Thanks for the interest and reply jlordc, I know it's quite a lot to take in.

1. yes, the idea is to be open only for members who use steemit in a constructive way. One of them will be the extend in how much they give back to the steemit community. What I had in mind is to set the maximum amount of shares an account can get based on their owned SP. It would make no sense for someone who owns 15SP to get a share to basically support themselves while they are not even in a situation to support others. 1 share for each 40-50SP owned I would set the number at. Shares will also become incactive in case there is a big power down or lease. So someone having 1000SP getting 20 shares who afterwards goes to delegate 900SP to a bid bot will see 18 shares go inactive seeing the worth of those upvotes go all other shareholders. (shares can be sold at any given time though). The idea is really to reward the ones who are on steemit for the long run.

2. once the account reaches 549 SP, 50 shares will become available. the 100 first shares are allready "sold" Level 0 are all inactive shares that will be used to convert minnowshares in the future (more on the sponsorship part will come in a later post). Right now they give extra value to existing shareholders. Level 1 was uses to give out some permanent shares and some test shares to see it it all works properly. Soon some of those shares will be given away in some contests. So level 2 has 50 shares that will become available. even if only 1 of them gets sold the program will still easily meet the minimum requirements of having at leat 10% extra SP in the account. 549SP+3.33SP = 552.33 / 150 shares = 3.6822SP in the account for each share. all the shares not sold will be added to the existing shareholders upvote worth so in that case each share would be worth 549SP+3.33SP = 552.33 / 101 shares = 5.468SP

3. I right now am using Steemauto. The idea is to do it manually. Since it is done in batches and the SP needs to reach a minimum amount in order to open the next level I expect it to all be very managable. The supply is very limited and looking at steembasicincome there is quite the demand for something like this so I expect it not to take too long for a level to be filled. After that it's just a matter of calculating the upvote % of each shareholder, add it in Steemvoter and let the programm run on it's own until the next level is reached. I'm not sure how long it will take but there will always at least be at least 2 weeks in between.

4. Lifetime in as long as the program runs. In case it ever comes to a point where it stops everyone will be able to claim and get back the steem during the 13 week power down period.

I hope this answers your questions!