I appreciate your reason and careful consideration of these matters. Something that I have long noted is the ability of the founder's stake to assume instant governance of Steem at the sole option of it's hodler. Steem has only ever been as decentralized as the holder of that stake has allowed, and when Tron acquired it, that decentralization was undeniably threatened.
Frankly, I'm quite surprised @ned didn't do this long ago.
Many do not understand that all Steem was mined into existence, and all subsequent rewards have just been inflation on that original stake. There isn't really any stake that isn't ninjamined at it's outset, so ppl crying now about that genesis of Steem are wasting their time and our attention. The issue is that Stinc and it's founders repeatedly stated that stake would not be used for governance, which it never has been until it was sold, and was earmarked for supporting development, for which it has been used historically (whether you think it was used well for that or not).
Now Sun says he just wants to sell it and profit.
He has used it to completely centralize governance of the blockchain - colluding with exchanges, potentially criminally (IANAL).
I was happy originally to see Sun and Tron in the position of our potential booster, but now I strongly oppose Sun's actions, because he has much degraded the security of the blockchain, and essentially ended the competent development of Steem by causing Stinc's employees to resign.
His statements have inspired no confidence he has any reasonable plans to improve Steem or it's community, and have on the contrary more than once conveyed plans to pretty much destroy it. I'd really like to see him off our governance mechanism and reduced to merely a stakeholder, but the nature of his stake makes that impossible without restricting it's applicability to governance mechanisms.
Regarding the reduction of powerdown to less than payout time, elimination of downvotes, and other issues, I submit that those are far secondary to the essential decentralization of Steem, and that the proposals I've seen will actually break Steem, preventing spam prevention, bot discouragement, and more, as well as deranging payouts, and making all users far more vulnerable to hackers. I have had my account hacked, lost a significant amount of Steem (for me) that was liquid, and only managed to keep what was powered up because of the extended powerdown time that prevented the hacker from taking it.
While I am open to discussing any and all aspects of Steem, it's governance, and features like downvotes and more, I don't see any point in wrangling over such details while the corpse of Steem is cooking over a fire. If Sun retains control of governance, I don't care about powerdown times, downvotes, or hackers.
Accordingly, I hope you decide to defend the Steem blockchain with your witness votes instead of contributing to it's present demise by surrendering governance to one individual with no higher calling than the profit motive that I can see. When you do, I'll care about the lesser matters aforementioned. Until then, I don't see any purpose in any discussions regarding Steem at all.
If it's kill, I'll let it die. Your witness votes are adding weight to the injuries killing it, which I recommend you change. If you do, and the community manages to bring it back to life as a decentralized blockchain, then Steem governance and other issues are relevant again.
For now, I'm posting because it's still here. I don't have any confidence it will be tomorrow. Insofar as you may act to keep Steem up and working, I ask you do.
Thanks!
Thank you very much for your long reply. I think what you wrote summarizes opinion of the 22.2 community in a civil, coherent way.
I agree with some, I disagree with some, and I am neutral to some, like in most cases. I would like to think more and discuss further before making the next move.
In the meanwhile, hope you enjoy - Steem on.
I would like to point out that my initial response to the Soft Fork executed by the witnesses, 22.2, was to state they should revert to 22.1 and, I quote, 'give the man his money back.'
Thanks!
With all the plans they thought they'd achieve for steem as written on their post? Not likely he'd want to dump. He's not that stupid. But of course, as an investor, and like steemit inc had done many times in the past, he'd sell off some to take profit. This is based on his understanding that he bought a company for the sake of developing it for profit in the long run. Steem price prospering means the whole chain prospering. Justin didn't spend $50M to give his steem away. No one would agree to that.
Because our witnesses froze his stake.
We really should stop using this as a premise for justifying whatever is going on here now. We froze a businessman's stake out of impulse, without a conversation and we pushed him to react. Whatever he did, we made it happen.
Well, we are entitled to have different views on this subject, and i respect that we could voice our opinions without any hostility. After reading this post, I fully support @glory7's views and decision in this matter.
Steem on, man.
Regardless of our thoughts on that, I personally heard him make that statement in a recording of his conversation with the witnesses. It doesn't matter what I think about it. It's his statement, and I acknowledge the fact that he has sole agency over his investment decisions, over which I have no influence whatsoever.
It doesn't matter why he exercises sole control over Steem. It's just a fact he does. Steem is his personal possession in fact at present, and that's the reality that will continue to exist until and unless he and the exchanges execute code that prevents them from exercising governance. Further, code needs to be executed that prevents such hodlings from executing governance, which I find extremely unlikely anytime soon.
Any ability of @proxy.token or other community members to broker that possession potential to Tron is just as illusory as the decentralization of Steem has always been. The fact is that Tron has nominal stake to completely exercise sole governance of the blockchain presently.
The fact is that Steem is not now decentralized, and has only ever been allowed to appear decentralized by those with the stake to completely control it. It may have been an unsuccessful attempt to deploy DPoS to create a decentralized platform.
We can attempt to make a new platform that might succeed, or to attempt to make Steem successful, but presently it is not successful, and it's value is now only derived from the confidence the market has in it's owner.
Personally, I await the fork. I believe Steem is done.