Thanks for presenting the facts.
While I don't like the centralized governance of Tron, we've just used a similar, if not worse method to exclude a rightful shareholder (stake purchased, not mined, regardless of its history!) from exerting any decisions on Steem. Actually, it's far worse: we're holding that stake hostage... temporarily. Meaning however long top witnesses so desire.
If our great witnesses couldn't find a solution for the ninja mined stake while it was still in the possession of the initial owner, before it was sold, they should have done it by the book now.
I know democracy and free market is hard, and at times we all think coercive methods are easier (and they are), while condemning them. But resorting to them doesn't make us better, it makes us the same or worse as the ones using them regularly.
The only right solution to this problem that I see would have been to stop powering down and start powering up until "the community" held more stake that any single shareholder at least to block a super majority.
I saw expressed blown-out-of-proportions concerns about Sun setting up 30 servers of his own as top witnesses, having an overnight hard fork to steer Steem in whatever direction he wanted.
That would have disqualified him publicly, and as a marketer and businessman he couldn't afford to do such a stunt. That would have made a Steem hard fork in which his stake was burned or given to steem.dao publicly justified.
But our top witnesses chose to force his hand into the negotiations table. And make the first hostile act, instead of talk.
Thanks for accepting my invitation and providing your feedback!
At the time of the soft fork, a supermajority of top 20 witnesses (19/20) were running it on their nodes. Many more backup witnesses were running it too. These witnesses are approved by Steem stakeholders, the community. Much like a stake-based republic, witnesses are given a collective authority divided between 20 individuals or organizations. That is not unilateral.
I know the decision was a hard one for many, including myself even as a witness not in the top 20. In fact my initial reaction to being invited to discuss this was something along the lines of "What the fuck are they doing?" However, as I saw the things I've presented in this post as part of the broader picture, I saw why that difficult decision had been made by so many different people.
Whether the possibility of Justin Sun/TRON Foundation using the Steemit Inc. stake to shut down Steem is blown out of proportion is a matter of differing opinion. The signals of imminent deprecation I see in their communications don't make me optimistic. If you don't like the centralized governance of TRON, I'm sure you wouldn't like to see it on Steem either. The soft fork was a preemptive action to keep the governance of Steem decentralized for the moment, so that the Steem community of witnesses and stakeholders can discuss the future of Steem with the buyer of Steemit Inc. on equal terms.
Yes, I understand the reasoning and I saw how many witnesses run the new soft fork version.
The problem still remains.
You guys chose the coercive measure by holding his stake hostage against the harder solution which didn't depend entirely on you and it cost money and it meant persuading people not to sell but instead buy STEEM and power up and vote for top witnesses.
That is how free market works and, since Ned sold Steemit along with its stake, that would have been a measure I would have fully supported.
Because yes, I don't want Steem's governance to become centralized, but unfortunately you guys showed us DPOS is lacking severely as well, through this secret soft fork.