By this time, I am sure everyone has seen the Decrypt article detailing Justin Sun's moves against Steem. It is a rather fascinating read that covers Sun's true intentions from the very beginning. Evidently, much of what was going on behind the scenes counters statements Sun was making in public.
If you did not get a chance to read the article, here is the link:
https://decrypt.co/38050/steem-steemit-tron-justin-sun-cryptocurrency-war
The article did a great job capturing the essence of the discussion. Sun was trying to take control of an entity in a similar fashion to what takes place regularly in the present system. He thought he would enter Steem and start dictating how things would go. By now, it is obvious that his intention was to roll Steem onto Tron and do away with the former altogether. We are starting to see this process unfold now.
Sun's saw the opportunity to add a lot of users to his network. Tron, like many blockchains, can boast lots of DApps but few users. Most of the traffic tends to be bots, moving money back and forth. In the end, real users are still scarce in the blockchain world.
That is something that Steem had. This had to make Sun salivate. However, there was a problem that Ari Paul, the co-founder of Blocktower Capital, and known crypto figure, points out.
He stated is another way but the essence is there. Community is what all projects are seeking. Sun approached it much like they do in the business world, just buy it. Unfortunately for him, it does not work that way.
As we all know, most of the community picked up and left. Since Steem was open source, the blockchain could be replicated and used for other purposes. After much development, the blockchain was released in March. Since that time, a large number of DApps moved over from Steem.
There is an interesting part of Paul's tweet that caught my attention. When he talks about the more decentralized projects beat the more centralized ones on a long enough time frame, I start to wonder what he is referring to. Is that in reference to what happened in the past or his project for the future?
Obviously he is talking past tense and stating his observation. However, we could also take it to be a forecast for the future. The more decentralized projects will take out centralized ones, it will just take time. Given enough time, the centralized power structure cannot hold up.
This brings us back to the decentralized/centralized debate. What is really taking place in this industry right now and how does it apply to the future? In fact, the actions of today are truly paving the way for a new future.
Things often move at a slow pace. We cannot see all that is happening, especially behind the scenes. What appears to be stagnant is often vibrant and thriving.
Each day we are seeing more decentralization across the board. Certainly, there are individual projects that do not meet this criteria. In fact, it is easy to make the case that some, like Steem, are going in the other direction. That said, when we look at the totality of what is occurring, we see massive changes on whole.
If community is at the core of this, which I believe it is, then we are seeing things expand. Numbers are growing, albeit slowly. This will likely not always be the case. There will come a point in time when the numbers are expanding rapidly. It is what happens with technological growth.
At the same time, we are seeing more ideas and innovations popping up. This is creating more diversity across the entire industry with some projects moving into the forefront. Over time, we are going to see some of those projects start to eat away at their centralized counterparts.
Finally, there is a lot of wealth being distributed throughout the cryptosphere. Tokens are being doled out each day. Blockchains and different projects are dropping tokens on a consistent basis. This keeps adding to the bags people are holding and giving most the opportunity to pursue other endeavors.
Here is where we see the tentacles really starting to spread. This stage is akin to opening the doors on the last day of school and letting the kids out. They flee in all different directions.
Presently, people are taking their tokens and following different paths. Some are getting involved in the DeFi craze, staking tokens which are providing massive gains. Others are trading back and forth for profits. Others are investing in developers, bringing their own ideas to light. Finally, there are many, like those of us who are on Hive, who are involved in games, content creation, or artwork and being tokenized there.
In conclusion, I look at what is taking place and apply Ari Paul's words as an optimistic viewpoint. Over time, the more decentralized systems will overtake the centralized counterparts.
This simply means that we must focus our attention on pushing decentralization in whatever manner we can. Doing this ensures that all centralized foes will ultimately fail.
Thus far, it looks like the Hive community is the leading example of this. It stood up to a push towards centralization and, in the end, created something better than was there before.
If you found this article informative, please give an upvote and rehive.
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There are many examples where decentralization (open architecture) has destroyed established industries in a relatively short period of time. For example, Linux vs. other operating systems. People often don't realize that 96% of the Internet is powered by Linux, their car, refrigerator and alarm clock all run on Linux. Supercomputers, AI are all 100% Linux. It only took 10 years for Linux to crash companies with tens of thousands of developers.
Another example: Internet versus Intranet. The Internet was portrayed as an unreliable, hacker-infested dumpster, while (expensive) secure Intranets were there to save the world. Where are they today? When was the last time a document was updated on one of these?
What about enterprise software? Remember when system administrators used to configure all employees' computers and install advanced software? Today, most innovations are done on employees' smartphones, where users install the applications themselves, and system administrators are trying to catch up with recent trends.
That is why I am optimistic about decentralized and open Hive social blockchain taking on the established social networks.
Hive is not truly decentralized. It is a semi decentralized but that's necessary for the scalability requirements.
Decentralizations means you don't need to ask one's permission to build apps, communities and other projects on the chain. Anyone can build apps on Hive, use all the user data, entire social graph, objects, attention bids available on the chain. Permissionless is the fundamental requirement for rapid innovation.
In terms of distribution of HIVE ownership, it is also rather decentralized. 30% of HIVE is now owned by 35 accounts. In the world of blockchains, this is very much decentralized.
Lol, it only takes 15 people to change that in Hive. That's why I am calling it semi decentralized.
Ok, so you are talking about the DPOS itself and the 20 top witnesses (and 15 of them can implement a hard fork). Well, this is a long discussion with lots of good arguments on both sides.
But what I want to focus on, is that true decentralization in that respect (implementing code updates) comes at a huge cost to innovation. We are nowhere close (blockchain base code) to the final version. We are still heavily experimenting. We solved many attack vectors, but we still need SMTs and a bunch of other things.
Once you'll have a blockchain version with a consensus that you would like to freeze for longer, sure, extend the list of witnesses to 200, reduce number of simultaneous witness votes and your are done. It will be super hard to introduce the next upgrade (change rules) after that.
A lot of good points here @taskmaster4450.
Organic growth takes time.
A long time ago, and not related to the blockchain space, I remember talking to a seasoned social media maven about building followings and creating a brand. I think it's precisely true in the case of centralization vs decentralization, as well... it's patience that wins. In that original discussion, my friend's point was that you can buy 10,000 followers on twitter and instantly "have the numbers," but all you have is shell accounts and bots, not actual followers, just like JS and his TRON apps.
It's one of the reasons I often add a cautionary voice to the discussions where people argue that the future of Hive (or any site like this) is to build lots of dApps. That's all good and fine, but who's going to USE them? That's like being proud that you have a shopping mall with 500 stores... but what good is that if there are no shoppers?
Projects (essentially) run by developers run the risk of ending up with a rather narrow of myopic view of reality... typically some version of "you can CODE your way to success." No. No, you can't. As you point out here, it is ultimately engaged communities that bring the success....
A lot of the DApps are now being run by entrepreneurs not coders. This is a major shift.
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Great post! Justin Sun is basically a literal comic book villain. In the same way how he brought out Steemit and ruined everything that made it great, he did the same thing with the streaming platform DLive, and now that place is a shell of what it once used to be.
Well if you are just trying to toss stuff together it might not work.
He has no vision and is just trying to get attention. It works for a while but at some point the technical capabilities need to be there to attract people.
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Wait! What did faketoshi really create? Isn’t TRON a copy of Ethereum?
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That is what many assert, basically a copy of their white paper and other code.
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"Things often move at a slow pace. We cannot see all that is happening, especially behind the scenes. What appears to be stagnant is often vibrant and thriving." is so important. Agree completely with this statement. It takes time to build and accomplish things that are worthwhile.
Yep...there was an announcement today that totally came from left field (at least to me) from one of the developers.
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This is the type of subject that should always be hanging around here because it is always important to be discussed by everyone.
What is decentralized about hive? There is still the same circle jerk upvotes from whales, the few claiming the majority of the rewards which will lead to centralization again, and you have @hivewatcher and @hivewatchers who permanently ban accounts without holding trial. They are judge and jury. Then they expect you to crawl back on your hands and knees begging forgiveness. Decentralized my a$$
No one is entitled to receive the inflation controlled by another account, including whales. What makes Hive decentralized is the fact that every stake holder controls a piece of inflation and no one on the network can create inflation without following the very strict rules in place.
Decentralization is a spectrum. Everything is decentralized. Even central banking is decentralized. There are plenty of fiat currencies in the world. That is decentralization.
Oligarchies are more decentralized than Monarchies. Republics are more decentralized than Oligarchies. Direct democracies are more decentralized than republics. Yet they are all centralized at the same time because there is no such thing as pure decentralization. In fact, when something is 100% decentralized you don't even call it decentralized. The word you're looking for is distributed.
Getting tired of the same old shit being said over and over again. Nothing you've brought up brings any insight or clarity to the situation. Your opinion is not unique or insightful or productive. Get over yourself.
Plus, you're just flat out wrong:
Really? Is that so? How will they recentralize the chain when they control the same percentage of the reward pool relative to their stake as everyone else? Think about it. My blog makes more money than I would if I was just upvoting myself. Many others can say the same. Your logic is nonsense. It's even more nonsense when we realize that a lot of the top 20 witnesses and devs leeching the DAO aren't even whales. We get more decentralized every day. Do the math before spreading your blind FUD.
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Thank you for replying. For the record, your rebuttal is compromised of Ad hominem, straw man arguments, and insults...all or which are the lowest denomination of debate. Having said that, let us proceed forward as gentlemen (yes, I assumed your gender, please don't get "triggered"). I do not feel that I am flat out wrong. I am happy for you that your blog makes money simply by not having to upvote yourself. You have put time and effort into your posts and provided value to others. This service is rewarded back to you and that is why you make money. That is the very foundation and beautiful thing of the praxelogical study of Division of Labor and free markets, as well as the building blocks of capitalism...all good things in my mind. I have been robbed of that beauty, by @hivewatchers and @hivewatcher permanently without trial or without a way to defend myself. One user determined that my content from Steemit that I created with my scarcity of time and my effort that I posted here on Hive to a whole new user base was seen as spam. I was black listed and when I vented, I was permanently banned. Even if I provide value and service to others, I can no longer be rewarded on this blockchain indefinitely. Let that sink in...that is essentially the equivalent of a life sentence. One user has the authority to be the dictator, judge, and jury for all of time. How is that decentralization or "distribution" as you like to call it? Where else is this power distributed? The whole reason that Hive was created was due to a power struggle over complete centralization. If Hive does not learn from Steem's mistakes, it is bound to repeat them.
As for my "math" and blind FUD, all I have to do is look at the trending page and see the same users earning exponentially higher rewards than others. After enough time of receiving these rewards, they will earn more wealth. More wealth leads to more power, and more power leads to more influence. Once a few users have the majority of wealth, power, and influence, it is very easy for them to form a cabal or cartel and really centralize this blockchain. They will have free reign over the direction of this platform. Again, I use Steem as an example of the few ruining it for the many...that is NOT blind FUD.
I am sorry that you are tired of the "same old shit being said over and over again." But just because you don't agree with it, does not make it not true. If I and others are complaining about the same issue, then maybe there is actually a real issue. If it were not an issue, why does it constantly get brought up over and over again?
Is Hive the only token on here?
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Hive hasn't been around very long, and if history repeats itself with Bitcoin and we see that Mega bull run in 2021 things are going to get very interesting. I say this in reference to decentralization and Hive. It was previously thought by many that Steem was a centralized shitpile that could never withstand an assault like the one Justin Sun accosted us with.
When the next FOMO hype-cycle kicks in, a lot of investors with deep pockets are going to be researching projects. They're going to learn for the first time what happened with Steem and Hive and be like, "Wow, that is quite a story... I want to be a part of that!"
These things happen on a very delayed time scale, so most of us that lived it can't see how that event is going to ripple into the future because we feel that it is already behind us. Months behind. That is not the case.
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Your current Rank (34) in the battle Arena of Holybread has granted you an Upvote of 19%
excellent
That was the most interesting read I ever had about steem/Hive. I twas so factual from the very origin of everything. For me, the main culprit of the entire dance are Ned and Larima. J. Sun only saw a business opportunity and wanted to buy into it without knowing the shady deals behind. However, we blame no one when we take "ignorant" business decisions like JS did. The beauty is that the emergence of Hive has shown the power of a decentralized community and the essence which blockchain tech and cryptography stands for.
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I am not going to say that Sun knew about the Ninja mined promises, in fact he likely did not. Why would Ned tell him.
However, he did come in with the intention of totally taking over. For that Sun can be faulted.
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I read it and enjoying it, it is like a movie.
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Such consistent quality writing. Thank you.
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Good and true