SCT Crux and the Upcoming Fork.
Dear Diary,
It's day four of the Tron occupation of Steem, and the balance of power is tenuous at best. The exchanges have the power to vote the sock puppets back into the super majority but politics will not allow it. However, Poloniex is still supporting the coup with 2.3M credits.
The Sun's path of least resistance lies in the #sct community. Some are on record as claiming they don't care about decentralization, and just want to get a return on their investment like Mr. Sun. Others are very frustrated with downvoting and want to see it removed from the platform.
This has caused Mr. Sun to engage in extremely pandering politics, offering the sct community anything and everything under The Sun if they will vote in his sock-puppets to push a hardfork that will make the exchanges liquid again.
I fear I have made a fool of myself. Last night at three in the morning I joined the SCT discord because The Sun was there trying to butter them up. He is a very charismatic silver-tongued snake, and he taught me a valuable lesson. His false charm an charisma filled me with rage and I got myself banned from the discussion. I wonder how many other enemies he has defeated in this manner. He is a master at work. I fear for my homeland, and prepare for the exodus to a stronger castle, if that's what it comes to.
That's enough of that.
Can you believe it's only March 6? The day we were originally supposed to meet with Sun to figure this all out? He was supposed to have hardforked our chain already and the exchanges should currently be enjoying a 3 day powerdown. So much has happened in such a short order of time.
Sun was expecting to attend this meeting with all the power. Now that meeting isn't happening and he is almost fully reliant on trying to convince the Korean community that he's on their side. He will offer them literally anything to get the super majority back.
This is an honor issue.
Binance will not vote against us, and the same is also likely true for Huobi. The deal was they would get the ninja-mine unfrozen and he would do the rest. Think about how much work Justin Sun has had to do because of this entire situation. He even said it himself:
"For big guy like me
Steemit is nothing
Its the smallest thing for all things I do
Even the head of steemit doesnt even match to talk to him
If its not because the money is locked
I wouldnt even spend time dealing with you guys"
- Justin Sun (Tron) @justinsunsteemit
Yeah obviously the translation is terrible, but the message is clear. Justin Sun thinks we are a Podunk chain not worth his time and he's a big shot. There is also another example that I can't find at the moment and I'll post later. It's very clear that he's pandering to the community in any way that he can to get what he wants.
Justin Sun says he just wants to make a return on his investment, but he doesn't actually want to invest in Steem. In fact, he is doing the opposite. He ruined Steemit Inc and the majority have quit. At this point, he is looking to save face and exit as quickly as possible. He will make any promise to that end. He will not uphold them. It's literally impossible for him to do these things (like remove downvotes). Actual community consensus will not allow it.
The hardforks
Justin Sun is so close to a hardfork he can taste it. He has extreme tunnel vision right now. He doesn't understand that this community will not let him push a hardfork onto our chain (even if he has hostile takeover consensus).
If Sun manages to push a hardfork this will be the final nail in the coffin; the one where this community says enough is enough and they fork away to a sister chain. Now there are 2+ chains and everyone in the community will have to choose where to go. It's very clear that not many will follow Sun, leaving him and everyone who follows him with nothing.
Worst case scenario (scorched earth).
This is the fork that punishes everyone that attacked us. Any account who voted for the puppet witnesses will have their stake deleted. This includes Steemit, Binance, Poloniex, Huobi, and others.
If it comes down to this, I support the Scorched Earth hardfork and think it's the best thing for the network. By deleting/freezing the funds on the exchanges, the Steem blockchain will stay in the Limelight for years. Lawsuits against the exchanges will fund themselves in the form of the stake that was deleted/frozen.
Exchanges will have to explain why they thought it was okay to lock investor funds in a smart contract to vote on governance only to attack the chain and cause those same funds to be destroyed. The optics on this angle are legendary. Can you imagine the headlines?
"Steem takes out Justin Sun and three exchanges in one fell swoop."
I really can't even imagine how bullish that would be. Perhaps you're thinking this is an extreme measure: to delete the stake of investors just because their money was on the exchanges. First of all, to that I would say "not your keys, not your crypto".
However, more importantly, this action would likely force the exchanges to compensate investors out of their own pockets. For example, they'd have to pay investors some amount of Tether depending oh how much Steem they had on the exchange. Even better, the exchanges might be forced into buying "real Steem" and giving it to the defrauded investors. We are in a position to delete millions of coins and force exchanges to front the bill.
The scorched earth worst case scenario is the best for Steem and the worst for Sun and the exchanges in my opinion. We need to punish the exchanges publicly for attacking us. This is personal.
Less contentious fork.
This would be the fork that only deletes the stake that centralized the chain. Exchanges would be forgiven and only Steemit Inc would lose its stake. I would only support this fork if the majority of the community supported it. The exchanges need to be held accountable. They haven't even started a powerdown yet. Their intentions are known.
Other variations
There are certainly some other ways this could go down, but for the most part Sun is going to lose no matter what. The only way Sun can get any value out of this situation is if he completely surrenders and gives us the chain back. This would generate a lot of community sympathy and deleting his stake would become impossible. If he pushes the hardfork he will lose everything, and the exchanges could very well lose everything as well.
Conclusion
I implore the SCT community to look at the evidence of this situation. If they help Sun push a hardfork onto our chain with zero consensus everyone loses, but this community will make sure he loses more. There is no possible outcome where Sun's fork will have any value. The community creates the value, and Sun doesn't have a community, he has the ninja mined stake. That is all.
He doesn't even have the developers to back up his promises. It's truly a sight to behold him so effortlessly lie through his teeth while inspiring so much positivism and charisma. Scammers like Sun are going to be banished from all positions of power when crypto goes mainstream because of actions like this. He can fool a lot of people, but he can't fool the ones that believe in the tenants of decentralization.
This community has rallied together so well I have absolute confidence in the network at this point even if we have to fork to a sister chain. We've already won, it's just a matter of if we get our original chain back or not. We don't even have to change our name; we've already got the support of other big exchanges in this movement, and Sun's chain will be worthless.
Fuck man!
I just love you rn!
Let's become even stronger guys!
Now I can have good sleep :)
The SCT community holds a lot of stake, but is a tiny circle of users. What they seem to be counting on is that JS will take them to the moon - he is going to dump. They also seem to think that the rest of the community that is posting thousands of posts daily is going to keep doing so - no, they are going to dump also. And while the stake that JS has is very large, the invested community holds more. That means 340 million Steem is going to dump on the exchanges nearly simultaneously... how does that price look?
A sister chain can do as it pleases, start fresh or fork whoever they want. Perhaps on a sister chain, the Stake of those who supported the centralization of the chain and the subsequent destruction of the token value, will go to funding the new SPS.
I say cut out the stake in those accounts that vote for the Snake in proportion to voting power used on them.
I think people will see how fast I can write 1500 words when needed now :D
lol
Shits going to get real interesting on here soon. It’s been a wild ride this past month. Maybe this is a blessing in disguise, for us to finally be able to deal with the Steemit stake?
You nailed it. I had to chuckle when reading this.
The real value of the Steem blockchain is in the community, the people, their content and their relationships.
The community is rock solid. When Sun bought the ninja mined stake, the possibility of the other stakeholders coming together and wresting control back from him was considered impossible by some users. I was told it was impossible by "realists". It turns out they were wrong. The only thing that tipped the scales in Sun's favor were the exchanges.
I imagine if a sister chain were created, that chain could get listed on some exchanges without difficulty. The price might take a hit but that would be temporary. The nuclear option of forking out the stakes of Poloniex, Binance and Huobi would serve the new chain well. Notably, Bittrex, Upbit and all the other trustworthy exchanges would of course keep their tokens. The original chain would remain a dictatorship run by Sun and it would most likely be abandoned.
At last, the ninja mined stake would be gone. Steemit's engineers could be hired to finish testing SMTs through SPS. It might take a while but otherwise all the pieces are in place. OpenSeed will be finished no matter what. Steem would finally fulfill its original vision.
I would continue creating content out of a simple desire to make the thing work. Sun and his corporatism are a cancer that should have no place in this space.
sounds good and powerfull like "fuck yea" when reading it. but when you think about it disowning exchanges is basically what communism is.
hence may i suggest the social democratic alternative, freezing their stakes, or a transaction sanction, until they resume their non-political role by casting this function in the Steem API:
https://developers.steem.io/apidefinitions/#broadcast_ops_decline_voting_rights
Similar to real world sanctions, it would economically pressure them to release their weapons of blockchain destruction. This should be uniformly applied to all parties operating with the finances of other people, including businesses that were not acting maliciously. Otherwise this would just be a political purge of ideology. This though may or may not displease witnesses like @blocktrades, hence not all witnesses are likely to go along with this idea. Its certainly though a possible outcome within the event space of possible future outcomes.
Having clear rules and customs vs having a majority purge a minority that displeases the majority, distinguishes us from bullies.
Quite right. It makes a lot more sense to freeze all assets rather than destroy them. This is especially true for the exchanges that attacked us, considering that is technically other people's money.
I really enjoy reading your diaries. I am glad we align so much in our understanding. Thank you for all of the work you do for decentralization. Please suggest witnesses.
I disagree with the scorched earth.
I think we need to fix one problem at a time.
And right now if we hold fast to the 13 week powerdown it will force the bad exchanges to power down AND buy steem from the open market or Justin. The price goes up!
The best part is, the only thing we need to do to accomplish this is hold the line and say NO!
We can talk about fixing other stuff when we can breathe again.
Besides scorched earth will look bad in the eyes of the crypto world.
This made me LOL and give you the vote.
I agree, the scorched Earth approach would make a lot of ppl mad. I still think it would be the best thing for the network, but only of it didn't cause another fork that split the community further.
In all likelihood freezing exchange accounts would be a temporary measure, just to show we mean business and make sure they can't get off scot free.
obviously the best outcome is to retake the chain.
That's my point they, the exchanges accounts are already "frozen" with the powerdown problem of 13 weeks.
Temporary pain AND it forces them to start the powerdown.
We don't have to DO anything more than hold the line and say NO!
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 5/10 - need recharge?)