Update: CZ has published longer thoughts in blog format.
Update 2, Sunday 24 May: Andrew has published new advice to exchanges especially Binance and Bittrex.
Via twitter Binance, one of the original 3 exchanges which participated in the original hostile takeover of Steem by Justin Sun, issued a statement which was retweeted by CZ himself with the following comment:
CZ was quite willing to engage in various discussion, this particular thread involving @theycallmedan was particularly important because of where it ends up:
I'm a victim of this theft to the tune of almost $1,000,000 at the time of seizure. The #SteemHostileTakeover set this all in motion & now over $6,000,000 has been forcibly taken from innocent users. Convenience should never take precedent over justice & personal responsibility.
— They Call Me Dan (@TheycallmeDan_) May 23, 2020
Surprised you still have STEEM. Thought you would have sold those for HIVE long ago. Anyway... doesn't matter.
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) May 23, 2020
This indicated that CZ still hadn't come to terms with the entire 13 week powerdown! This, despite the fact that his exchange was caught up in it when they were encouraged by Justin Sun to power up their customer funds so Justin could perform his original 51% Sybil attack. That is what gave Justin Sun full control of the Steem blockchain! And many Hivians are justifiably still angry over that.
Which led to this important tweet where CZ finally understands 13 weeks of power up:
Make sense now. I hope you see that we can't block all other users withdrawal. And there isn't another fork of STEEM. It sounds like you guys have the technical skills to fork it. That's probably the best thing you could do. And we will likely support it.
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) May 23, 2020
Here we have CZ showing an understanding of why two months on from the Hive fork at 14:00 UTC, Friday, March 20th, he has fully grasped the importance of the 13 week power down we have on Hive (and which has now become 4 weeks over on Steem).
51% attack
Meanwhile in reply to @stellabelle , we got this valuable confirmation from CZ that the original take over by Justin Sun ( #SteemHostileTakeOver ) was what we have said it was all along, a 51% Sybil attack. That attack leveraged bot witnesses, a voting stake from 3 exchanges, acquired through deception, and led to the unlocking of the Ninja mined Steemit stake. That is the Ninja stake Ned sold to Justin Sun in the under the table acquisition of Steemit Inc by Justin Sun.
That is centralization. Or a few other ways you could look at it. You just thought you were working on a decentralized pushing platform, but it was "51% attacked" recently.
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) May 23, 2020
What was Binance's statement?
In the spirit of transparency, Binance has received a request to upgrade the STEEM network to version 0.23, a hard-fork which includes the following:
- An update to reduce the power down (un-staking) time parameter from 13 weeks to 4 weeks, and
- Blacklisting of 65 accounts which collectively hold 23.6 million STEEM (currently ~$5 million USD at the time of writing), effectively removing their balances from the STEEM blockchain.
Binance would like to confirm that we do not condone this type of behavior and believe that blockchains should not be used as a tool for censorship or editing user balances. Since receiving the request on May 15th, 2020, Binance decided not to initiate the upgrade, meaning that we have been unable to sync up to the latest STEEM block height, and as such, deposits and withdrawals of STEEM have remained suspended.
However, this decision has negatively affected all of our existing users that hold STEEM, and is not a long-term solution, as they are currently unable to move their tokens on the blockchain. Thus, in the interest of our users currently holding STEEM, Binance has decided to support this upgrade to provide users with the freedom to use their STEEM tokens as they see fit.
As a further response to the above, Binance plans to reduce STEEM trading pairs from the current 3 pairs down to 1 pair over the next two months.
Some users jumped on CZ saying this is an inadequate response. CZ responded with this:
We want to be neutral, but.
— CZ Binance 🔶🔶🔶 (@cz_binance) May 23, 2020
Options: 1. We don't support the upgrade. NO ONE can withdraw STEEM ever. It hurts EVERYONE and does not help the few that's already affected.
Option 2, we support (technically) the upgrade. And we will support any new community forks.
2, right?
For my part I'm largely in agreement with CZ: exchanges like his are in a no win situation. He is clearly acknowledging the broad strokes of @apshamilton's legal warning issued less than 24 hours before the Hard Fork 0.23. CZ knows the fork illegally transferred assets from their rightful owners but he can't permanently cut off Steem now from Binance because that would seriously harm the rest of us who are trying to power down and leave that centralised shitcoin at Justin Sun's mercy.
I said that on twitter.
I do agree with you now, we're past the point of class actions for the community. The old Steem Community which was attacked by Justin Sun moved to Hive. That is done and is successful.
— 🇮🇱Dr BrianofLondon.me (@brianoflondon) May 23, 2020
Now we have to consider if this act of theft is the point where real world laws are enforced.
And further agreed that following the initial attack by Justin Sun, CZ seems to be doing the right thing now. I'd go so far as to say Justin Sun is no longer of CZ's Christmas Card List 😆
Exchanges have mostly been messed about by Justin Sun. I consider @binance and @HuobiGlobal to have behaved honorably since the original attack.
— 🇮🇱Dr BrianofLondon.me (@brianoflondon) May 23, 2020
Also, his mentioning of a community fork while talking to @theycallmedan is interesting: it seems he hasn't completely come to terms with the fact Hive is the successful community fork of Steem but I'm sure he will see this soon.
That's enough for this summary, there's another one I need to make regarding my discussions with the twitter account claiming to be the Steem Witnesses. Look for that post later!
