Have there been any discussions with the Tron team about the will of the witnesses and the token holders they represent? There have been many concerning posts from the Tron marketing team (including Poloniex) describing a token swap of “old Steem” tokens to Tron based tokens. I hope it has been made very clear to the Tron team that the witnesses are ready to support the chain as it is now because that is the job we are elected to do. If the token holders want a change, we’ll listen, state our positions, and they will vote accordingly.
That said, I think the potential for new marketing, promotion, resources, and development could be fantastic for both communities. I hope they join together for mutual benefit while respecting the many years of work and commitment that got us here.
As a witness, I look forward to connecting with the Tron team and discussing the history of this community and what expectations we are facilitating.
The token swap spells is a hint of the death of the steem chain. A bigger blow to the steem community could be the air drop as well as the minting process. We don't even know how many new Steem tokens will be in circulation, and of the new tokens how much the Steem community will own as a percent vs what is gifted to the tron holders who will probably dump them.
As far as witnesses, every 3 seconds or whatever Justin Sun can replace one top witness after another when he is ready. If you want to save Steem, vote to destroy his ninja mined coins or freeze them and remove his voting rights if at all possible. If it important to act quickly and before takes control of the top witness nodes.
Justin Sun doesn't appear to be a fan of decentralized chains. His cofounder quit tron over the issue of not being decentralized. https://cointelegraph.com/news/tron-co-founder-and-cto-leaves-project-alleging-excessive-centralization .
As far as Justin Sun and Marketing. This is how he markets his own coin (language is NSFW).
Seems quite a few Chinese projects let a single person own a bulk of the coins and distributes a smaller percentage for the rest of the market to fight over, including ribble*...I mean ripple. While Justin Sun peddles his crap coins, he is able to devour valid decentralized systems and other emerging technology literally for what he admits is crypto crap. Steem Coin used to be pretty popular in China, I wonder how much power China will have to delete content when the top witnesses are owned by Sun.
-winnie the pooh aka the Chinese President, owned by Disney or vice versa depending on context.
Are there other good posts out there talking about the potential dangers of Tron, assuming there are some? I should write some articles about these things. I want Tron to prove me wrong and show me that they're not trying to obtain too much power over the Steem blockchain and everything. I don't want to say Tron is doing that but I cannot currently say they aren't. So, I will try to keep my eyes open to everything that is happening.
Some of the arguments I have heard on msp waves. The names of whom, many I do not recall. Aggroed would be a good voice of reason to listen to since he not only is a top 20 witness, but he is also behind very popular dapps on Steem. Pay attention to what other top 20 witnesses are saying too.
Are the top 20 Steem witnesses Pro-Tron, completely, partly, to an extent? Are they fighting this Steemit Inc Tron merger thing?
A few things I forgot to mention in my original post about the minting process, is we also don't know how many new steem Sun will claim for himself/any foundation/strategic partners. The mintage and ultimately the distribution is of the great concern .
here is an article from coin telegraph
https://cointelegraph.com/news/tron-community-in-uproar-as-genesis-coins-used-in-super-reps-vote
I found it on this steemituser's post (link included)
https://www.palnet.io/tron/@anthonyadavisii/that-s-not-a-good-look-justin-word-2-my-naysayer-s
I don't really pay much attn to who the top 20 witnesses are. I think I can name maybe 6, some of whom are posting/reading here or at least mentioned here. Here are a few of them and what they either post or resteem about steem-tron. In some cases i'll just name them as posting/resteeming quite a bit, but otherwise there is still a chance I accidently missed a witness or post.
here is a posy by markymark prior to the AMA
https://steemit.com/hive-111111/@themarkymark/my-opinions-on-the-tron-news . He also resteemed the real wolf (top 20 witness) https://steemit.com/hive-111111/@therealwolf/govern-and-protect-steem-vote-for-witnesses-now
someguy123 resteemed https://steemit.com/steemit/@jackmiller/you-can-buy-a-company-but-you-can-t-buy-the-people and aggroed's (top 20 witness) https://steemit.com/steem/@aggroed/justin-says-steemit-is-migrating-to-tron-time-to-panic-or-things-will-be-ok-for-now
Drakos merely resteemed justinsun's first post to steem.
therealwolf posted a thread that as mentioned marky resteemed. the wolf also resteemed an interview with andrarchy (steemit developer) (https://steemit.com/hive-100421/@blockbrothers/jevdpbnn).
aggroed has posted quite a bit for/against. Ausbitbank, lukestokes, and good-karma have resteemed quite a few articles on the topic.
thecryptodrive posted https://steemit.com/steem/@thecryptodrive/a-witness-prayer-for-steem-and-tron prior to the AMA
clayop resteemed pharesim's (Whale?) post https://steemit.com/openletter/@pharesim/open-letter-to-justin-sun , some steemitdev posts on the topic, and one or more post in korean
Bitcoin Steem Similarities?
I don't know if I asked you, but does Steem allow for anybody who runs Steem on their computers, servers, etc, to be a witness, technically speaking, similar to how anybody who is mining Bitcoin is technically a miner?
Witnesses vs Miners
I know Steem has the top 20 witnesses, but is the 21st witness still a witness? Are there limits to how many witnesses there can be? Does a witness have to be voted for in order to be a witness?
Peer to Peer (P2P)
I would prefer that Steem allows people to mine Steem like people mine Bitcoin or to be Steem witnesses similar to how IPFS and Bit Torrent works. I don't know if Steem allows for this already or not but that is what I would prefer, that anybody can run Steem to help decentralize Steem, to help backup the data running on Steem as the more the computers the better.
Steem used to be mined long before I joined. There are witness "producer" rewards, but I am not sure how they function or. see for example https://steemd.com/@yabapmatt
It also appears that witnesses not in the top 20 can still get producer rewards. see https://steemd.com/@klye
I've never set up a witness node. I hear they are hungry for RAM-and ideally you need hardware that is probably better than what is in your typical budget home pc [not that I shopped in years]. But I would suppose that anyone who has the money for such a system, a good enough internet speed, and knows how to use or is able to learn how to use unix/linux could run a witness node. There are cost associated with running a witness node. Ignoring any labor costs they include: the financing of the machine; the electricity to run it or for cooling, and; maybe a higher monthly bill for internet. This may not be profitable nor possible for everyone.
People get to vote for witnesses, and the rank is based upon the sp of those votes. The old saying, "building a better mouse trap isn't enough" is true. Steem is a better platform than tron, but tron won in the marketing department. To be a top 20 witness doesn't mean going out and making a custom made system by itself, but marketing why you should be voted on as a witness....particularly to the major stake holders.
Thanks for giving me another reasonable witness to vote for. This is how change should be addressed.
They could be thinking of some kind of Pegged-Steem on Tron.
Luke, you are thinking win-win, AKA mutual benefit, and I agree, and I hope they don't try to do what Facebook does. I'm not saying they can. I'm just speaking theoretically to an extent, meaning they could try. I don't know one way or another. I'm just thinking hypothetically, long-term speaking, as I'm concerned with slippery slopes, AKA the ability for good things to declines towards potential risks, problems, relating to censorship. The only thing more critical than censorship might be in regards to the mechanism behind voting for witnesses, who gets to vote, the weight of the votes, the whole system, which could be dangerous if Tron were to have too much power over voting for witnesses. Well, I'm not sure how it works. So, I can't say Tron has too much power. I'm just saying that if they do, then that can be dangerous. But then again, maybe not dangerous. But the possibility is still there.