Well, the first thing we all saw was the announcement by @ned, and then we saw tweets from Sun indicating there was gonna be a wholesale integration of Steem into Tron, and our money replaced with some new token.
If that were the actual plan, I'd be rounding up torches and pitchforks myself. Sun didn't buy Steem, and he sure as hell didn't buy my Steem, or me. This however has changed and I suspect that multiple misunderstandings and translation issues have contributed to the outrage and confusion.
This post is my measured response after @justinsunsteemit's introductory post, the AMA, and the witness discussion hosted by @aggroed yesterday, and no little reflection on all that info. Not everyone has all that info, or has had time to consider it, so if the initial communication that Steem was becoming an app on Tron and their money was being replaced with some new fiat token from Tron is all they have to go on, I understand their outrage. I shared it for a minute.
We'll let them catch up with new facts as they are able, and get up to speed.
"Ned is gone. I thought everyone would be celebrating."
I'm not actually. @ned did some very good things, and single handedly invented being CEO of a new kind of business on the fly. Lotsa folks have lotsa criticisms, but I don't think many of them would have done better than @ned did. He did a lot right IMHO, and most critics don't give that a thought. With 1/3 of the Steem (more at the start) he never once sucked rewards up using stake weighting. That speaks pretty loudly to his character IMHO, because almost every other whale did.
He was integral to the creation of Steem and that development is a stroke of genius. He may not have been the most hard bitten CEO that ever made a profit, but he had ethical standards far above most of his peers on Steem, and created this novel offspring of crypto and social media we have come to love.
I'm deeply grateful to @ned, and always will be.
Thanks!
Thanks for your response. And BTW, this is a very well written article with a lot of good points that I agree with.
I think that was mostly PR myself. Playing to his Tron crowd and the markets in general. That's how I saw it myself at the time anyway. After all, he is a business man that's well known for his marketing skills - so it was to be expected. People put way too much emphasis and faith in one tweet and comment and came to some interesting and unfounded conclusions. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm cautious about it too. But without more to go on, what's the point in going ape shit like some are doing.
I think it would have been wise and responsible for many to do this first, rather than be whipped up into a frenzy without much information and continue to spread the same initial FUD. That was my real point here.
But like I said, I think many are just being opportunistic about it all. Trying to make hay while the sun still shines (oops pardon the pun).
Anyway I chose to come to your post and comment, because I knew you would give a measured and well calculated response...so thanks:)
I appreciate your feedback whenever I can get it. I've been long impressed with your ability be reasonable, and generally learn from everything you say.
Thanks! That's a very nice thing for you to say, and the feeling is definitely mutual. I do wish I had more time to devote to this blockchain and some of the conversation that go on, but that's the way it goes in life sometimes. I just hope it didn't seem like I was attacking you in any way. It wasn't my intention:)
I avidly seek criticism, as only that enables me to correct my false understandings. If you attack my ideas I do not feel like you're attacking me, because I need to attack my ideas, and the more people that attack them the better. Science can only disprove false hypotheses, and I don't want to continue believing false hypotheses.
This is false.
Before delegation was a thing ned's posting key was on more laps than a napkin.
As i mentioned elsewhere, dlive, dtube, utopian, curie, among others have taken literally millions of dollars of steem, converted them to btc, and left us holding the bags.
Those dapps didn't share a cut with @ned, AFAIK. He didn't profiteer. He was surrounded by profiteers, and did the best he could with who he had to grow Steem - not line his wallet with rewards filched from creators.
You'll note I don't throw any of those institutions bones. I'm not saying I think @ned didn't do anything wrong, or that he couldn't have done better. I'm saying he didn't profiteer from his stake personally, and probably did his best.
You'd have done things differently, and so would I. Everyone would have, because we all are different. Everyone's a critic. But @ned created Steem from nothing but a vision, and no one else did but @dan, with his help.
The examples you give do not reveal profiteering by @ned. If you're going to make such an accusation, back it up with at least a mechanism that supposedly flowed ducats to @ned's accounts.
I don't see even a theoretical mechanism in your accusation of that happening.
Does him profiteering by selling steemit's stake qualify?
Irrespective of who actually profited, those steem came out of the votes of all of us involuntarily due to his decisions.
If his only profiteering was to keep his favorite projects funded, then he may not have profited in steem, but in self gratification of knowing he was screwing everybody over to pay his sycophants.
Regardless, he is dead to us now, we can stop putting our energy into maintaining his relevance.
Look, you seem to have very strong opinions regarding @ned, which is why I found your comment so savage. You don't need to make him Satan to justify your opinion. He didn't mine the rewards pool to fatten his wallet, unlike most whales did, and still do.
If you want to compare selling the stake to pay developers that was originally claimed to have been mined to support development to financial manipulation of rewards, I'm not going to be able to agree with you.
I'm grateful Steem exists, and reckon we owe him honest statements rather than demonization.
You do you.
Yes, nice that his amalgamation with dan left us better off.
But to expect me to take his backstabbing in a non-personal way, no.
He actively worked against the better interests of the average user the entire time he was here.
Some things he had done for him benefited us all, some only benefited him, and his sycophants. (dlive, dtube(mostly), and utopian(on the whole) come to mind.)
So, all hail the amalgamation of ned and dan that led them to launch steem!
F' ned for not doing a better job at customer service to make his creation a success.
People invested real money on his promises of a better tomorrow, and what did he leave us with?
A done deal token swap killing the chain that only didn't happen because the profane rioted?
F' him.
Actively breaking steem and going on walkabout for two years is no cause for hero worship, iyam.
He is dead to us, let his account rot.