Ain't No Sunshine
As you probably already know, Steemit Inc was purchased by Justin Sun and Tron out of the blue. This acquisition came with a lot of mixed and confusing messages from Tron’s side, about token swaps and about Steem, not Steemit becoming part of Tron. The lack of distinction made the community and the witnesses uneasy. What? Does Tron mean to dissolve Steem? Does Justin think that instead of Steemit Inc the company, he has purchased the entire blockchain? As there was no clear communication between Justin Sun, his team and the consensus witnesses despite them trying, the temporary soft fork 22.2 was issued as a purely protective measure and in hopes to start a dialogue with Tron on what their intentions are, especially when it comes to the past promises involving the notorious ninja mine stake.
It quickly became clear that Tron was not informed by Ned Scott the former CEO of Steemit Inc about the fact that the ninja mine stake was originally partly intended for the support of the development, covering costs, and growth of the community. After 22.2 Tron responded to the invitation to talk with the consensus witnesses about the future of Steem, but not long after they seized the governance power of the blockchain with help of exchanges - Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex who used the customer’s funds (not your keys, not your STEEM) to vote in 20 of Tron’s sock puppet witnesses after Tron reached out to exchanges and lied that Steem, the blockchain is attacked by hackers, trying to nullify 65 millions of STEEM, which was never really on the table as an option or supported by the supermajority of the consensus witnesses ever, even though there were many opportunities to do so before during 4 years Steem has existed.
As of now while I am writing this post, the Steem community has fought back fiercely on twitter, combating lies, the name-calling the consensus witnesses as hackers, and the false narratives spread by Justin Sun, Tron, and Ned Scott. The core team of Steemit Inc: Andrew Levine the head of communications, Michael Vandeberg senior blockchain developer, and blockchain engineer Steve Gerbino have resigned. Many big names in the crypto sphere are watching this play out and some have commented and even are rooting for us - Andreas Antonopoulos, Vitalik Buterin, John McAfee, Daniel Larimer. If you are not out there tweeting a storm, time to set up an account now. Ironically, this centralized platform has proven to be the most useful to get in touch with people and media who help spread the word of madness that we all now have to deal with whether we like it or not.
So far the community has pulled it together and voted 10 consensus witnesses back in top 20 and two exchanges - Binance and Huobi are standing down and powering down, thanks to the community restlessly tweeting about their actions on twitter every day for a week. Yet the battle is far from being won as Tron is continuing to spread lies, attempting to sway the community to support their way, not really negotiating with the consensus witnesses or trying to find a way to move forward, continuing the claims that they have no interest in governance while still running the sock puppet witnesses and adds to their power trying to force out the consensus witnesses who got back in.
Actions speak louder than words! While here on Steem they promise us buckets of gold at the end of the rainbow, on twitter and other places they accuse our witnesses acting maliciously and try to save their face in the eyes of the crypto community by spreading lies using multiple accounts.
Yes, Justin Sun came to us with the big bags of money, but is it really worth the price of decentralization? Some might argue that Steem was never truly decentralized. True, our Satoshi never lost their keys, they just made promises that weren’t kept. Yet our governance was decentralized without ninja mine voting for 4 years until Tron showed up, fooling the exchanges into helping them out.
Your witness votes matter no matter how big or small, go cast them if you haven’t already! I hope we survive this one way or another! And if you are wondering how to tell them apart, https://steemd.com/witnesses marks Tron’s sock puppets in yellow.
Song of the day: Glass Animals - Your Love (Déjà Vu)
#posh is still very posh even during takeover https://twitter.com/ChainedGalaxy/status/1236883536411611136
Yes, the governance was decentralised all this time, though the spectre of potential centralization was present. That spectre reared its ugly head.
It has really snowballed into complete disaster. I think I've aged some years in one week xD
You will soon be a silver fox :)
I have intentionally limited my involvement in some areas that I might feel, but can't actually affect much.
Would be an interesting look haha.
That is probably the smart thing to do for sanity reasons. Will try to chill more this week, but will see how it goes.
Take a series of self-portraits of reaction shots to the daily news :D
decentralization is a sliding scale, and prior (old top 20) governance was certainly more decentralized than 20 puppet witnesses controlled by one entity. But I think also it is a huge stretch to say that governance was truly decentralized in any meaningful sense before. On the scale of decentralization, witnesses being elected by at most a couple dozen large stakes is so close to 20 puppet witnesses as to be practically indistinguishable when you zoom out IMO. Changes to the voting rules are badly needed. They were badly needed prior and the need has only grown more dire. Steem has never been decentralized, the initial stake distribution started us out on a terrible foot in that regard and the reward pool payout mechanism has been too easily gamed the entire time to achieve any really meaningful progress toward decentralization. The biggest factor in evening out stake distribution has been whales getting out of Steem by dumping their stake, which unfortunately just opened up the exact vulnerability that was exploited RE exchanges holding more Steem than stakeholders have staked on the network.
Yeah, it is a funny old place, but the stake was slowly spreading further out. It is a pity it was used in this way and the exchanges have a fair bit to answer for in my opinion, as I don't think staking coins and voting is their normal order of business.
While I know that only a few accounts had the majority of say, I think that even that was "relatively" decentralized as that stake was often spread across competing individuals and some of those who actually give a crap about Steem.
Interesting times.
!ENGAGE 25
yes agreed on the "relatively" decentralized, and particularly in comparison to Tron takeover. I think one of the saddest things to come out of this was Binance CEO saying that a DPoS blockchain having rules in place to prevent exchanges from voting would be grounds to deny the listing for new applications. This is a very real concern for any DPoS chain, not just Steem. Pretty disappointing to see the largest player in the space say they wouldn't even list a project that had a safeguard in place to prevent exactly the SNAFU we just saw.
Hey @m31, it's good to hear you're feeling better. Hopefully we see you around a little bit more.
Thank you @galenkp! Recovering still, both from the virus and this past week was so intense, very little sleep and a ton of stress, like for so many Steemians out there I'm sure, not to mention the witnesses doing the heaviest lifting.
Yeah, I know...It must be very draining for those doing the heavy-lifting. To be honest I've tried to stay a little insulated by it and simply write content. It is, after all, what I do best. I have a proxy I trust doing my voting and keep apprised of the situation on a basic level. Still, it's been a little stressful. I can only imaging what it's like for those putting in the real work.
Absolutely. Everyone's tired, running on low sleep, and sometimes emotions take over, but we all have to prepare that this battle might take a while. Quite crazy, but is what it is. Will see how this week will turn out. Hopefully some progress? Yet I am skeptical as always and also given how the "negotiations" have gone so far.
I'm hoping things work out, I'd miss steem and those I engage with here if it were to fold. Crossing my fingers is about the only input I have though I'm afraid. :)
Cheers! hug
Seeing some cracks in the community makes me sad, but I hope that in the end we all will find each other again and remain together.
Tron Overlord Justin Sun is ironically stealing our thunder and sun, pun intended.
Same time, the Steem community is doing pretty well with the stormy weather out there in twitterland. I am amazed how much people have managed to accomplish through there.
Exactly. It's a miracle. It's ALIVE!!!! Love it.
The real question is- Do you prefer the Bill Withers or DMX version of Aint no sunshine?
Ahaha, the Bill Withers version is more of my liking :)
Bill withers all the way... tho im a DMX fan and a pure hip hop fan
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Cool as a cucumber? Steem community is pretty cool indeed ^^
one thing I would say, it is not necessarily apparent that Tron/JSun did not know about prior promises as to use of Steemit stake. It is certainly obvious that they felt they did not have to honor them, which is a different matter entirely.
Yea, that is what he claimed though. Might as well have planned this from the start, just don't want to speculate too much until things become more clear.
One thing that indicated that they might have known about this prior, was what Eli said about how she warned them that this might happen (this - freeze of the stake).
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