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@lukestokes,

Mate, I watched your video and you seem like a nice fella.

Having managed a hedge fund for 20 years, I'm pretty familiar with securities laws. Let me tell you what a U.S. judge is going to call your little softfork caper: Theft and Extortion.

  • Do you know what: Steemit Inc. (a "U.S. Person") + Justin Sun (a "U.S. Person") + thousands of U.S. Steemians + U.S.-based nodes equals?

  • That's right ... U.S. jurisdiction.

"Social contract" ... are you out of your mind? With all due respect, you youngsters have no idea what you're talking about. A litigation lawyer would eat you alive. If I were @justinsunsteemit, I would seek an immediate injunction.

You witnesses are WAY out of your depth and you're courting absolute disaster.

Lawyer up ... you're gonna need it.

Quill

I appreciate your perspective and experience. Thank you for your comment.

Do you think Steem is a security? If so, why? It passes the Howie test without a problem.

Do you think a theft took place, if so why? No property was deleted, removed, destroyed, etc. It think it would be more accurate to describe this as a temporary access restriction until the owners of property (STEEM token holders, the witnesses they vote for, the users of the Steem blockchain, etc) can dialogue with an owner of special property about their intentions. This would be similar to someone buying up a stake of tokens destined for a worker proposal system. If the intent of the property for many years is not maintained, don't the people who made decisions based on those promises have recourse? No need to involve courts when we have non-violent mechanisms we can use.

In what ways, do you think, extortion took place? No threats or demands were made of Justin Sun or the Tron Foundation.

Blockchains are not governed by individuals, but a group of them, located in all sorts of jurisdictions (not just the US). Yes, one might argue joint and several liability is in play and that any one node operator could be held accountable for what an association of operators did collectively according to the 2/3+1 consensus model, but again, what legal jurisdiction does bitcoin fall under? Ethereum? EOS? Steem? These are blockchains and so far, no node operator of a blockchain (that I know of) has ever been tried in the way you describe and that includes many events such as the ETH/ETC fork, the BTC/BCH fork , etc, etc. This was a temporary measure to come to a shared agreement. Justin responded favorably and is coordinating a town hall meeting. Why pay lawyers when we can all work together for a mutually beneficial outcome? The Steem community has put many years of their life into the content on this chain and they elect witnesses to protect it on their behalf.

No demands were made of Justin or Tron. Similar to the intention of the code introduced in Hard Fork 14, this code is intended to come to an on-chain consensus on what has been an off-chain promise since day one.

If anything, Ned might have some concerns about whether or not he fully disclosed the nature of the property he sold. It's possible he did which is why Justin isn't freaking out. See the posts I link to which show some examples of the promises that were made about the Steemit ninja mined stake.

I think it was a valid action needed in order to protect the chain and prevent some kinda of takeover

Due to a lack of informations and communication both by steemit and tron i believe you made a right choice. It wont be easy, but shit needs to be done before its to late.

There will alwaya be people who will disagree, and thats perfectly fine, they can easily change the witnesses they vote for.

Th

Beautifully said Luke, I’m very happy to hear that things are transpiring with mutual respect up there. I think it’s super important for us to stick to our values as we progress through uncharted waters and most of us are here because we value our liberty and rights to our own property. Intellectual and otherwise.

There is so much grey area in the property rights discussion that there are bound to be many different opinions.

@timcliff now 21st on the witness list! I checked that right after I saw your video.

I've always experienced him to be truly a voice of reason.

It's discouraging to lose Tim, Smooth, and Clayop as top witnesses. These are interesting times for Steem, to be sure.

For me it's at least strange to see that you are not in the top 20 anymore, Luke...

Why would that be... Duh!!!

He was very dedicated and had a very wise way of handling social interactions when there were conflicts around here. Why wouldn't he be, what have I missed?

I truly believe that we are all disappointed to see Tim come out of the top 20 just as I really believe that he will return too because he deserves it. Many votes removal were nothing personal, but once again with the security of the network in mind.

The fact that he did not update his nodes is to his credit and his choice is fully respectable.

Thank you for this excellent video Luke.
It's clear and concise and without any drama.

Thanks arcange. I'm trying to put the facts out there as best I can, but there are always biases that can't be avoided.

The soft fork and push back against Justin Sun is...bearish for Steem.