Today, Vitalik Buterin tweeted about importance of "Exit to community" for projects, quoting a short article.
Dan Larimer decides to jump in on an opportunity for brag about his accomplishment, quotes the tweet and says this:
For any Hive Bee it is abundantly clear that Dan did not decentralize Steem, and quite the opposite. A few days ago we have read the article by decrypmt.co titled - Steem vs Tron: The rebellion against a cryptocurrency empire, which informed us of many things we were not aware of before including how Dan & Ned colluded to get super majority ninja mined staked for themselves before anybody else could.
The blockchain was supposed to launch in a week, at the end of March. Today was only March 23, 2016.
Imagine then the crazy, wild surprise that swept through Notestein’s basement when one developer saw that the blockchain had already gone live. The main-net was up and running; the genesis block had been verified.
A week later, Notestein realized that Scott and Larimer had used the surprise launch to give themselves a head start to mine 80% of the supply of Steem tokens. Typically, when a blockchain like this launches, everyone knows the launch date in advance, which levels the playing field, and can ensure that the tokens are evenly distributed among investors. But that didn’t happen here.
So, we all know Dan did not decentralize Steem. In fact his very actions early on, and later greed of Ned destroyed Steem. I find it strange that he tries to claim today that he decentralized Steem. Many people lost investing in Steem, believing to what he and Ned said in the past.
This is how Vitalik responds to Dan and dismantles his claim:
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The main takeaway from Vitalik's point is how extremely valuable we, the user base, are. For without that base of engaged stakeholders, there can be no 'Exit to Community'. 😁
Exactly.
That's not the only element, probably even not the most important one either. Historically, time after time, startups have been shuttered during M&A, acquisitions, or just when the founders got bored.
Whether that startup represented a tool in your workflow or a community, the only loser is the user. This goes beyond data portability even (the ability to export your data to another (centralized) tool).
Community can also be thousands of corporate users. If your company invested both time and money in integrating a tool and then the tool goes a different path, or shuts shop, you lose everything. That's the whole point of "exit to community", we need the ability to continue using as we did before. Even when a startup decides to go a different path with a new version.
Perfect example: Basecamp V2 and v3 are massively different, V2 users (all paying clients) were all offered the chance to stay on V2 rather than being automatically upgraded and forced to adapt their flow. In all their brilliant "stubbornness" of great founders, the Basecamp crew (SvN - Signal vs. Noise) do understand their community. The userbase, irrelevantly of whether they are "a community" or paying clients. It goes way beyond "a community".
End of the day it's all about respect. Respect for the user. Those who, indeed, the app a reason to exist.
Giving the userbase a choice as Basecamp did isn't "Exit to Community" as it occurs to me. They gave them a choice to stay or to upgrade. What they didn't give them were the keys to the kingdom.
I think probably the most important important aspect of a community (no matter what makes it up), is engagement. What good does it do to exit to a community that's not engaged? The whole point, as I see it, is "Exit to Community" gives the community the power of self-government. The good ole DAO.
Exit to Community is really just a pipe dream without engagement. If only a small amount of the userbase exercises the power of their vote, we're still nothing more than subjects. That's why I think teaching newer people here on HIVE to get involved is vital to our success. 👍
Yes, but there was no "exit" either with Basecamp. BC is still operational. I highlighted that case because they understand the needs of their users, their community, and don't force their desires upon those users. A vast majority of companies would have forced everyone to upgrade. BC is also privately funded (bootstrapped) and never accepted any VC.
I see I totally failed in my reply.. Community does not need to be engaged. It can be paying clients each in their own silo, who never engage among themselves. You used the correct term: userbase. That's the community. Communities like we on Hive are merely a subset in the nomer "community".
For companies the "exit to community" would be whether to open source the IP (at least the one used to operate the site/app) or to crowdfund the continuation of the platform and recruitment of a new team, an alt-acquisition so to say.
I don't think you failed in your communication. I learned something from your response for sure and I honestly know very few details about Basecamp.
But it seems we are going in circles. Engaged is important because Steemit did exactly what you just proposed. It's only from that engaged part of the community who were larger stakeholders that HIVE exists today.
It's true from a corporate perspective that "Exit to Community" means opening the source code to everyone. But the real success of the "Exit to Community" depends on an engaged Community.
From a corporate outlook, that's a scary proposition. On the other hand it gives HIVE the opportunity to become an online entity unlike anything ever seen before.
In our little world engagement is very important, yes. And engagement also leads to an increased sense of ownership. Here, thanks to stake, ownership is even an integral part of the game.
I totally agree there.
But I think the original concept referred to was in relation to startups (a startup is a product seeking for a replicable revenue model). I'm not sure anymore that blockchains are startups, especially not blockchains like ours (and ETH) which aim to build true alternative economy ecosystems. I know, I know... semantic pedantry lol. Guilty as charged. :D
In the decentralized world we have "Exit to community"... we fork our own continuation chain. Hive is one of the Exit to Community prototypes, albeit one initiated by the community and not a common venture process. Vitalik saw it happen when ETH Classic decided to continue the ETH chain complete with hijacked DAO funds.
!ENGAGE 50
Thanks for that. 😁
"You know what happened to the boy who suddenly got everything he ever wanted?
He lived happily ever after".
~ Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory
ENGAGEtokens.On my opinion, what people like the witnesses and @blocktrades did is what really helped make HIVE.
I am glad we passed that uncertainty times! 😊
Yes, I agree. It looks like BTs spent a lot of money making Hive happen too.
Vitalik has been on our side for a while. It's always so refreshing to see and hopefully, we could form some link with Eth things in the future.
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It would be nice to him use Hive too. In reality though, I would think both Vitalik and Dan see Hive as a potential competition.
Yeah that's one way to look at it. Personally, I don't think crypto is big enough for us to even be competing with each other. We're all really in one corridor and most people I know have holdings in virtually every project. It is symbiotic
Dan is such a corporate fuckup.
I'm amazed a guy like that could even invent a consensus algorithm.
That being said, it's arguably the most centralized consensus algorithm available, so there is that.
Luckily voting republics have been around for thousands of years, so the mix and balance Hive gets of decentralization vs efficiency will hopefully turn out to be an extremely powerful combination.
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Good for Vitalik for calling Dan out on his bullshit
Yeah tbh if STEEM was ever meant to remain decentralized, it wouldn't have been soo easy for a shady character like Justin Sun to take over the whole blockchain.
Not being on twitter I miss all that. Thx for posting!
EOS is also having quite the time dealing with large exchanges using user funds to vote with from my limited understanding.
I don't know much about EOS either. Don't know if it is true, but I have heard in the past that some exchanges are also block producers on EOS.
Here's a very interesting detail about that situation: at some point Binance Research published an article about how collusion resistant EOS is (hint: it isn't). So far so good, right.
Interestingly enough, Binance started two block producer nodes towards the end of the research period leading to that report. They were subsequently registered as producing nodes a little later and became among the biggest block producers on EOS.
@v4vapid produced an excellent recap of how bad the situation is on EOS. Jump to my comment (second one) for the link to Binance’s own research report.
TL;DR: it’s all so hilariously rotten you couldn’t come up with it yourself.
Oh, wow. I must have missed that article by @v4vapid. Thanks for sharing. They are really good with thorough research and substance.
I knew Binance was corrupt in their core when they decided to participate in hostile takeover on Steem, something unimaginable before that actions. I have come to realize so many so called 'experts's in the crypto space use the banner of 'bringing better future for people', but all they do is scam and enrich themselves. Sad part is many still buy into their narrative.
I am still hopeful, Hive is a unique experiment that can actually deliver on empowering ordinary folks. There are many likeminded people here, although many have left. If only these so called 'leaders' in the space be done with their greed (they are already extremely rich), there can be something good for people.
Tbh I'm still willing to take CZ's version of the takeover at face value. Participating in actual public politics is not common Binance fare. Justin is an every day conman tho, so I can imagine the events happened as CZ explained them (and because the listing manager didn't do any due diligence on the claims). Huobi has the same version, JS didn't tell them it was his stake.
A CEO whitelisted the security fork support, based on listing manager reporting to him, sounds to me like a normal workflow.
But let's be honest, CZ runs a business and the numbers are all that matters most days of the week. He will optimize his bottom line wherever that is welcomed. That there s9metimes may be inconvenient timing issues like in the EOS report/BP setup situation... that serves us as a reminder that we shouldn't forget they're all wolves. And we live/operate very much in an oligarchic society.
! ENGAGE 35
Yes obviously it was great to see Vitalik step in there. I feel Ned and Latimer orchestrated the demise of steem and nothing like decentralising it like they claim. Steem was like a time bomb until Justin Sun came with the match stick.
Too much greed and borderline scam deceiving investors.
Oh snap!
LOL someone got schooled major! I think that many alt coins aren't exit to community,we can look at Tron, EOS and many of these chains are owned, same with dapps. While I don't have a problem with someone owning a chain, they spent hours creating it and funding then just say that and don't pander to the community about decentralisation be open about your project and let the market decide if they want to use it or not
It's ok to be a private company, or hold majority stakes. Problem is when they advertise otherwise and preach decentralization. It is all about scamming people and getting themselves rich. Tron is a clear scam. Justin Sun has no clue what decentralization is. EOS is semi-scam, because Dan Larimer only cares about making himself rich while giving a good talk.
I like Vitalik. He seems to be honest, doesn't care much about money. There is someone who actually wants to make a difference for regular people, in my opinion. Rest of them are all scammers or semi-scammers. Then we have hive, where we have a lot of decent people with an ambition to build something amazing. There are many obstacles, but hopefully we will overcome them.
Sometimes it seems like only scammers can succeed in this space.
I fully agree with you and yes there are so many scams about in the crypto space but what I think is they only get ahead for so long, its very short lived and then the next one comes, but hopefully with time we can reduce that and educate people. The only reason we see it is because its so well documented, people are always calling out projects the moment they launch.
Compare that to fiat people get away with far more scams
What I try to be positive about is these scam coins bring capital into the space, create new code, new ideas, train up new devs and those skills, code and ideas arent lost when the scam dies, it gets absorbed into other projects but that's just me trying to see the silver line
Hope Vitalik remember his own words one day. ;-)