterback reviews.