Deescalating and working towards a mutually beneficial solution

in #stopthepowerdown5 years ago (edited)

Hey Ned,

Thanks for going on air these last couple times. I haven't agreed with all of your statements, but I do have to say you're a lot more natural in this format. It's a nice first step to show that you are personally making an effort to be more communicative and it's a great way for the community to ask you tough questions so the current rift has a chance of healing.

The powerdown

Recently you started a power down on the @steemit account outside the scope of the standard powerdowns you call "programatic selling." Normally you power down 800,000 steem a month to sell and use it to pay for expenses. Now you're powering down 34M steem. This is the note you left when you initiated that 6 days ago:

Moving STEEM to secure wallets. Steemit's STEEM supports our Mission, Vision and Values which are built on Steem and Steemit.com. Our vision is to grow Steemit.com into a vibrant communities web app, expanding the boundaries of community coordination and online discussion by incorporating cryptocurrencies as incentives. The company focuses on sustainability and decentralization by lowering run costs and increasing revenues by increasing stickiness through better homepage and community tools, and while always demanding a secure and safe, client-side signing experience.

One of the central complaints I resonate with and hear frequently is that the 800k steem per month you're spending doesn't seem to help the chain grow. It only crashes the price, lowers our rank on CMC, and community investors are getting pummeled by your choices. It would be one thing if there were more improvements coming and mainstreaming was ongoing, but site usage is down, you sunset the flagship app, and it took a year to build out HF20 at a cost of 10M steem, and we still don't have a great onboarding process. It's unsustainable and unwise for investors to support this.

Concern has escalated for both Steemit Inc and the Steem Community.

Deescalation

I get that it started as a knee jerk reaction to johan's pull request and witnesses abandoning an open conversation with you and choosing instead to migrate to a platform where you are absent. HF21 that your former contractor put together based on HF9 (which was implemented) forks out Steemit's steem. Couple that with witnesses suddenly abandoning you en masse and I get why you could think it's a cause for concern.

I can confirm at this point it wasn't a giant conspiracy when it started, but there's a lot more dissent now.

In light of that I'd like to try to pull all hands off the BIG RED BUTTON.

Please stop the powerdown

Ned, I've said since the very beginning of my journey here that people are the value. My primary goal is to keep this community as tightly knit as possible. All the bitcoin forks have siphoned off value from the main chain. We're on Hardfork 20 and that vast majority have stuck with the primary Steem chain. My sole intention is to make sure that as much of the Steem family stays on one chain as possible.

I don't think I've ever seen stakeholders so mad as I have for the past few weeks. It's gotten to what I'd call an extreme. I've noticed contingents that support a multitude of plans. Here's what I'm seeing out there. These are in chronological order of what various people shared with me.

  1. Fork out Steemit accounts
  2. Start a fork of Steem and fork out their accounts on that
  3. Work cooperatively to solve the problem
  4. Status Quo

I'll talk through those choices a bit down below, but your choice to powerdown @steemit puts the community that literally despises how you've behaved, communicated, and how you've spent the mined stake in an awkward position. The peaceful resolution that involves forking would be to start a fork of Steem, and remove your presence from that. I'll call it Neosteem for now. If you're powering down Steemit and hiding it in exchanges then it jeopardizes the ability of the most outraged to find a peaceful solution that successfully eliminates Steemit from their future.

Your choice to powerdown is literally enhancing their need to leave immediately or fork you out immediately. The powerdown is pouring gasoline on the fire. I'm betting and hoping that you haven't considered this aspect. So, I'm presenting it here and asking you to please #stopthepowerdown. Stopping the power down will let things slow down, cool off, and let calmer heads figure out a mutually agreeable path forward if one exists.

My pledge

If you stop the power down in the very near future and there's still any chance of success of a mutually beneficial way out of this I pledge not to run a hardfork that forks out steemit accounts.

Options on the table

Option 4. Status Quo
I'm absolutely positive that if the status quo remains some of the best witnesses and largest stakeholders will leave Steem. This is directly against my desire for the chain to stay together. On top of that I personally can't consent to the way that the mined stake is being used. It feels like I'm growing Steem Monsters in an uphill battle as the price, userbase of steem, and activity on and off the chain has slowed. I admit some of that is the bear market, but I think Steemit's choices have been critical in how much we're slipping. I personally really need to see changes happening. Ned, you're making some good steps towards communications, but that won't go far enough. If things stay the same this place will fracture, and that's exactly what I'm trying to avoid.

Option 2. Forking Steem without Steemit

I think the most likely scenario if there isn't an accord is people will simply make a fork of steem and not include steemit on that. In the long term I think it will end up being the more successful fork. It'll be more decentralized and have a lot of the incredible talent move towards it. If the current chain does create anything useful it'll be quickly absorbed and then further outpaced than the Steem(it) chain. In the meantime it'll be shitty as a ton of people walk away, the community is ruptured, and we lose the biggest asset we have (people/community). This is the exact opposite of keeping the chain together and is my least favorite option (Status quo essentially leads to this).

Option 1. Fork out Steemit accounts

Forking out Steemit is super contentious and is going to have a shit ton of downfalls. The votes might not be there to make it happen, though if things spiral more they very well could. However; Ned might spin up 20 witnesses and vote them in to prevent it. There's so many nightmare scenarios to choose from!!!

From the perspective of keeping the community together I hate to say it, but this is actually the plan that includes some kind of forking which keeps people in one place the best. Yes steemit is lost, but steemit is essentially one person with a big stake. I'd rather see that lost than a ton of people and their stake.

Inertia is one of my favorite thought leaders on Steem. He has stated on multiple occasions that hardforking steemit out is theft to do. I disagree. I have the liberty to run whatever code on my witness as I so choose. As a witness I'm elected in part to help create and define consensus. If the consensus is that Steemit is a bad actor that's hurting us all then I have the right and frankly a responsibility to run code that honors that. Do I want that? FUCK NO! But would I do it to keep the community as a whole if all other options have failed while Steemit was escalating the situation? Yes I would, and in a fucking heartbeat. This is my home and I have the will to do what's necessary to defend it.

See, their stake isn't gone. It's on the chain. He can run his own version of Steem that includes Steemit's stake by rolling back to a previous spot on the chain. He could even grant himself more Steem on his very own private Steem island. But Steemit isn't Steem. Steem is comprised of thousands of people and I'm here to protect their interests more than I am to protect Steemit Inc, which is essentially just Ned, while he consistently makes poor judgments.

I don't buy the argument forking is theft. I don't buy the argument it's piracy. I buy the argument that I get to choose what code to run that will benefit the most stakeholders, which to me is whatever keeps the population of Steemians growing. It's up to you the steem hodlers on the platform to choose me if they agree. So far so good :)

Option 3. Working together. AKA the right plan!

My ultimate hope and complete attention is on finding a mutually beneficial solution that gets both parties to the promise land of mainstreaming Steem, spreads our values, and let's us benefit from a high token price.

I personally don't care for the language that to me comically amounts to "give us the money nedowski or we'll cut off your whale balls."

But I do resonate with something like "Stop spending so much money and producing so little of value that you're literally eroding the positive efforts of everyone else working hard to make this place grow."

I'm of the opinion that a community structure could cut costs for ned/steemit, produce more valuable work (quality and quantity), open up more community development, and engage the community like never before. So, that's what I'm proposing vis a vis Steem Council. I'm doing what I can to make an outcome where we all benefit rather than all lose. Here's hoping we find a way!

Our future is in our collective hands

The best days of the chain may very well be ahead of us or we could be watching the split that kills us. It's up to all of us, our choices, our voices, and our actions to make the best outcomes possible. Ned, I hope we can find a collaborative way out of this mess.

Thank you for your time, thank you for your consideration, and I'm committed to doing everything I can to work together,

Aggroed

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I know this isn't a laughing matter, but holy shit this quote cracked me up!

"give us the money nedowski or we'll cut off your whale balls."

The Dood abides!

I agree with much of this post, but not so much this part:

I don't buy the argument forking is theft. I don't buy the argument it's piracy. I buy the argument that I get to choose what code to run that will benefit the most stakeholders, which to me is whatever keeps the population of Steemians growing.

And our disagreement is the beauty of DPoS. People can vote based on who they trust most to secure their funds. We can also discuss back and forth our understanding of property and maybe come to better conclusions all around.

To me, a blockchain has to stay immutable and only in the most unusually incredible circumstances should something be modified. If the code breaks, for example, that might be a reason to set things right. If there was theft, that might be another reason. If we're talking Utilitarianism, I see your perspective, but I personally prefer self-ownership and how property rights are derived from that principle. If DPoS blockchains are just about whatever the majority want, then there really isn't any real property here from the framework I'm using. (More on my moral perspective on an old post here).

I was about to post on exactly the same point. Glad I read comments before I comment!

I completely agree with you on this point. If the standard for witnesses is 'the greatest good for the greatest number' then we are not talking about property rights at all, IMHO, but essentially communism.

We have agreements, written and tacit, that govern our possession and use of Steem, Steemit, and etc. If they can just be abrogated by a majority, then we don't have a rule of law, but of a mob. This is an important point for those that maintain 'code is law', because code is infinitely mutable. It can just be rewritten on a whim.

While I have great respect for all concerned parties in these discussions, particularly not leaving out @aggroed here, I hope he has a chance to reconsider that principle and discovers that he actually does mean that property rights are as sacred as they can be made to be, rather than simply what is convenient for growth, or whatever.

That latter point is the scary one, as he may find swifter growth more pertinent than private property rights - today. If he remains not strongly committed to property rights, and later growth is less important than some other matter, say decreased centralization, or even logo color, then what is to stop a fork on that future day to take people's property in order to turn the logo blue?

I am not a fan of ninjamines. I do not see that I have any right to tokens so created prior to my participation on Steem. Those two views aren't irreconcilable, and Steem either tolerates the past without becoming predatory or, IMHO, it loses all credibility with investors.

If Witnesses can take away one guy's stake, they can take mine too. If they can censor that guy, they can censor me too. Sauce for geese, and sauce for ganders.

Forking away stake needs to be behind a line drawn so deep that only existential need can cause us to cross it, or we can have no confidence that it isn't so shallow that it can just be crossed whenever it's convenient.

'First they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I said nothing. Then they came for the communists, but I was not a communist, so I said nothing. They came for the gypsies, homosexuals, and those born with defects, but I was not one of them, so I said nothing.

When they came for me, there was no one left to speak up for me.' (paraphrasing a Holocaust survivor).

Thanks!

I agree. I get the frustration. It's shared amongst many in the community, but I vehemently disagree that it's acceptable to fork out someones stake because you don't like what they're doing with it. I appreciate the witnesses that are coming out and letting their positions be known and I hope everyone reading these votes where their opinions lie.

I also just want to say I strongly disagree that there is any scenario where a fork like this would end up being what's best for Steem overall and that it's a hard sell to talk about working together in the same post with an open threat.

I'm echoing @lukestokes reply with STRONG emphasis on this..

To me, a blockchain has to stay immutable and only in the most unusually incredible circumstances should something be modified.

Didn't Steem already restart once. I believe ninja premine happened twice. It already doesn't have this immutable property you are talking about.

Aggroed has put in a ton of work to improve steem, so his opinion is prob different than others who have done much less work.

Btw, look at what happened after Ethereum forked out Ethereum Classic. Who even talks about it?

I'm not saying I agree with the fork but it should def be an option on the table.

We are the actors relevant to this present situation, and we were not involved in the ninjamine. What happened then was not our responsibility, and what happens now is.

See my full reply to @lukestokes above for why I think we should keep our hands off other people's stakes today.

tl;dr do unto others as you would have them do unto you. If we start taking folks money, no one will put their money where we can take it - and Steem will die.

We are the actors relevant to this present situation, and we were not involved in the ninjamine. What happened then was not our responsibility, and what happens now is.

Okay, lets just pretend it never happened and so we have no problem.

But wait....

My point is that we came here after the mining was over. If we put money into Steem after the mining, and now claim to be offended by the mining, that's on us. If you didn't know about the mining before investing, you didn't do due diligence. If you did, and you're now claiming it's a problem, you're being disingenuous.

Either way, it's not our stake.

  1. Mined stake is a part of the game.
  2. Rules of the game are not set in stone and we could change it if having enough power and will.

Good luck finding anyone who'll invest under those rules.

Normally you power down 800,000 steem a month to sell and use it to pay for expenses.

A quarter million bucks for a staff of 12? Those AWS nodes must not come cheap. Either that, or I’m in the wrong line of work. 😄

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Steemit full time staff is actually 14; if we're referring to what was stated on the livestream, 12 was not correct - it was misstated.

Why the fuck are you answering to this and not to the entire post? Wtf.

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I’m going to cut @ned a little slack and assume that since a bunch of witnesses are posting #stopthepowerdown posts today, he’s working on a full post to respond to all of them at once.

I didn't think of that. I hope thats true otherwise it doesn't make any sense to me :)

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I wouldn't count on it.

Nailed it.

A CEO that doesn't know how many employees he has. Visionary Yes, common sense No.

? it just means you don't know how many employees you have

I appreciate your commenting here as it shows you are paying close attention to even these details of the conversations. I anticipate a post regarding these issues in the near future, and look forward to adding my two cents.

Well, my upvotes not there yet LOL, but I'll be there, for what it's worth.

Given the sentiment I have been reading in posts today, I don't see that you have any other option than to exercise fiduciary responsibility as CEO of Stinc. I am certain that this is not an easy task, and doubt most critics can fathom just how complex some of the issues are you face. I am sure I can't.

Thanks!

Does that include you?

Other coins have a picture of their team on the landing page. We have to take Ned's word for it

No, AWS instances of the RAM specs that Steemit needs cost a fortune (per month!). The majority of that 800K would have been going to AWS costs I’d say. Personally, I was a little surprised to find out that Steemit were running their nodes on AWS. They could have built their own dedicated facility with a ton of high-spec’d servers and multiple redundant Internet connections for that kind of money.

might want to be aware that 800k Steem at current prices is not a quarter million USD.

Ballparkish. And at some point during last month, the price was $0.3125 which makes the math work just fine.

I don't buy the argument forking is theft. I don't buy the argument it's piracy. I buy the argument that I get to choose what code to run that will benefit the most stakeholders, which to me is whatever keeps the population of Steemians growing. It's up to you the steem hodlers on the platform to choose me if they agree.

I see it as theft, and have always thought it ridiculous when people have demanded steemit to be accountable to them. I would not trust anyone who would think forking out steemit’s stake is considered fairplay. Regardless as to if I like them or not, their stake is their stake. It seems immoral that people think they can mess with another’s share regardless as to how they got it. I assume you were a businessman and know the risk you were taking when you bought into steem. So I don’t have sympathy for anyone who is complaining now, especially the larger stakeholders. It’s certainly not ned at the forefront of my mind when I think poorly of steem. It’s the whole culture and ecosystem. So for a long time now, I am tired of the whining from the big accounts blaming steemit for everything. You yourself seem reasonable, but there are a few dickish big holders that make the platform come across disgraceful.

How would you feel if someone decided that SM is bad for the blockchain and moved to minimise your influence? It’s a gang up mentality. I think those who might have triggered the powerdown behavior only have themselves to blame if they don’t like the reaction. I vote you go build your own blockchain instead, and hope no one decides you’re doing a shit job and then want to fork you out of existence. You’re all making steem look bad.

I’ve always seen steem as a privately own startup that sold us an idea of decentralisation. If the prices tank, then that simply is showing the true state of affairs. So if he sells out, you can buy up and become the new king? I thought that’s the process....people get fed up, leave, those who truly believe can fly in and save the day, proving they really believe. I don’t see how negating a large stakeholder is meant to inspire confidence, or make you and those who agree with you anymore trustworthy. I don’t know you, I don’t know ned, but my time on steem, I just see a lot of self interested people, leeches and ass kissers. Should we add thieves to the list too?

So @Ned some food for thought .....

Here is one of your top Dapp owners, built on the very chain you help build. How is it that you are not drinking buddies? @aggroed is very successfully growing Steem Monsters. They have 100k+ page views per day on there website, a happy and growing customer base, ad revenue from said page views, outside investors chomping at the bit to buy a piece .... the list goes on and on.

@Ned here's the thing, you have a few other successful, growing projects on this chain atm like @actfit, @magicdice, @partiko, @busy, @steempeak, and @artzone. You have people cross branding like @stephenkendal.

@Ned - Stop the mass power down. Hire me as Director of Business for Steemit and let me make you several hundred million that you are literally throwing away. You can PM me in discord. I am in @aggroed's Steem Monster discord, same name.

@andrarchy and @justinw might want to point this one out to the boss before it's to late.

@ned maybe you should listen. I think in San Jose, we would have blown up Steem into a much bigger property already AND distributed the controlling power to new USERS that would REDEFINE the internet.

You STILL HAVE A CHANCE if you want to make a very big splash SOON, and blow up on the market share chart, but you have to give away controlling interest so investors will take you seriously, that you really can create the new model for the internet. It needs to be public property, even if there is 25% of the rewards pool saved for investment in development.

You forgot to mention the STEEM Poker League aka Lucksacks.com which is my personal favorite DAPP on STEEM. I agree wholeheartedly with your comment though! @aggroed along with many others has indeed done the marketing for STINC probably saving them a great deal in advertising expenses.

#pleasestopthepowerdown #hirethisfellaheseemssmart #letsworktogetherwithoutveiledthreats

While I'm not pushing to get you hired on, I'm also not agin' it. I don't know you, but this is a very valid point. While it may not bear much on fiduciary responsibility for extant stake, it certainly might, and it sure does make sense from a business standpoint. Stinc could be much more strongly capitalizing on it's assets by working with dedicated and successful partners on Steem.

Thanks!

It's easy money for the right person.

Couldn't agree with you more!

i dont like where this is going for.

Fork someone out is bad too. The Blockchain loss then allot of Trust. Think about someone would buy the Steemit Stake.

If Investors think they can loss they stake by forking out, Steem has lost all Trust. And its against a open speech comunity-

And i know it sucks what steemit is doing, like the Smt delay etc.

But i think we should stay cool. Only my 2 cents :)

Best regards

Yup that's exactly what happened with Ethereum and Etherum Classic. People are afraid to buy ethereum obv.

Maybe they can donate a big chunk of their stake to a development fund, that will be used by the community to improve the blockchain. Community decides how and who to develop ....

In this way they will reduce their central role, remove pressure from their self, and in the long run actually end up with more valuable stake ... Win win :)

That's an alternative I hadn't heard discussed before. It deserves thought. It also shows how powerful the community can be when sourcing mechanisms and roadmaps. I expect that more ideas may be forthcoming as the situation develops, and as long as sound principles guide those involved, who must set out to blaze a trail with chosen mechanisms, best practices and results are far more likely when folks like you set out to help.

Thanks!

Who would you trust to run that fund?

Nobody :) .... a system with a set of rulles

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In all honesty, keep the power down. Get them out of steem so people don’t apply steemit to steem. In fact the price is much higher now from the power down start date. Capitulation???

Time will tell.

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Quite the dramatic price increase lately ehh? I find it very interesting and quite timely.
Capturesteem.JPG

That’s the way markets work my friend :)

Thankfully I have been able to take advantage of it so far. Maybe this is a sign that the current situation is going the correct direction? Seems to me that the redistribution of the Steemit stake is the best thing we could ask for. It would remove the direct control and ability to kill the system.

Seems to me that the redistribution of the Steemit stake is the best thing we could ask for.

Agree. Painful but nessesary

And do not rise precisely because of the volume of the shutdown that enters the markets? Coinmarketcap includes the steem that is in steemit or just from the markets? Although the large volume is seen in the Korean markets

i agree with this post as well. interesting enough these are the user experiences that cause things to be very unbalanced which in turn destroys the hard work each user has done to create a presence here.

Even discussing that it could be possible to get consesus to fork out someones wallet - with only 17 witnesses is enough to scare any serious investor into never touching Steem again.

God, yes. I love communism.

That is hilarious.

(looks around for the /sarc tag)

srsly doe?

Problem with mutual aid, pal? ;)

Not as long as it's not at gunpoint. And mutual.

What?

Aid. I'm a giver. However much I like to be beneficial to folks, I don't like them to threaten to hurt me if I don't do what they want, or steal from me.

So, I'm all for voluntary mutual aid.

Are you having some sort of weird delusion thing? Who is threatening you, lmfao

She is very serious.

I feared this TBQH. Funny enough for my measly upvote anyway.

She's young and seems to spend her time fighting other activists and making calls for violence against perceived enemies and even people who's actions she just disagrees with. But it's no path to happiness clearly.

Please dont lie about me to random people on the internet dude

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I don't like any isms, but messing with a person's stake is nothing short of larceny in my not so humble opinion.

I am not happy with all this talk of forking (the term has been used by this post as well as the other posts I have read so far concerning the "powerdown"). It is not the wording that has been used by some concerning the fork, but how it is being perceived by Steemit.com, Inc. and ultimately its CEO aka @ned.

Did @ned perceive this talk as being a veiled threat? I don't know, just seems that way to me.

I think the most likely scenario if there isn't an accord is people will simply make a fork of steem and not include steemit on that. In the long term I think it will end up being the more successful fork.

I don't find this credible at all. The new fork would have no devs, no exchange relationships, and no pre-consensus mechanism that might lead to acquiring those things.

You can complain about how little Steemit has gotten in return for their investment all you want, but I've seen no reason to believe that any alternative would do better. Centralization has a lot of advantages in terms of managing the development process.

Also, I have seen attempts to fork Steem in order to obviate the ninjamined stakes fail in the past. That's not to say a new one wouldn't succeed (with new and more coders) but there is a good reason Gorilla Kings are solid investments.

Given the mess such forking would certainly entail, it's hardly certain anyone would benefit from it, and there's plenty of ways everyone could be hurt.

Thanks!

Note that this isn't a proposed attempt to obviate ninja-mined stake and the abuse thereof, which would at least have a philosophical basis. Freedom isn't being threatened; of course, he's voted all of these people into power. They aim to maintain their own ninja-mine monopoly while shutting Ned out of his.

Thanks for pointing that out. I missed that in the manufactured outrage.

It's really far too late for that and the timing is all wrong.

'that' being???

I agree about timing, regardless of what it is bad timing for. Hivemind just came out, and communities and the rest are just around the corner.

I hope.

More importantly, this whole thing could cause Ned to decide to keep MIRA exclusive to Steem or even to Steemit Inc. It's an obvious reply to the threat of a true fork: go ahead and try to run your own chain that's twelve times as expensive as ours.

They aren't obligated to make that development available to anyone else, or to release it under the same license as past updates. But this would be disastrous to everyone's growth.

Let's hope that @ned is above being so triggered by present circumstances, and that no further insults are piled on the extant injury, because that is very true.

Thanks!

That, meaning forking out the Ninja stake.

Ah! I could not more strongly agree. Optics could also hardly be worse.

This kerfuffle is a shitshow, for sure.

Thanks!

I applaud everyone's efforts but I have a feeling that the track record of Ned speaks for itself and we will be looking at a fork in the near future.

I couldn't agree more, the spiral of escalation started long ago and is, after numerous horrendous decisions, coming to a climax. I really hope that Steemit Inc agrees to a mutually beneficial solution. Since even @ned should know, without users and without dapps, all his stake isn't worth a cent.

hardfork steemit inc out.
it's way overdue. people are sick of ned trying to dictate everything for steem. if he were smart, people might've been happy with the centralization. but no.

and fork the guitar.

As i don't understand much deep inside that what is happening but one thing which i got to say is powering down will really bring a bad impact on people and still we are facing hard times proving this platform and after these all things it will be way more harder to prove and many people will leave as well i guess.

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Uhm, I don't know why. But for some inane strange reason I would like to see what @sircork would have to say about this issue on this post.

Hey YouAreHOPE! ¿Are you willing to spit out your brain entrails on this matter? 😈

My only comment is that this post proves Aggroed has no idea where he is and what is going on behind the scenes. He may be witness #1 right now, but he has always been witness #dumb despite his success with a non-game game. Anybody can sell water in a desert,even if it's a mirage. Rumors are starting to leak that some of us have known since last year, And some of us know that but Aggroed apparently doesn't because as always, he is super out of touch, with other people all doing his work for him. It's not like the narcissist user of people has ever engaged in the community anyway, why would we expect him to know what is going on if @crimsonclad doesn't tell him and manage his life for him?

As if things were not bad enough, a certain someone just stirred the shit pot. I will not mention their name, but their initials are... @por500bolos! lol

Well, I guess like the old saying goes: If it bleeds, it leads...

Haha well, you know me @sgt-dan. I can't help it!! 😈

¡No pain, no gain! Everyone deserves a splash of the shit pot.

Now that is funny!

Thank you very much for coming to my call my dear friend. :)

Now I see my hunch has been corroborated. "Hopes of a feather flock together"

Rumors are starting to leak that some of us have known since last year

Yep! because you've always been so translucid, I had already seen that the content of your 'brain entrails' would add something valuable to the discussion. 😈

LOL

It's because you are insane and strange. Good thing I like that in people =p

Haha well, sometimes I believe I am the most sane chap on the block here.

But yeah, you prolly may have a good point if you read my own opinion about this ongoing #stopthepowerdown issue. :)

Oh know! Now you've gone and done it! lol

to the average person, having steemit power down now just looks terrible.

"and we still don't have a great onboarding process. It's unsustainable and unwise for investors to support this." the onboarding process (or lack thereof) has always been one of the biggest embarrassments and major impediments.

i just bought more steem today following the rise, hope i don't regret it

I hope you don't too. If you don't, I won't regret hanging in there, at least not for financial reasons, either.

I also find your appetite for risk, considering the present kerfuffle, admirable, and note that the timing is excellent from a technical perspective.

Wish more people had iron balls for investing. Glad some still do.

Thanks!

@aggroed, tks for your bringing out the issue.

Forking out the steemit Inc funds destroys the integrity of both STEEM as well as the forked chain. If you can fork out a large holders stake once, what's to stop everyone from ganging up and forking out someone else's, say freedom? Or some other massive holder of the future?

This path, and even this conversation is Toxic.

it stops large stakeholders from trying to be dick-tators like ned. i'd say it strengthens the integrity of steem and this community. nothing's stopping anyone from ganging up and forking. it's why we love decentralization :)

Sigh. SMH

Well said bro!

I am selling up and leaving, I am sick of the drama on here, and was sick of ned and stinc day 1. This place has turned into drama central, and nobody cares about community here in reality, they care about stake, they care about circle jerking, stinc can do what it wants with it's ninja mined stake, I have lost all hope in this place full stop.

There is no drama.
Everything going on now is just staged.
All T20 witnesses out of a sudden making announcements, while quiet the last month?
"to show their concern and care for this blockchain"
Yeah, sure.
Those posts out of nowhere are just to close together.

Many of us have been in ongoing discussions, and some have been in direct negotiations with Ned this week trying to come to an agreeable solution. Posting on chain is where we are with things now as clearly our efforts off chain to stop this massive power down have not been successful so far. You can read more of my thoughts here if interested.

Indeed I would be, thank you.

Nothing left to chance is there, and oh so bloody obvious, I tend to agree with you.

go mine some MimbleWimble then ;-)

Sounds like a good idea. :-)

If that’s your conclusion you are missing my point.

I am watching bernie ruin informationwar and multiple other peoples accounts, in fact anyone that speaks out about transvestites, I have watched haejin plunder this place since day 1 with his rancho account. I have seen how stinc has taken out millions of sp from here via multiple accounts including alpha.

And I watch circle jerking daily, where is this "community" you speak of?

I take out of my whole experience here, like most people, not a lot!

And where you gonna go? This place is still better than anywhere else in many ways. And the worst case scenario is a fork that is going to benefit the majority of stake holders. If you wanna sell and leave, I get it though. Crypto and blockchain is not for the faint hearted.

I have a land holding that I worked for and left the UK to buy, I run a project supplying free food for locals and that takes a lot of my time in the spring, sure the spring is not here yet, but this place takes 3 months to power down from, and I am not internet reliant or much of a mobile phone fan, so I ill retreat to the real world, and the society around me. It is much better than this toxic environment.

I hope this answer satisfies, if not oh well.

You can't connect to everyone in the world in a heartbeat in the "real world" as opposed to the internet. You must have misjudged the actual use case of STEEM in the beginning to think that going back to the "real world" is now somehow a better option. But I wish you all the best nevertheless.

I wish you all the best too, I have seen peoples accounts ruined weekly on here for not towing the line, and for not agreeing, this place is worse than facebook, as people lose real money here, You may need to keep talking about nothingness to get along, if that is your thing then you can keep it for me.

seeya

Ha 1 less boring as hell actifit bollocks I have to look at daily, good riddance.

Calm down pal, it's all going to sort itself out. I suggest you write a post to let out your frustration. Then buy some votes to get a decent ROI. Buildawhale is a great bot.

Once you have let your anger out, think of how much money you will make when SMTs are ready. Then you will be so relieved you didn't sell.

That sucks, maybe you are better off buying a tub of ice cream.

:-) ice cream it is then.

Where there goes another $1,000+ USD. Please stay! Ain't no place perfect! See now #witnesses and @ned?! An exodus may be beginning!

To quote the Good Book...

A house divided against itself cannot stand.

#hodl #weneedretentionofexistingmembers #worktogether

I have multiple account disorder, so more $ than a thousand taking flight.

Wow my first week back on Steem (it) after a few months away and it’s about to explode.
Great stuff.!!!
Grabs popcorn 🍿 and watches the all the value burn 🔥.

If the consensus is that Steemit is a bad actor that's hurting us all then I have the right and frankly a responsibility to run code that honors that.

So, why haven't you said or done anything with regards to forking Haejin out?

Also, I think you don't realize the irony in what you're saying. You're saying your stake matters, so you are allowed to do anything you can to protect it. Yet, you're speaking against what Ned is doing to protect his stake.

And you describe the nightmare scenario of Ned spinning up 20 witnesses. As you put it:

Do I want that? FUCK NO! But would I do it to keep the community as a whole if all other options have failed while Steemit was escalating the situation? Yes I would, and in a fucking heartbeat. This is my home and I have the will to do what's necessary to defend it.

See, their stake isn't gone. It's on the chain. He can run his own version of Steem that includes Steemit's stake by rolling back to a previous spot on the chain. He could even grant himself more Steem on his very own private Steem island. But Steemit isn't Steem. Steem is comprised of thousands of people and I'm here to protect their interests more than I am to protect Steemit Inc, which is essentially just Ned, while he consistently makes poor judgments.

I don't buy the argument forking is theft. I don't buy the argument it's piracy. I buy the argument that I get to choose what code to run that will benefit the most stakeholders, which to me is whatever keeps the population of Steemians growing. It's up to you the steem hodlers on the platform to choose me if they agree. So far so good :)

Replace "Community" with "My Stake," which is really what it's about, and you can see why if you were @ned, you'd do what he's doing. In fact, you're arguing for him spinning up those 20 witnesses, and voting himself in.

Heck, you know, now I'm confused. You speak of a peaceful solution. You speak of splitting up as being relatively peaceful. Ned is going for a peaceful solution. He's taking his toys and leaving. You know what leaving leads to? Lack of conflict of interest, and lack of conflict. So long Ned has the largest stake, then he's a constant source of contention, and will be in conflicts.

Once Ned walks off, it'd essentially be the same as forking his stake out. Except he's the one initiating it. So what's the problem? Ned is hard-forking, essentially, on his terms. So you tell him if he won't stop, he'll get forked out?! Come on.

Now that is funny!

How so, Dan? :3

He's taking his toys and leaving.

I did not mean in a bad way. I just commented (thought out loud) to let you know that your comment in context with a number of other posts and comments I have been reading off and on all day (there are many of them), just struck me as funny.

My personal opinion that this entire mess is due to perceptions of what has been said and all of us having pre-existing opinions. I see both sides of the disagreement and am not knowledgeable enough about all of the conditions that has led up to this showdown.

It was not what you shared in your comment that I found humorous, but taken together with many many other comments, I just had a giddy moment.

I would rather laugh, because this entire SNAFU makes me want to cry for all of us because from the biggest stakeholder to the smallest stakeholder, this is Cosa Nostra (our thing). I am just glad that I am not one of the capos.

Fair enough! I just wasn't sure if you were laughing with me, at me, at the situation, etc. so wanted to know :)

It is all good. As I stated above:  ...perceptions of what has been said....

image.png

I do not doubt for one second your ongoing commitment and diligent work for the community.

But I think that it is contrary to sound principles to fork away stake, even if you think it's the best thing for the community. How that stake came about didn't involve either of us, and neither of us has any rights to it. The threat that the power to seize that stake was extant is why the powerdown was undertaken, and I don't see that Stinc has any choice but to exercise sound business practices to protect it's assets.

While that doesn't prevent a fork, an honest fork, such as @elfspice undertook some time ago, wouldn't seek to take someone's stake. You might simply recreate everyone elses stake on a forked chain, and that wouldn't be theft.

However, I don't think that would improve the community, even if it was highly successful, because not everyone would bail Steem for NeoSteem, at least. The unforseen bugs and problems that would arise would be, in a word, legendary, even with highly competent and experienced coders. Lastly, the optics would not be great.

Given those challenges, I have to disagree that forking will definitely produce a new, stronger chain. I think it's remotely possible, but far more likely that such an attempt would not produce a better chain, and would harm to original without any doubt at all. Investors would either be extraordinarily predatory upon such an event, or absent for long enough to see how things shake out.

I don't think it's a good idea. I appreciate that I am relatively uninformed regarding involved people, assets, and schema, but I tend to start with principle first, and add those things to a sound base. Seems to me that more can be done in the extant situation before seriously undertaking existential alternatives.

I am not using existential lightly, as various ways such a scenario develops can simply end badly, and toss out babies with bathwater.

Finally, stake being sold by it's owners is why they have it. I'm not gonna protest if you sell yours, nor threaten to bail. @ned hasn't indicated the stake is being sold. He's stated - for damn good reason - that the stake is being protected from forking by being moved to exchanges. While that ain't good optics either, I don't see he has any choice at all, given that taking it has been proposed by folks credibly able to make that happen.

Please consider that US law requires corporations to maximize investor returns, and the CEO that allowed the principal stake of the corporation to be seized would be subject to criminal prosecution if they didn't undertake every possible means of protecting it.

Thanks!

Edit: I note from your post language that only threatens to create a fork absent the @steemit stake. Please realize that your language isn't a commitment by anyone else to not seize the stake. Moving the stake to an exchange doesn't protect it from being 'forked away'. It only protects it from being seized.

popcorn time. Amazing lessons in game theory.

I am glad that I voted for you as a witness !!! I want to believe that the best of times STEEM is yet to come.

Great write up.

Your post gives yet more understanding of this situation.
I resteemed neoxion's then lukestokes and am sure there will be many more letters to ned so now I guess I will sit back and watch you whales work this out.

I think we all want what is best for the communities in Steemit and believe it will all work out in the end.

Take your witness vote, I coudn't agree more with that, you exposed it perfectly.

Totally makes sense. I'd been looking for information on this fire, and this is the perfect summary.
Thanks for the being the Witness that we need. If STINC goes with your suggestion of stacking the witness votes then, they should know we'll all jump.
Let's hope it doesn't come to that...

😳

Posted using Partiko iOS

You guys (@ned, @aggroed and top witnesses) should meet IRL, not virtually on discord. Make the meeting a live broadcast in multiple platform so more people can view it. Make sure there's a copy so people in different time zone can watch after they woke up.

Posted using Partiko Android

I do have one question which has been bugging me for a long time, so somebody in this case Steemit or Ned is selling a large chunk of Steem every month, obviously if they sell it somebody has to be buying it, why would this influence the price or the Market Cap? The way I see it all that happened is that some Steem changed hands, of course I don't know much about how this works but can somebody point out where I am wrong?

Markets operate to some degree on supply and demand. Transactions executed for a given commodity, like Steem, are the mechanism that sets price. When less Steem is available for sale, buyers have to compete with each other to buy it, and that drives the price up. When more is available for sale, the price goes down.

Hope that helps!

You make the most sense of all the posts I have been reading on this.

I had not voted for you for witness till 5 minutes ago.

You earned my vote with this post.

Posted using Partiko iOS

We are one working together is progress of successful business.

Posted using Partiko Android

Work together for success this platform.

Posted using Partiko Android

Personally, I think Steemit is free to do what they want with the stake they have. Yes, it was a little sketchy to ninja-mine it, but given the options to raise money for a company to do development on Steem, I don't think that it was necessarily a bad decision. If I owned a company, I wouldn't want to be beholden to people that only brought money and nothing else to the table. Another option would be an ICO, which has it's own negatives.

Others have gone over all this before and I can't remember all the pluses and minuses of all the options. I did come to a realization of why they did it though and I can't say I would be too happy, if instead of them, a worse actor ended up being a huge whale due to mining a large percentage of Steem.

I think forking them out is a pretty drastic action and would be very difficult to do. I think the only reason it might even be considered is because they have lost so much faith of the community. It would be a very dangerous thing to do though, since they are the primary developers of the chain currently. We should increase the development outside of Steem before we consider any such action.

Which reminds me of what I thought when you thanked Ned for being more communicative... That's all well and good... He should be more communicative... But Steemit themselves need to be far more communicative when it comes to development. They have taken the role of the primary developers of Steem, yet they just dump massive forks out there with little communication. It would take massive work by the witnesses to review that code on their schedule. Every fork is like the Patriot Act, dumped on Congress during the middle of the night and they are forced to vote on it. I kinda think that witnesses should start just refusing forks until the code is fully reviewed until Steemit starts learning to be more communicative so code can be reviewed and we avoid getting forked in the ass.

If people did decide to fork Steem, I think that would be good in many ways. Sure, it would cause us to lose a lot of people, but they would be forced to take over development of the forked chain and would have to create the documentation, forums, and all the trimmings of open source development projects that Steemit didn't even bother creating. Because of Steemit's role as the primary developers, no one else has really stepped forward to do all the open source community initiatives that are usually done by the development team. They are completely separated from the community at this point, so what exactly is someone supposed to do when they want to help with development other than just doing shit on their own? A fork of Steem could be truly decentralized and actually end up doing far more good for Steem itself, as many changes will likely be adopted into the Steem chain, assuming they are good changes that they would want.

Of course, I think forking Steem because of this is stupid. But I also think that freaking out and withdrawing all your money from the bank because a clown with a plastic gun walked in. I seriously question whoever decided to do that power down.

I think the right answer is what I have been hoping for for...months. We need witnesses to step forward and encourage more open source development of Steem and get Steemit to work with the community on development. AKA work together.

We can't rely on Steemit. It's not healthy. They built this place and should be a primary developer, but just one of many. This place is supposed to be decentralized.

Sorry for talking so much in your comments section. It's kinda my way though. :P Thanks for reading though.

any comments on establishing a development fund ?

Normally, I would have something smart ass to say, even on a post as serious as this. And you gave me such an opportunity with the Big Lewbowski reference. Instead I will just say this:

Bravo.

This is incredibly nicely said. I really do like the tone and tenor. I too would be wildly in favor of option 3. But I seriously believe that all options should remain on the table. All Options.

I don't like the pledges that I see. That only results in options that can't be considered.

I don't give two shits about the charge of theft. Like they didn't steal 70% of the market cap to get their stake? Really? You can't steal my previously stolen stake? That argument is null to me.

Thanks Aggroed. Your voice has power, and we have the need.

I agree with you bro..

Hi, @aggroed!

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I, ordinary user, support Option #3 , a win-win solution should be more appealing to all community members.

To @ned please, heed the words of the community. Explain further your actions.

To @aggroed thanks for your statement of commitment to the steem community, keep us inspire. Thank you.

Posted using Partiko iOS

@aggroed Can we agree to concern ourselves and talk about solutions that are a win-win for the entire platform? Talking about anything else seems... not a proper way to go about this.

I am also wondering what the root of your worry is. Is it that @ned will sell Steemit, Inc.'s stake and disappear?

Goodbye steemit. It’s been fun. All things must come to an end.

This post has been included in the latest edition of SOS Daily News - a digest of all you need to know about the State of Steem.



I think that we need to work together for that happen, however... if the STINC doesn’t help, a fork need to be done.

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