Are You On The Home Team?
Right now tensions are pretty high with all this Tron drama. First these guys come out of left field and buy up the biggest stake on the platform. A stake that according to most users wasn't Ned's to sell. We can sit here and argue the validity of that social contract but is it a legally binding one? I'm no lawyer but I don't think he was legally obligated to use that stake strictly for the community. Sure he mentioned that it wouldn't be used to influence governance on Steem but that's just it. He mentioned it. There was never anything official like a smart contract. It was basically a gentlemans aggreement. For the four years he was at the helm he kept his word. Or did he?
This so called stake was supposed to be for the growth of our community. I don't recall seeing a soft fork when delegations were being granted to users and projects across steemit. In fact most of those delegations are currently still delegated and voting. Wait I thought that stake wasn't supposed to vote on content (this was another promise in this so called social contract). I also remember them powering down this stake and dumping it on the open market and still no soft fork. Yeah we had a bunch of peolple with their panties up in a bunch but that's all it was. As I sit here and try to analyze all of this it doesn't make much sense to me. Why wasn't that stake restricted when the contract were broken? Now all of a sudden we are forcing Justin to uphold a contract Ned never upheld. In my opinion forking away Steemit Incs stake is and has always been the goal. I guess Justin is just a great scape goat.
Should we have been nervous?
Yes there was enough reasons to be nervous given the fact that Justin could have easily voted in his own personal witness team to the top 20. I don't think this was ever going to happen. Here's why. Justin and his team have been negotiating this acquisition for months. A sale of this mangitude is not done after a few beers at the local pub. Exactly what the details of the negotiations were may never be publicly known. What I do know is that Justin must have paid a pretty penny to acquire Steemit Inc and all their stake. With that being said it is extremely hard for me to believe that Justin didn't at least have a basic understanding of how this place works. He must have known that his new stake was powerful enough to vote in whichever witnesses he wanted. If he did have intentions of taking over the witnesses wouldn't he have done it immediatly so that his efforts would not have been blocked by a fork? Instead a full week went by with nothing but a few stupid tweets. Talk is cheap and actions always speak louder than words in my opinion. In that week we had more communication from the Steemit Inc team than ever before. We even got to see a post by Eli. Also we saw @exyle interview one of the main guys @andrarchy. In that interview I didn't get the feel of doom lurking around the corner. Instead the interview actually made me feel more comfortable about the whole ordeal. So why and how did we end up here?
This was not a community decision
Even though this soft fork is reversable the consequenses of it is not. After we played our hand I am not sure how we will ever be able to hand Justin back full control of his stake. There is just no way that we can ever trust that he would uphold Neds social contract. To be honest he doesn't have to. It's his company now and he purchased it legally to do with as he pleases. If you guys think some obscure video of Ned promising to not use the stake to vote witnesses and content will stop Justin than you are all pretty delusional. If your landlord decides to sell the house the new owners can legally evict you for no reason. They are not obligated to uphold any contracts between you and the old owner. Same goes for this place. This so called contract was between us and Ned. Not us and Justin.
Behind closed doors the top witnesses and some stakeholders got together and decided to go through with this soft fork. Crazy thing is that they call it a community decision. 60 people does not equal the steem community not even close. Now I understand that we couldn't have a public meeting about this because Justin would probably have made his move to prevent it from happening so I get it. But 60 people is not enough when your decision will affect every user platformwide. This is a crazy catch-22 situation. I don't want Tron coming in here and destroying this place either. I love Steem and things just won't be the same living inside a Tron contract.
How can we move forward
Well there really is only a couple things we can do. We could cross our fingers, release the STINC stake and pray Justin doesn't put his team in the top 20 witnesses. We could permanently fork away his ability to vote for witnesses. I have read that this code already exists and just needs to be implemented. Lastly we could just fork away completely and start a new chain without his stake. His stake could be sent to null or the DAO. If we do this we would have to get our Steem relisted and I imagine this would be no easy task. Justing has major exchange connections and could possibly try to block our efforts. So you see the situation is pretty dire. If there has ever been a clear case of FUD this is it. Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. None of us know exactly what our future holds and I am sure many of us are scared that our home will be changed forever.
Is Ned a criminal?
I have seen several people calling Ned a criminal saying he deserves to be charged with fraud. Honestly that shit makes me laugh extra hard. Ned is far from a criminal and he will never see a jail cell for his actions here on the Steem blockchain. I have seen people saying he conned Justin into buying Steemit by not telling him about how he had to use his newly acquired stake. First of all none of you were there to know exactly what was said. Second of all I don't think you can tell someone what they can do with their multi million dollar investment. Imagine a car dealership telling you that you can't paint your car red beacuse the manufacturer promised the world there would only ever be black models. I could go on and on with different examples but you get the point. If you are not a lawyer than please refrain from saying things you have no understanding of. If Trevon James and Craig Grant are still walking the Earth freely then I highly doubt Ned will ever be charged with anything at all. I am pretty shocked at how quickly people have made Ned the Devil. Sure we all wanted him to do more and deliver on promises made by him. But to call him a fraud is a big reach.
I know I will take heat for this
This is not the popular opinion on Steem these days but I don't care. My momma raised me to always speak my mind no matter what. What's done is done and there is no going back. I am still standing with the home team and will go down with the ship. I might not like it but I love Steem and believe the witnesses have our best interests at heart. They are just doing the job they were elected to do. This post is not an attack on anyone just my opinion. I'm no tech expert and I am sure somebody will remind me of that. I want what all of you want. For Steem to be a global force in the social media world. I hope and pray that we can fix this without having to start from scratch. If Justin is a smart businessman than he would not destroy his multi million dollar investment but instead grow it for himself and every user here. We have the potential to disrupt so many different industries.
Let's make history instead of becoming history.
Leave a comment on your thoughts.
Until the next post STEEM ON!!!!
