Steem Town Hall - ALL-COMMUNITY-MEMBERS-WELCOME

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Hey guys, thanks for your help on the post yesterday. I took the information gathered and I asked my attorney, Bull Blockchain Law, to put together a legal opinion. The question is: Did the statements from Steemit Inc over the last four years constitute anything binding? When Tron purchased Steemit do those binding things carry on to the new owners? Are there any legal precedents of actions by entities like the SEC in cases like this?

We'll see what they say. In the end it'll likely just be one opinion. My guess would be that Tron would then work with attorneys to get an opposite opinion. Ultimately neither opinion would really matter because in the USA a court and jury would would decide what has merits. This request to the attorneys isn't meant for the Steem community and the Tron community to try to determine in a court of law what would happen here as that's entirely opposite to the spirit of crypto. What I am attempting to demonstrate is that when the Steem witnesses temporarily froze Justin's assets we didn't do it maliciously and it wasn't targettin Justin. It was targetted stake that was encumbered with these promises.. We believe that the owners of Steemit Inc have purchased assets with liability to this community.

It's like they bought a house with liens on it. The liens don't vanish just simply because new owners are present.

This whole conversation is bothersome to many people and essential to others. Whether something is legal or not matters very little to many crypto enthusiasts and anarchists in the community because legality and morality are rarely the same. However; it can be essential to people in this space, especially businesses and communities that are interested in doing business with crypto. How can they operate here if the laws they're used to have no sway?

My perspective of the history of this "Fiasco"

  1. Ned Scot and Dan Larimer started Steemit. They made posts announcing it on bitcointalk. They started with mining to avoid Steem being a security in the laws in effect at the time. They centralized the stake of Steem through mining. They promised routinely over the next four years that the stake Steemit INC made would be non-voting, used to onboard users, and develop the blockchain ecosystem.
  2. Steemit Inc used those funds in that manner for four years. How well the funds were used is highly questionable because Steem has incredible technology that can actually scale and one of the largest communities, but somehow still has one of the worst marketcaps. That said, on the 14th of February Ned Sold all of this stake to Justin and pocketed the cash (exit scam?). This leaves the witnesses in a terrible position. This whole chain agrees to operate on Steem with the Steemit stake, but only because of the conditions and limitations put on that stake. If the new owners don't honor the promises that the company has made then this could be disasterous.
  3. Witnesses attempted to communicate with Justin and Tron, but our communications were ignored. In secret witnesses gathered to enact a soft fork to temporarily freeze Steemit's assets to ensure they stay non-voting, and are used to onboard users and develop the chain.
  4. Justin and Tron, still not communicating, and only seeing this action as hostile attempt by malicious "hackers", colluded with Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex to have exchanges stake custodial funds and use them to overturn Steem's consensus witnesses. Once Tron/Steemit took over the witness positions they put in a new softfork and left 20 sock puppet witnesses in charge of governance on the chain.
  5. Through direct action witnesses and the Steem community have managed to retake consensus, and then lose consensus to these sock puppet accounts as various factions come together.
  6. In particular a strong voting block from the Korean Community called Proxy.Token is currently maintaining a balance such that neither side is capable of hardforking the chain without the consent of the other side.
  7. Because Huobi and Binance staked users funds, and because there's a 13 week unstaking process they're extremely anxious to get funds unlocked and are pushing for hardfork 23 of the Steem blockchain to enable them to unstake faster to remove the customer funds that they froze when they decided to stake custodial funds so they could overturn elected witnesses.
  8. Allowing this hardfork temporarily could be negotiated between the duly elected witnesses of the steem blockchain and Tron/Justin in good faith, but in the long term these changes can't stay as this 13 week powerdown is precisely the thing that has kept exchanges from acting in bad faith and unethically with custodial funds in the past.
  9. The devs working for steemit have mostly quit. The remaining staff have technical knowledge but have never lead a hardfork of steem. Hardforking steem is actually fairly challenging and even under optimal and voluntary conditions we've stopped the chain more than once. That said, we the duly elected witnesses of steem, sucessfully navigated Steem hardforking 21 times already. The staff on hand at steemit are not equipped to manage hardforking this blockchain especially as they have 20 witness nodes all on one server. If anything goes wrong they could fork the chain in error or simply stall the chain. I contend they aren't qualified to manage the fork itself. Any actions by Tron/Steemit that lead to the chain freezing would be devasting as they are drastically unprepared to handle the consequences of a chain freeze.

Moving forward

There's many ways this could progress. In the quantum world until things have been decided all possibilities exist. We could find a path forward that's hostile and bad for all parties. We can forge a path where the steem blockchain halts and multiple forks go forward. We could find ourselves in a path where more exchanges chime in. We could find a path forward that has both Steem and Tron participating together. We could forge a path forward where tron and the Steem community go separate ways. We could find a path forward where Tron finds a way to walk away from Steem.

There's a lot of possibilities, but ultimately which path we take starts by communicating and building bridges. I'll be in the peace, abundance, and liberty network discord channel with hundreds of steemians and potentially hundreds of new friends. You can also listen at https://mspwaves.com/watch. We'll be there from noon eastern (2hours from now) through 5pm eastern.

All are welcome, all opinions are welcome, not all deliveries of opinions are welcome

I'd like to note that everyone is welcome to share their opinion in the Discord group. We have no censorship regarding sharing how you think things should be resolved or what led up to conflicts. What is enforced though is that we balance Peace AND Liberty. If you can't provide your opinion with respect for the person you're disagreeing with we'll censor your DELIVERY until you can manage to frame the exact same opinion in a respectful manner.

All opinions are welcome. All deliveries of those opinions are not. The motto of the group is do no harm, but take not shit. Kindly abide by the very simple rules.



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41 comments
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First you need to find common ground - something both sides agree with - and build on that. Everyone wants to get money and fame (but everyone follows different paths) - outline a common road and fix it in the agreement.

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(Edited)

"There's a lot of possibilities, but ultimately which path we take starts by communicating and building bridges."

Agreed! Let's find a way for Tron to save face and the community (I've been here almost 4 years!) to survive and thrive!

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Agreed !!

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Interesting times to be sure!

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Way better storyline than Star Wars!! These are real world Emperors & a resistance.
@aggroed playing both Princess Leia and Chewbacca.

C3PO & R2D2 have resigned.

What lays in store for our heroes?

Rogue Squadron Standing By.
Red 4 Standing By.

Don't get too cocky kid.

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It is unbelievably shameful the way the exchanges acted to interfere with our blockchain governance.

Posted using Partiko Android

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(Edited)

Thanks @aggroed for your detailed and in-depth (and most importantly rational) analysis of this mess. Unfortunately I'm not as well versed on these crypto details as I would like.
What regs cover issues like this? Does the SEC have sway over coins like Steem? Binance and Huobi are both foreign based so how does that affect us. So many questions and issues to sort through but often it takes some sort of disaster to make something better. This disaster had brought the community together to fight an enemy. Anything JS or the associated exchanges say will never be trusted going forward. Hopefully we will prevail.

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Go ahead dear !! We are with our Witnesses !!

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(Edited)

burn the neon green the second the community witnesses are back in control

why would anybody trust justin after the stunt he and his cronies already pulled? he has shown his stripes

as long as that neon green stake is out there, steem is a centralized concept

[edit -self-voted for visiblity]

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(Edited)

Sorry bit of a captain hindsight here

Was it not possible to somehow ( sorry I am not a technically advanced person) hardcode the non governance clause to the steemit stack of steem?

If it was possible but wasn't done and presuming there was no clause in the deal between Justin Sun and steemit Inc shouldn't Justin Sun have the right to manage the assets he purchased?

Same as the steem witnesses can decide to hardfork Into a new chain( I hope it doesn't go this way, i think both sides can benefit from the current situation but everybody will loose out long term if it goes that way.)?

Would the communities react the same way if Justin Sun bought the amount of steem on the market to be in same position or would the price increase and money whales would make as a result sweeten the situation to a point where not much would be said which would then direct to the real issue here which I kind of read between the lines in a lot of posts
Steemit Inc cashing in and being the only beneficial for work carried out mainly by witnesses and the community.( Which did so knowing about the existence of the steemit stack and of the possible future implications in case of change of ownership etc of steemit Inc)

I haven't been much on steem for over a year
I didn't like where it was heading at that time came back to have a look as a lot of noise about in the cryptosphere curious how things gone since then? Last time i asked a question like this had my account destroyed by a despotic witness so accusations of the site now turning towards tyranny well just had to have a look around.

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A legal resolution will take too much time unfortunately. 😔

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Ok if I win the lottery I just buy the stake of mr sun... so everyone wish that I win that lottery. 😉

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(Edited)

Very reasonable thoughts! Thanks a lot.

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They promised routinely over the next four years that the stake Steemit INC made would be non-voting, used to onboard users, and develop the blockchain ecosystem.

In the world of crypto, promise should be reflected in the code. I just don't understand why you top witnesses did not do anything for the past 4 years. Anyway, it's not my business.

I do want to know who is freedom/pumpkin. For a long time, his vote can decide whether a witness can go to top 20. Why nobody talking about it? How did he get these STEEMs, premined or purchased?

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They didn't want to talk about it because he was the only account keeping them up there. Steem has always been centralized by freedom/pumpkin. The best witnesses are not at the top. Only the bidbot owners and greedy community owners. Just so one guy (Justin) decided to do the same thing now, it's unacceptable. Ironical.

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Totally agree.

Now the market cap of Steem is equivalent to a penthouse in Manhattan. It's amazing to watch a billionaire and dozens of witnesses fighting in this penthouse.

The penthouse was broken. Nobody cares as long as they can suck blood from it. Now an investor comes. They acted quickly to lock his property. Funny.

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Only the bidbot owners and greedy community owners ...

Not only, but, yes, there is some truth in your comment.

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Things don't need to be anymore ugly than it already is. If we can allow the exchanges get their funds out, that would be fine. We'd win their trust and support, and then negotiate with Justin towards helping us develop the chain. The way I see it, Ned is the one with the money. He sold those stake. Justin should go after him too.

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they can get it back in 13 weeks like everyone else.

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My point exactly... this could also lead to some of these prominent exchanges delisting STEEM if we have them wait for 13 weeks. Making an exception for just the exchanges is a good compromise.

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Agreed 🤝 continue

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It's like they bought a house with liens on it. The liens don't vanish just simply because new owners are present.

This.

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I don't know if things would have been different if all of this was done off-line prior to the announcement of the sale. To my thinking, having major players hash things out in private first might have been a better way to go so that the nuisance of public opinion doesn't tarnish all the egos involved.
At any rate, that's what I would have done. I would have got Ned, Justin, and the witnesses in a private meeting before going public with the sale.
The optics on all of this is lousy...And I don't see how it's serving anyone, really, and if it ends up destroying the chain...well, fcuk!

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Did Tron Overlord Justin Sun use any Steem which they didn't own to vote for witnesses? If not, then they at least didn't steal, legally speaking.

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Level head, facts presented,peace and respect demanded. We have great leaders and I'm glad our voted witnesses are vested in speaking for the community. Thanks for the update with succinct material.

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법이란 나라마다 틀리겠지만 한국의 민법을 보면 물건이 넘어가면 채권은 자연적으로 깨지게 됩니다. 구속력을 잃는다는 말입니다. 애초에 구속력이 있도록 법적으로 효력이 발생하는 장치를 해 놓았으면 모르되 그렇지 않으면 그냥 말로 한 약속은 아무 의미가 없을수도 있습니다. 공증된 서면 계약서나 스마트 컨트랙트 계약이 되어 있다면 걱정할것이 없는데 아직 보여지는것은 아무것도 없으며 스팀은 스마트 컨트랙트는 고사하고 아직도 smt도 구현이 안되고 있습니다. 증인들은 다운 보팅이나 보팅봇 돌리는데 열심히 하지 말고 기술 개발이나 스팀 홍보에 열심히 했어야 합니다. 말도 안되는 논리로 다운 보팅이나 불놀이에 적극 가담한 증인들은 이번 기회에 증인에서 퇴츨되고 열심히 한 증인들은 다시 올려서 스팀의 미래를 열어가야 한다고 봅니다. 감사합니다.

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We love Tron community and especially those people behind. What we don't like is how their leader is acted.

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Steemit stake could be considered commons and Steemit owners just have custodial rights. They are free to use it but not devoid of responsibility while using it. They cannot cause us undue harm while using their property.

In anycase, ownership is 2/3 the law. In crypto probably a lot more. I don't think the moral highground is possible in any case.

Just keep doing your best to get as much of a victory as you can. Nothing is 100% clear.

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