The drama continues!
Yesterday my feed as accosted by a flood of reblogs from @theycallmedan. I must admit, I was a little late to the party because for some reason my router doesn't seem to be getting a secure connection to Steemit.com and has been blocked for a few days (still is). In any case, these are the accounts that have been "censored":
Relevant Accounts
- misterdelegation (22M Steem)
- steem (11.7M Steem)
- steemit (31M Steem)
- steemit2 (35k Steem)
- steemitadmin (31 Steem)
Around 65M Steem was essentially just frozen on the blockchain! Honestly, I have no idea if I support this verdict or not. It's times like this that I'm glad I'm not a witness making these tough decisions.
On the one hand Steemit Inc's ninja-mined stake was acquired under the most contentious terms. Our chain was even scrapped and rebooted during its infancy just so Steemit Inc could scoop the majority share for themselves after messing up the rigged mining process the first time.
Steemit Inc came forward and told everyone it was okay that they owned the vast majority of the platform because they were the ones doing all the development and they would only use that stake to continue doing so. When Ned sold the company all those promises went out the window and Ned pocketed the cash for himself. Cool story, bro.
This is being used as the justification for freezing all this stake on the blockchain. @aggroed even goes so far as to imply Ned may have committed securities fraud, calling him a snake and making reference to the Magna Carta. It's a bit biblical for me but I rather enjoyed it.
Did Ned commit securities fraud? I'm no lawyer, so who knows. I think the main point of all these witness posts on the subject is to justify what has been done by any means necessary. Very serious actions have been taken in response to this perceived threat. Does Ned's pinky promise regarding the ninja-mined stake constitute a legally binding verbal agreement? Somehow I doubt it... but maybe.
On the other side of the coin, we are a stone's throw away from a contentious hardfork that could rival the Ethereum DAO hack split. Except it would be even worse than that because the target in that situation was a rogue hacker who literally stole 10% of all Ethereum in existence. @justinsunsteemit is not a criminal in this case and acquired that stake legally.
Of course this hardfork would never happen because simply leaving the funds frozen is logistically identical to sending it to @null, but you get the idea. This softfork is a potential threat to the censorship resistance of Steem. Sometime down the road investors may decide to pass up Steem due to these actions that have occurred. "If they can fork away the CEO of the company's stake away, they could fork my stake away." Yada yada yada. Censorship resistance is important.
A lot of people are now up in arms about this all happened without community approval. The witnesses got together and made this decision "behind our back".
I get the argument, but I don't agree. DPOS is a republic, and as a republic, we're supposed to trust that our politicians (witnesses) will make decisions that align with our values.
The idea is that witnesses are supposed to do what the people that vote for them want them to do. If a witness you vote for does something you don't like, you're free to change your vote to another candidate that will. Obviously there are a lot of centralized attack vectors that exist within republics that allow the system to be potentially corrupted, but this is the system we chose, and there are a lot of benefits to doing it this way (scaling/speed).
For example, @timcliff is opting to not run the softfork on his node. While this currently doesn't have any effect on the network due to the super-majority voting the other way, it will if more witnesses decide to cast their vote in the other direction.
On a side note
@berniesanders has voiced an overwhelmingly positive post about this whole situation. What alternate reality have I stepped into?
So why the hell are you suddenly so positive? For the first time ever (and there was a good period of time where I was not included in witness chats), I saw a group come together, without the influence of Steemit, and put out a meaningful update to keep this blockchain secure and true to it's original intent. sAs far as I know, that's never been done prior to this release. That's huge. A real win. Something to actually celebrate.
You know, I have to agree. It is good to see that the witnesses are not firmly in the pocket of Steemit Inc. as has been implied many times before.
Is this even legal?
On the other hand, it seems like we are making pretty serious threats to the top stake holder about how he is allowed to use his stake. It's honestly a pretty crazy situation. What if Justin Sun starts suing witnesses or something else just as insane? This situation could escalate and get out of control quite quickly. Never a dull moment here on the Steem blockchain.
Considering @justinsunsteemit's response to this situation, it seems like nothing crazy is about to happen just yet. Although I am having Red Wedding flashbacks... lol
Let's all get together and be friends! The Lannisters send their regards!
heh
Needless to say this is a very exciting time for all the witnesses and the big stake holders. This is a very big all-in moment for the Steem community. We've shown that we're not going allow a single stake holder to determine the fate of this community, and that's inspiring and really what crypto is all about (governance).
Conclusion
Steemit Inc's ninja-mined stake was a ticking bomb just waiting to go off. We started this chain with a bad distribution, and it was only a matter of time before actions like this were going to be taken. I'm still on the fence about the whole thing, but I'm definitely leaning toward supporting the witnesses. Again, I'm pretty grateful that the burden is not mine to bear. I just get to sit here with my !popcorn and see how it all turns out.
Good luck, friends!
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