Image by 024-657-834 from Pixabay Modified by me in photoshop
Forget an AMA, I've decided to post this open letter and AMQ (Answer My Questions) to challenge @justinsunsteemit to answer some pertinent questions about his actions; particularly the lies he is spreading on crypto-twitter.
Lets look at the facts.
Fact 1
@justinsunsteemit has proven himself a liar by misrepresenting the recent situation with softfork 222 on steem by out right stating that a group of malicious hackers removed the ability for him to vote with his steem stake.
#STEEM has successfully defeated the hackers & all funds are super #SAFU. @SteemNetwork and @steemit community is now stronger than ever since we united & solved the difficulties!
Sources:
~~~ embed:1234690574977884161 twitter metadata:anVzdGluc3VudHJvbnx8aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9qdXN0aW5zdW50cm9uL3N0YXR1cy8xMjM0NjkwNTc0OTc3ODg0MTYxfA== ~~~
The truth: The top twenty consensus witnesses, voted for by the steem community, implemented the softfork as a preventative measure against potential malicious acts by Justin Sun to undermine decentralization on steem. They did this with the proviso that it would be reversed when they could secure a legally binding contract from Justin Sun as to his exact plans on how he will use his stake.
Misleading comments re us collaborating w/ exchanges on a hostile takeover is false. Our intention was never to take over the network & all parties' votes will be withdrawn. We wanted to protect the sanctity of private property & the interests of all from malicious hackers.
Sources:
~~~ embed:1234691750213455872 twitter metadata:anVzdGluc3VudHJvbnx8aHR0cHM6Ly90d2l0dGVyLmNvbS9qdXN0aW5zdW50cm9uL3N0YXR1cy8xMjM0NjkxNzUwMjEzNDU1ODcyfA== ~~~
I worked in marketing and PR for three years, so I understand exactly what @justinsunsteemit is doing with his tweets. In the first tweet above he paints himself (and the steem community) as victims, attempting to further develop the narrative that his PR department have come up with.
Dictating the narrative in situations of reputation management is literally PR one O one.
In the second tweet (featured above) Justin Sun releases a response, which again repeats lies about hackers, trying to debunk the truth that steemians are responding with in the comment sections of his tweets. What is interesting about that tweet is that that you get to the truth of the matter by reading exactly what he is denying.
The truth: He most definitely did 'collaborating w/ exchanges on a hostile takeover' as there is evidence if you look deeply enough into the matter. If you have steem stored on binance exchange, try to withdraw it and see what happens. It is locked up for 13 weeks because they have powered up your steem to vote with! I'm not that technically minded so I will direct you to a few posts that cover things from a more technical stand point (listen to the video by @lukestokes which explains the situation with exchanges simply and clearly).
1: Your stake in Steem on centralized exchanges was just used to take over the Steem Blockchain by @lukestokes
2: Steem Town Hall - Operation Liberation by @aggroed
I'm not the only person who recognizes the threat that Justin Sun's actions represent to decentralization. Vitalik Buterin, head of Etherium has spoken out over this issue:
Vitalik Buterin Hints at the Part Big Exchanges Played in Recent Takeover of Steem Blockchain
But lets get back to @justinsunsteemit's twitter PR narrative.
The final tweet I saw from him yesterday further solidified his PR narrative, mainly to try and pull the wool over the eyes of the wider crypto twitter ecosystem.
My deepest apologies to the community, all the exchanges, & various parties involved for this disturbing hack incident. Thanks for your support to @steemit and @SteemNetwork. Always STEEM ON!
Source:
Here he attempts to include us in the narrative they have been building up over the last 24 hours. Stating a 'supposed' heartfelt apology to the exchanges and the steem community for having to endure hostile actions by hackers.
What we can do...
We all understand the facts, and the blatant lies Justin Sun is telling, but the problem is that the average crypto twitter public will just take what he's saying on trust. Also, many cryptocurrency press websites are known for the poor quality of both their writing and research.
Therefore, it is essential that we steemians bombard the internet with the facts on twitter, facebook, medium (where I will be sharing a modified version of this article) and other crypto publishing platforms. I tried to share tweets in palnet's MSP network show last night, as well as other discord rooms and was met with a certain amount of negativity from people who think they know better.
Just in case anyone hasn't already visited these tweet already here is what I shared and my suggested message. Lol, feel free to be less confrontational than I was in my use of language.
Exchanges to tweet with this message:
https://twitter.com/cz_binance
https://twitter.com/binance
https://twitter.com/Poloniex
https://twitter.com/HuobiGlobal
You are implicit in trying to destroy the mechanisms of decentralization on the #steem #blockchain'@replacewithone of the exchanges listed above' If you have been involved in helping @justinsun facilitate a hostile takeover of one of the most promising #blockchain #steem in the crypto space, your exchange is nothing more than a Tron corporate shill @czbinacnce (again replace with owner of exchange), is that what you represent?
An organisation that uses other peoples assets without their consent?
Replace the name of the exchange, but repeat the message!
Let’s bombard these exchanges with negative publicity on twitter.
Here is the link to my tweet on binance:
Other things you can do is to go and vote the witnesses who were ousted by Justin Sun with your witness votes! At this point it doesn't really matter about affiliations etc. Lets just get a majority back in the top 20 so we can stop Justin Sun from changing the ecosystem we have all built based on true decentralized consensus, into a centralized general purpose blockchain, instead of the thriving dapp utility specific one we now have.
Fact 2
Justin Sun has proven that he is willing to use misinformation by promising a meeting with the top twenty witnesses on steem where he would address all the concerns and make his position clear. This was a delay tactic that has allowed him the time to take over the consensus witness positions by influencing exchanges to vote with the steem they hold.
I'm still uncertain of the legality of what the exchanges have done. it seems to me that by taking my steem and using it to influence governance issues on steem, they have taken my money without asking, then put it back in my wallet like a child borrowing from their parents wallet.
My Questions and Suggestions for @justinsunsteemit
These questions are simple to answer and easy for you to understand/action Justin.
1) When are you going to stop lying about this situation both on twitter and the Tron foundation official media outlet?
2) When are you going to stop aggressively trying to centralize steem blockchain under your control?
3) When are you going to stop treating steem and the community here like an acquisition?
Steemit inc is not the same as the steem blockchain. The stake you bought Justin, and the way you use it can either endear you to the community on steem or it can damn you to loose what I think you most wanted from Tron's acquisition of steemit; to encourage our community of over 10000+ daily active users to become interested in Tron.
Suggestions:
I can help you out here with some suggestions/advice if you're a little confounded by the reaction of the steem community and the consensus witnesses we voted in which you removed contrary to the spirit of decentralization.
Let the developers develop, let the witnesses govern. We the steem community voted them in and we can vote them out if they start acting in a negative way.
The soft fork they implemented was approved by a major cross section of the community. There were discussions in discord and posts on steem where people could air their views. Consensus was reached by a community of over 10000+ active daily users, and you Justin Sun have destroyed the decentralized consensus.By voting in twenty unknown witnesses to the consensus positions. Do you understand the value of 10000+ people actively engaging and creating high level content in this emerging crypto industry?
Your actions have just alienated all of those people you wanted to try to entice to Tron. You could have made many millions of dollars from your purchased steem stake by helping to market steem, respecting the consensus witnesses and engaging the community with your own content. And yes, promoting Tron at the same time.
With your marketing expertise you could have helped drive steem back up into the top ten market cap, as with greater exposure people would have noticed steem’s industry leading utility, and you would have had a major stake in two successful blockchain technologies.
I hope you read this Justin and think about what I've said here. I am no one special on steem! But neither am I a no one on steem. It is a place I choose to publish a percentage of my writing. I am a freelance writer and aspiring novelist. I have also recently set up a hive community on steem to try to attract more mainstream writers. I also have plans how to build bridges between my steem community and mainstream publishing houses.
Your actions and behavior lying about everything that has happened have me on a knife edge whether to leave steem blockchain to focus my time elsewhere.
I am the type of person you want on this blockchain that you have acquired a stake in, and steem has many more like me. Professionals who bring a lot to this space. The thing is that professionals are generally intelligent people. They can see through lies and dissemination.
A lot of them will not stick around for much more of this type of behavior from you @justinsunsteemit, and with the content creators gone, you will have a major stake in nothing!
Please think about this before you make anymore rash decisions.
With the greatest respect.
You would help yourself by listening to a dedicated steemian who has been here since the summer of 2017.
Thanks for reading.
The Ink Well
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The Steem blockchain is currently being attacked by a central authority in order to take control of the witnesses. If you are not managing your witness votes, please consider setting @berniesanders as your witness voting proxy by clicking here to help restore the decentralization of Steem.
Hilarious.
Bernie has been shitting all over people on here for 3 years. I know my own mind according to my witness votes and they're all cast. Would never set bernie as my proxy.
I agree with everything else you're saying in your comment though m8. It is a bad situation and everyone needs to vote witnesses to get a majority of legit witnesses in the top 20
Shared on twitter:
Posted on medium:
https://medium.com/@rowanjoyce808/trons-hostile-take-over-of-steem-blockchain-77a0b2120147?sk=01d28c78b15894ff3e65b1c50056b8c4
I don't think they have put it back in your pocket, though, have they? I think it's on loan for thirteen weeks (you didn't need it, did you? ).
Ha ha, well I never kept any steem on exchanges. I was using bittrex to trade a chunk of steem for a while but then I decided to sell it to bitcoin to trade that instead.
When all this blows over I'm probably going to convert my profits back to steem and hopefully power up to around 30000 steem.
Dreamin of a peaceful future of steem with a bull market where I can live offa writing here.... might be dreaming for a while ;-)
I think that future is closer now than it was ... proud to see people stepping up. I even went on that Twitter abomination this evening. Greater love and all that hehe
Great work on this post btw, very factual, most excellent!
But hmmmm I don't think you'll get him into a dialogue!
Thanks m8
Yeah, it took a while to get together all the sources and fact check a few things then I let my natural beligerant anger at what has happened take over and the words just flowed.
I particularly wish some of the witnesses would read this post simply for the analysis of JS PR tactics because I am 100% sure I am right about them. I heard someone in the town hall earlier saying something along the lines that Justin Sun is a master manipulator and if we all pile in on twitter showing him up for the lies he's spreading he'll just call us a toxic community. Maybe so, but there are tactics to hijack the narrative from him in all instances, it just takes careful planning and for someone to keep everyone on point to express the same measured and clear factual messages about the exchanges acting immorally in cahoots with him, and his misrepresentation of the whole SF issue as being hackers.
If the whole community stayed on message together, he'd be screwed PR wise as the two sides would be clear for all to see. It is not hard to see who has acted against decentralization in this scenario we're now faced with, but Justin Sun is constructing a narrative that he is the savior of decentralization by claiming the stake freeze was theft when witnesses were clear about it being a temporary defense mechanism.
It eerks me listening to the witnesses sometimes as they're so wrapped up in spending hours/days debating that they're not acting as fast as they need to. I am however very impressed and hopeful about the communities swift mass voting action to get some of the true consensus witnesses back into position.
I'll wait and see what tomorrow morning brings :)
Ha ha, me either. I'm just small fry ;-)
cheers for reading Karl
P.s. this article also got picked up by a publication on medium :)
Co-ordination would work, but I don't think anyone's that interested!
I've been trying to pluck up the courage to get on Discord and piss on everyone's popcorn - this is all getting a bit echo-chamber like for me.
I don't get why people think Justin is going to 'accept a deal' - as far as he's concerned it's his fucking stake, he's got a shit load of cash, and he can take back this chain as soon as he's ready to HF out binance's and his own stake.
It's fairly obvious this is going to happen because binance hasn't powered down.
Definitely getting like an echo chamber, which is why I published a modified, more traditional journalistic, version of this article on medium.
I'm not so sure about this as during the witness meeting he gave every indication of having already spent more than he wanted too in regards to the stake. If it wasn't just a pack of lies, it sounds like he wants to sell all, or part of, his stake. He didn't seem to grasp that Ned's pre-mine of that stake came with provisions of use as far as everyone is concerned.
He kept saying stuff like "I know you guys have problems with Ned, go after him not me."
It really could. A 3 or 4 point list of facts bombarded by everyone would at least inform the whole of crypto twitter the (potential) illegality of Justin Sun's collusion with exchanges, and dishonesty in how he's misrepresented this whole situation.
Marketing wise the exchange issue is the winning card we hold. If SF222 was reasonable or sensible action is debatable (I personally think it was necessary), but Justin Sun's reaction was completely dishonest on so many levels and aggressive.
1: lying about nothing happening in reaction to SF222 until a discussion had happened with him and all the concensus witnesses - a delay tactic so he could put his plan into action.
2: lying on twitter about hackers - a strange and rediculous lie to be honest which had me scratching my head as to what he was thinking. I honestly think he deosn't give a fck and often says stuff to cause controversy.
3: collusion with exchanges to use stake that doesn't belong to them to vote in governance issues on steem.
Those three points are enough to completely derail whatever strategy Justin Sun is pursuing on twitter. He's even called up Ned to try and get him to join in with the spin.
At least Dan Larimer has commented on the side of the community.
The whole thing is FUBAR
It is FUBAR. I'm still trying to get my head around it.
Luke Stoke's latest vid is a good one. On YouTube, nice summary.
Great meme.
Love it!
@raj808 I wholeheartedly agree with your post, especially what was mentioned in the Suggestions bit.
Resteemed!
Yeah, it's a crazy situation Joey.
I think my suggestions were measured and sensible. Justin marketing steem would have helped increase the value of the token and he could have made very good ROI through that positive action.
Simple!
LOL dude Justins mentor is basically brain dead, have you ever heard Jack Ma speak, English as a second language aside, the dude is severely handicapped with most common knowledge.
I have to admit I haven't. I'll Google him and check it what you're saying.
Cheers phusionphil 👍🙂
This is who Justin Sun was trained by.
SteemVPN supports v0.22.4444
Good stuff! 👍🙂