You have been part of an event that will remain marked not only in the community of Steem, but in the whole crypto world.
Who would support the decision to centralize a chain of blocks? A lot of people already know about everything that has happened with Steem and Justin Sun in the last few days and, thanks to you (and Huobi and Poloniex), he was able to carry out the centralization of AN ENTIRE COMMUNITY, an entire blockchain under the control of a single entity and all thanks to the great capital that you, the exchanges, manage day by day.
What's really going on?
Justin Sun acquired Steemit 1-2 weeks ago, holding an incredibly large amount of STEEM and having the ability to start voting for witnesses, putting the decentralization and stability of Steem's ecosystem at great risk. This capital was unfairly undermined in the beginning of the chain and that is why the previous owner of Steemit, Inc. Ned, promised that this capital would only be used for the development of the chain and would not be used to participate in the witness election system or to vote for content, something that HE should have told Justin Sun and that it should work that way, since the promise was with us, the community, and it is a commitment that Steemit, Inc as a company has WITH US, not Ned.
So, the problem is not that Justin Sun bought Steemit, even I saw it as a possible benefit, but because of the lack of communication and because of the publications he was doing (one of his plans is to transfer Steem to Tron, assuming that Steem is Steemit), the witnesses decided to TEMPORARILY FROZEN the Steemit funds, making them unable to participate in the witness election system and vote for the content created on the platform. No one has stolen funds, no one has altered anyone's funds, no one has threatened to remove that amount of STEEM (it would even harm us) and everything was chosen by the community, thousands of users who make life here decided it would be best for both sides until Justin Sun started communicating better with us.
There have never been hackers, there have never been actions that have not been discussed, all the community decided was to disable some options with those funds, for what purpose? To avoid all this that has been happening these days, total centralization.
How is it possible that everything has been centralized without those funds?
Thanks to our beloved exchanges, specifically Binance (@deepcrypto8, @binance-hot), Huobi (@huobi-pro) and Poloniex (@poloniex, this one doesn't surprise me so much). The most impressive part of all this is that they used the users' funds to turn all that liquid STEEM into Steem Power, making them have even more influence on the blockchain. These 3 exchanges started an attempt to totally centralize a blockchain, making their amount of money worth more than all the thoughts and investments of everyone who makes life in this community, disabling the decentralization and helping to give all the power to one person: Justin Sun. It is obvious that this is something planned, moreover, there is strong evidence that this has been paid for (You can read this post from @klye: A Case Against Poloniex.com and Justin Sun), this is total negligence and this has affected all the users of this blockchain, this action taken by the exchanges has attacked the capital of all the investors, has attacked the stability of a whole blockchain and has altered the decentralization of a whole community.
What does it all mean?
That at any moment the exchanges themselves can attack an entire community. Just think about it: Steem is a community that has been improving and growing for 4 years, the witnesses that protect the chain have been elected thanks to their actions on the community and all the contributions they have made, they have been elected by thousands and thousands of users that have their investment here, they have been elected because an entire community trusts them, this can be verified by consulting the votes that the witnesses elected by the community have, comparing them to the votes that Sun's witnesses have, the difference is abysmal.
In the image above you can see how the witnesses in blue (the witnesses chosen by the community) have an average of 10,000 voters, Sun witnesses (the red ones) have less than 100 voters on average, the difference is so absurd that it simply makes me laugh that seriously important companies like Binance have been part of this.
What does this mean for the crypto community in general?
That at any time, someone with the right contacts can take actions that will harm your community in some way or another. Just look at the case of Steem, Justin Sun, founder of the Tron project and someone with great influence in the Chinese community has managed to centralize an entire community that has been struggling for 2 days so that ALL investors' funds and ALL users can once again make use of the chain as we have always done. I make this article so that people who are not aware of everything that is happening can understand our view of the facts, can understand that everything Justin Sun is doing is harming a whole community of 4 years. There is no hacking, no theft, just a community working for the benefit of all and because of the hostile actions Justin Sun has taken, now we are all being harmed.
The letter to Binance
I want to tell you that thanks to you, Justin Sun was able to take hostile action towards an entire community, thanks to you it was possible to demonstrate that blockchain technology can be dubious if someone with large amounts of money and someone with connections wants to do as he pleases. Due to Justin Sun's ignorance and lack of communication, he jeopardized the decentralization of an entire network, which he could not do without the help of exchanges like Binance and Huobi, I forgot to say that thanks to the help of these exchanges, Justin Sun released version 0.22.5 of the blockchain, the changes of this version have not been public, but as expected, the funds of Steemit were unfrozen and are currently being used to vote for Sun's witnesses
I want you to know that because of the lack of communication between you and us, you yourselves are endangering the investment of thousands of people, you are endangering trust in cryptocurrencies and you are endangering an entire community. All because you allowed this war to start without even asking what was going on. As a content creator, this situation has hurt me a lot and I am sure that not only me, people are focused on all these problems that are happening and the blockchain is in total danger because of you. You are as much to blame as Justin Sun for your participation in this, obviously not only Binance, also Huobi and also Poloniex are as much to blame, you allowed the centralization of a community and we are fighting against this, Steemit is NOT Steem nor Justin Sun is Steem, Steem is a whole community that is fighting against the centralization that you initiated and we are all being harmed by all this. We are fighting for freedom and for decentralisation, there have been no hackers here and no threats to steal or delete someone's funds, Justin Sun is lying and we, the community, are the ones who are fighting against him and all his contacts.
Excellent. Unfortunately it is hard to trust anything that JS says, especially after this mess. Exchanges will gladly sell their souls if it means keeping the major money people happy.
Posted using Partiko Android
There are tweets from Binance's CEO saying they had nothing to do with it and were not paid to do so, but I don't believe them. The crypto community is huge, even Vitalik became interested in all this mess, surely this can give us enough fame (although unfortunately it is a double-edged sword because it shows how fragile the chain is in front of huge amounts of money)
My guess is that governance development will be top priority once the dust has settled.
I hope the witnesses start working on that after all, I saw that @vikisecrets made an interesting post contributing ideas, I would like to know what the witnesses plan to do after this.
I noticed that those young millionaires are on top spot when it comes to lying. So no way to trust them (CZ, Sun & Co.). No ethics, greed only. In a way I am proud of the community, even though I would prefer digging into all the great new things around communities.
Unfortunately this is true, but seeing all that has been discussed on Twitter, I feel that we can get the support of big users too, I'm not sure how all this will end up for the exchanges, but I hope they will pay for what they have done.