The dust from the opening salvo of shots in the Steem-Tron war, is just beginning to settle, and we are left looking at the initial devastation caused by this tumultuous battle.
There are talks of a split, a new chain being created, perhaps a new name for another crypto token that will function like Steem, but on a new chain.
Let me just state for the record, that I believe a split in the Steem chain will be disastrous for us all. I think that will just create a load of losers, from @justinsunsteemit, to the witnesses, right down to me and you.
Everybody loses, nobody wins.
Lame.
Two Wrongs
It is clear that, as in so many disputes, both sides feel wronged, and just like in countless disagreements, the two parties have a point.
On the one side, the witnesses and whomever froze the Steemit account containing 65 million Steem, were wrong to do so. They did it because they feared what Justin might do, and that was wrong.
Justin, then somehow colluded with (as far as I'm aware) three different exchanges, to use customers' Steem, in order to power up and vote for Justin's witnesses. Even though this was in retaliation to the first wrongdoing, it was also wrong.
How To Move On
Clearly we need to move on from this, and the only way that I can see how is by the two wrongs being righted by the original perpetrators.
First the Witnesses need to unfreeze the Steemit account and give back the tokens that Justin has legally purchased.
Secondly, the exchanges need to power down, and remove their votes from Justin's witnesses.
Simple.
Until both of these criteria have been met, nothing can be done. Regardless of what the witnesses think Justin may or may not do with his stake, they cannot hold him to ransom by saying they want "assurances" before giving it back. That is tantamount to blackmail, and cannot be the basis for debate.
In turn, Justin has to prove that he is willing to act reasonably and back down from any witness voting with exchange funds.
Once these two things have been done, then the talks can begin.
The Sum Of All Futures
Perhaps we can move to a point whereby Justin's stake is part sold to the community, part sold privately, and maybe a new agreement in place regarding governance.
There could even be a future in which, as CEO of Steemit Inc. Justin drives the site, and therefore the currency, to greater and greater heights.
Or maybe Steemit will forever be destined to be a rudderless ship, a poisoned chalice that nobody wants to pick up, for fear of complicated politics and internal power struggles.
The one future that I'm personally hoping for, is one where the website Steemit still exists, and grows in relevancy, and functionality, whilst as time goes on continuing to be the flagship for the Steem currency.
I hope to see a future whereby the use case for Steem becomes stronger and stronger as the days, weeks, months, and years pass. More decentralised applications making use of Steem on many different levels, from fields as diverse as gaming, and banking.
All of these futures are at present under threat, hopefully both sides agree to step back from their current positions and start negotiations afresh, from a point of neutrality, not bothering to point fingers and cast blame, but to merely realise that they're ultimately both on the same side.
WHAT DO YOU THINK? SHOULD THE WITNESSES UNFREEZE THE STEEMIT ACCOUNT? SHOULD JUSTIN REMOVE HIS WITNESS ACCOUNTS? WILL STEEM SURVIVE IF NEITHER OF THESE THINGS HAPPEN?
AS EVER, LET ME KNOW BELOW!
I’ve seen a reply, I think from theycallmedan, about possible solutions, one being moving at least a portion of the ninja-stake into SPS (Steem DAO) that I think offers a comfortable middle ground, but honestly I don’t see Justin cooperating at all at this point. Today, and over the weekend, there’s been a flurry of new info surface, ranging from exchanges beginning power downs, to claims being made that Huobi is accusing Justin of giving them script to run which contained a virus that triggered the power up to begin with.
I’m more inclined to believe they’ve realized he has to be cut loose, lest they all go down with him, but that’s just an opinion. None the less, I don’t think there’s a solution directly on the table that ends with Justin and Steem working together. I also couldn’t confirm it, but I’ve seen something claiming feds may be looking at Sun. Someone posted something about 301 Howard st being served by SFPD, which also included mention of the fbi and a list of others who may be turning eyes this way.
This doesn’t feel like a simple business deal gone awry anymore... not that did by much to begin with... it has personal and desperation woven into it now and the narrative is constantly updating.
Very interesting! I think your analysis as far as Huobi is spot on. It's hard to imagine that tech savvy exchange personnel, didn't understand what they were doing when they did.
As far as the FBI being involved, that's a completely new one on me, I'll have to look into that one!
Couldn't have put it better myself.
Cg
Justin’s stake is unfrozen. It has been since he first took over the witness spots with the aid of exchanges. Pretty much every witness has assured him it will not be re-frozen and are asking him to step out of governance. However so far he seems to be digging in and powering up more, despite saying he has no interest in governance, and sadly his witness servers are still not even properly configured with a price feed, showing the Tron engineer’s lack of understanding or concern for the Steem blockchain.
edit - I also believe the only exchange still voting/not powering down is Poloniex, which of course Sun has some ownership stake in and thus more control. We've been at your listed conditions for talks beginning for days and I think talks have stalled and folks are just entrenching their SP. Steem is swimming against the tide in terms of the big sell off in crypto the past couple days, all due to "arms race buying" I believe.
Thank you for the information Bryan, I wasn't aware the stake has been unfrozen. Can I ask; was it unfrozen because of his exchange power up, or because the witnesses acquiesced and gave him back the stake?
Hmm, okay, well clearly he needs to power down Poloniex and come to the table and talk.
As far as buying up Steem to power up, that's all good, because as you say; it's helping Steem swim against the down river trend at the moment.
Again, thanks for enlightening me as to exactly what's going on.
Cg
Basically the utilization of the exchange stake allowed the initial overthrow of the top 20 witnesses, who were running fork 22.2 which froze Steemit Inc. funds temporarily. Justin’s witnesses immediately ran a new fork, 22.5 which unfroze the Steemit Inc. stake and began voting witnesses with it. So now, even with the two biggest exchanges, Binance and Huobi having revoked their votes, Justin still has enough power to hold a large number of witnesses and looks to be trying to recapture them all. In the meantime, you can also see most witnesses have reverted to version 22.1, which is the “normal” code prior to the freeze, with some still running 22.4 which also is a version with no freeze on his stake. At this point I don’t think any top witnesses are running the 22.2 “freeze” fork as a sign of overall good faith. Of course, they could revert at any time, but I can only imagine Justin has his own concerning alterations planned or else he wouldn’t be fighting for full control again.
Aha. Thank you once again Bryan. Now I have all the pieces, I can fully meditate on the answer.
Whatever that answer may be, I think we need a negotiator, maybe someone who is removed from Steemit and of course Tron.
Hopefully today will bring new positive developments.
Cg
You're welcome. I'm doing my best to stay up to date on any news. For my mental sanity I'd love to step away, but then I'm afraid I'd be totally confused trying to play catch up! 😬 It's been eerily quiet for a few days, though I'm sure there's stuff going on behind the scenes. The Korean community has been acting as somewhat of a middleman in negotiations as they have a pretty unified and powerful voting block. They've helped ensure at least 4 original witnesses remain in power to block any unilateral hardfork, but it was clear Justin was actively trying to court their vote his way.
My sense is that Justin created a massive problem for himself by assuring the exchanges they'd have funds accessible again in 1-3 days, and when the community fought back he wasn't able to deliver on that. Getting the exchanges liquid again immediately was the main thrust of all his early negotiations. I feel like his neck is out in terms of pride, credibility, and possibly legality now with some of the big crypto industry players.
I'm scared of what happens if he succeeds. Tron has shown little to no understanding of Steem, and will most likely rush through a hardfork prepared by a highly inexperienced team. With all Steemit Incs core developers having quit in the wake of Sun's takeover, I'd anticipate a chain freezing bug lasting days, if not weeks should Tron seize control. We've been through well prepared forks, heavily tested, with a seasoned team at the helm before, and experienced chain halts. It could be so much worse if technical issues arise in the current climate.
Good plan. The only thing I would suggest that we get some experienced cold head negotiators. So far it was disastrous. Aggressive and rude witnesses repeating the same sentences over and over again. Joke.
Agreed, we need calm heads right now.
Cg
Interesting perspective.
First of all, even if you believe that both sides (the old witnesses and Justin) committed mistakes, I think the majority of people would agree that Justin getting the exchanges to vote was order of magnitudes much more serious and dangerous. It sets very very dangerous precedent for the entire blockchain and crypto community.
Secondly, you state "They did it because they feared what Justin might do, and that was wrong." If a completely unknown person had bought the stake, then it might make sense for the witnesses to give that person the benefit of the doubt and see what they did first. But Justin has a well documented history of being a bad actor interested in exercising centralized control. For example, take a look at:
https://medium.com/popnetwork/banned-from-the-blockchain-an-ethereum-developers-tale-of-migrating-to-tron-248a0d215c92
https://www.ccn.com/why-is-justin-sun-lying-to-tron-holders-follow-the-money/
(which shows Justin colluding with Binance on Tron matters)
https://blockmanity.com/news/tron/tron-is-centralized-and-has-low-supernode-turnout-says-ex-cto-of-tron/
There was also an article (can't find the link) about how on Tron blockchain, Justin had 2 super representatives (or witness equivalent) ousted who disagreed with a fork he wanted implemented. I'm not a Tron expert so I might have some of the details wrong on this issue.
These articles demonstrate a pattern of behavior and I think it was entirely reasonable for the witnesses (and anyone else) to conclude that this is Justin's modus operandi. I think it would be incredibly naive to automatically give him a blank slate and leave the community and blockchain vulnerable to the types of aggressive actions he has done before.
Hi, and first of all, thanks for your comments. However nothing you've said above justifies blocking access to his property. He paid $12,000,000 for Steemit, with that stake obviously being part of the deal.
Let's not forget that all that steem was owned by one individual before Justin, and that person quite legally sold it to him.
The witness should have listened to @timcliff, who ran a fork that didn't stop him getting his funds, but restricted his voting powers with it, which in itself is morally grey, but better than out and out theft and extortion, which is what the witnesses attempted.
Cg
@cryptogee,
Sorry I missed this post.
You and I are saying exactly the same things ... and no one's listening. Here's an interesting conundrum: With the new chain, Hive, everyone except Sun gets their stakes replicated. But Hive is not on any exchanges that I'm aware of and, I suspect, it will be a while before any major exchange would have them.
And, as of today at least, the largest STEEM whales are not powering down ... and if they try to power-down, they'll collapse the STEEM price and the value of their remaining stakes. So ... they're still going to have to "protect STEEM" lest they risk losing everything.
Respecting Hive, there's lots of tough talk but I suspect most Steemians will simply cross-post and wait to see what transpires.
I raise a glass in salute to your, as-always, flawless logic ... a thing of little value these days. No matter what, Crypt ... we'll always have each other. :-)
Quill
Also according to the bible, it is fine for you to keep slaves and sell your daughter to her rapist.
The bible is a crock of shit, now stop fucking spamming the blockchain!
Cg