This is the answer I was looking for as well, in part. He also makes the point that stronger votes come from users with more voting power. To my understanding, if there's one whale who holds an extremely large amount of voting power compared to other users, they can influence the witnesses in their favor. I also understand that there's an upper limit to much Hive Power one can hold at a time, but let's say someone buys in to that max right now and takes advantage of it to vote for witnesses that would do his bidding. How would that type of scenario be resolved to avoid a Justin Sun recap?
I ask this because if this can be avoided, then this is true decentralization; I'm just not aware of the mechanism.
The more one learns about the characters of the more active whales around here, the idea that anyone of them or an external force could organize a truly significant share of the voting power to take over, is not very likely at all.
Based on what I've seen here over the past few months, I do agree that our current whales are protective of Hive. However, is there an actual mechanism in place to prevent something like this from happening in the future? You never know who will come in or when. It already happened with the ... steamy version of the platform.
Having the protective mechanism in place is vital. As long as there is one, then it's set in stone and nobody can argue with the fact of decentralization, rather than stay reliant on "not very likely at all," a.k.a. Living on a Prayer. 😉
P.S. I say this as someone who is now quite literally very invested in Hive and will not be leaving in the foreseeable future.
First and foremost the 1 month delay between powering up and votes counting for governance was put in place specifically to provide options if we notice an unknown and potentially hostile force creeping up on us. I'd say this now makes us "Slippery when Wet" 😜.
The other point is that with fork of Steemit's Ninja-mine stake equivalent and Justin Sun's stake equivalent was put into the DHF which nobody can vote with. That took away by far the largest single point of control.
Anyone trying to take over Hive in the same way will be buying Hive off the open market or trying to do OTC deals with some pretty committed whales. Good luck asking Dan to sell his stake.
We're always looking to strengthen our defenses and we don't take anything for granted, but many of us do think about this stuff.
Excellent. This is what I was looking for. Two concrete non-human mechanisms to help avoid a hostile takeover: a delayed vote + an untouchable stake. The third factor is important, but still has a touch of variability attached due to the imminent human factor.
For the first case (1 month delay of votes and noticing a potential attempt at a takeover), who would have the power to change things, in time, before a takeover happens? We don't want a "Runaway" situation. 😉
Love it lol.
The who ultimately falls to a super majority (17) of the top 20 witnesses who have to signal a new major version. And beneath that is the smaller pool of talent who are technically capable of making changes to Hive's core and testing them properly ahead of a hard fork.
But ultimately those witnesses are only in their places thanks to our votes. It may not seem like much but what we saw when the shit hit the fan over the Justin Sun attack, was that a community lead effort really can move a lot of Hive Power around quite quickly.
OK, so in short a takeover would have to involve compliance among all 17 of the top witnesses, and the 1 month delay in votes would allow time for this to be noticed and acted upon. Still not rock steady, but certainly not without merit, and with the backup of a lot of illiquid Hive. That certainly induces some more confidence.
I think something like this has to be relayed to the average inquisitive user in a way that's easily broken down and easy to understand. A sort of Hive-for-dummies type of explanation. Let's face it... this is relatively new technology and will fly over most people's heads (my own inclusive).
And remeber something else: the top positions are based on votes which can move with three clicks and no transaction fee.
This can change the order pretty quickly. If there is any indication of some kind of corruption, the order will change, new witnesses will be in the top 20 and any coalition built will be useless.