How did they abandon it?
They (we) didn’t. It’s literally our most important job - to secure the blockchain against any potential threats/attacks. It doesn’t matter if Justin Sun is the most swell guy in the world, if there’s a chance that this stake can be used to take control of the entire chain (and that is in fact a possibility), we should do our best to mitigate that risk.
Other than signing blocks, it’s pretty much our only obligation.
The fact that this was not done before today is unfortunate. And this is only a temporary solution to what is a very specific issue. However, the potential threat has been mitigated for now and we look forward to any discussions that the community can now have with the new Steemit ownership.