Integrity
Since there are many new developments in the ecosystem, this is an ideal time to take a look at one of our long term impediments to decentralization with the involvement of the entire community, old and new.
really gets on my nerves. The fact that it wasn't just top 20 witnesses in the conspiring freeze on @justinsuntron's newly acquired company AND personal stake (which he bought fair and square), you cannot honestly say that there was any community involvement beyond that closed circle in the chats this past week or so. That being said, I will not be updating to 22.2.
It Must Have Been Hard
Why I Don't Agree With It
Any Hard (or Soft fork) that proposes to fork out any account or limit the actions of an account on the Steem blockchain we will oppose now and in the future and anyone on the Steem blockchain should be able to do with their stake whatever they want.
Quoted from a comment @blockbrothers (who also has my witness vote - good on ya @brittandjosie) made on the @softfork222 bombshell. I am of the same mind here. Even if some of the tokens were 'ninja-mined', which we'll get into in a second, he still bought them all. With his own money. I feel it sends a very tyrannical message to any future investors that may want to come in and make any changes.
'Ninja Mining'
No.
It's not like Steemit Inc. came in on false premises to 'ninja mine' a bunch of coins to pump and dump them. They saw a future here and were determined to make it happen. THAT is why they were so heavily vested in the very beginning.
It was also very brand new and I'm sure early miners had troubles, but the fact remains, there was no ICO, there was no pre-distribution, there was nothing. It started from zero. One company had a vision which actually (in my opinion) had some morals since they never used it to sway any witness votes but just help others via delegations. Until Dan left. That's when this power was implemented. Then again, @ned was also threatened with sanctions in the same manner @justinsuntron now is under.
FEAR
So what they did, in their FEAR, UNCERTAINTY & DOUBT (FUD), was eliminate a potential threat to the blockchain. In a very angry undertone, I will say thank you, but think it was accomplished the wrong way. I mean, you guys froze his assets. No ability to power down, withdraw, vote, anything! All he can do is delegate and I am really scratching my head why that was even left on there. I'll be watching to see where and if they delegate to anything suspicious.
What They Won't Say
I'm sure they have their reasons, and quite frankly I don't care. I've had to power down before too. However, Steem is also an income, and nothing to bat an eyelash at in the higher ranks. Would you want to lose that? Would you want to go from sipping bottled water to straining it from moss? I guarantee you almost none of them will admit it, but it definitely figured in to the equation and decision to sanction Sun like a third world country trying to crawl out of the dirt. Especially since there were some 'developers and investors' at that closed cabinet.
Goal Achieved?
If you seriously think that for one second, this will not ultimately have any ramifications, you all are fooling yourselves into a drunken madness that even I can't achieve with the most hallucinogenic drugs on the market. You think he got where he is by forgetting about things that happened 2 days ago? 2 weeks ago? 2 years ago? I guarantee you he's keeping score. Do you not understand he's a multi-billionaire? He's super busy, and y'all were impatient and quite frankly impertinent to the deal he made.
Let's make this clear. STEEM is not is not Steem is not Steemit. He did not buy the blockchain. He bought some STEEM and a company named Steemit. He may have been misled, but then again, @ned didn't know the difference either. Or did he?
To really do what you feared, he (Sun) would have to either bought 17 witnesses off and voted them (which who knows, maybe this is a all a bullshit publicity stunt), or set up 17 witnesses of his own making and voted them to the top. Which, by the time any of that could have been accomplished, I'm sure the Steem community itself would have been aware and countered it by placing votes where they needed to be.
Love Me or Hate Me
We don't care who you are, we're a closed circle and nobody is going to eat unless we say they can. Spade is a spade. Greed is greed. Protection of the chain? To an extent. But surely, there were other ways to accomplish your goals. He was under no mandate to speak to any witness whatsoever unless he so chose. You forced his hand.
People don't like being forced to do things. I think that's called communism or something. I don't know. I'm most frustrated with the actions taken and the lack of actual community involvement in the decision. Just tells me that you don't really care about the community. Isn't that what pissed you guys off about Steemit Inc before? The lack of communication? Y'all are funny.
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Sorry to say but there absolutely was a pre-mine. I was there and tried to but got ZERO help from those who were mining Steem then. The only thing Dan, Fuzzy, and others would say was, "It's in the code how to mine". For a month I tried to mine but my abilities were not good enough and they were mining everything they could so others couldn't. Unfortunately I am pretty sure all those forum posts from the old BTSForum are long gone now where all this went down.
I see this whole current issue from the one truly bright side, we had a LARGE number of witnesses work together on a consensus and do something proactively for the chain. God/Bad/Indifferent it was still the first time this many have worked together like this. Should have happened years ago, but that is nothing we can change now, we can just move forward and I sincerely hope this is the key that unlocks the doors of open and transparent communications between Inc, witnesses, and the user base.
You think I had much help setting up my witness to start out? It took me three weeks to finally get it running the first time with the help from a friend who has since left the chain. Which just goes to show, it's not what but who you know here. (or anywhere for that matter) You can call it ninja mining if you so choose. But the fact remains, some were prepared and keen, some were not. Sorry yours didn't get running as it should have. Maybe we would have an entirely different ecospace if it had.
I am in agreement there in that last part, but also feel that these are witnesses voted in, we should know what we're voting for.
I am hoping that this being the first instance of the witnesses working together like this that going forward we will see more open discussions in regards to this sort of decisions. We are working in a system that is representative by our votes so in the sense we have given over the control of these decisions to those reps. (Not that I approve of this lack of interaction with the user base, it's just like US politics/politicians and the huge disconnect.) I would like to see open forum discussions that can involve anyone/everyone so that these issues are in the open before actions are approved. For too long it has been a reactive approach and we have needed a proactive approach.
Totally agree with that!
On another note, if you happen to track down the forums one day, do send them to me :)
Found it!
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=22125.0
This is the public launch, right?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1410943.0
Yep. It was announced in Bitcointalk before the in house forum since Dan knew everyone would be mining it right away and they wouldn't get the large amount of steem mined otherwise.
Not a pretty topic to read about, remember reading all that ages ago and none of it impressed me.
It still frustrates me to read through the thread. It is the origin story of Steem, the good and the bad. Interesting that the sale is what it took for things to come to a head and the witnesses to finally do something.
Maybe it is just that the bulk of original witnesses were ones who mined and now that they are less involved we have witnesses that are less "tow the company line"?
This is the first time on any PoS economy that the governance stood up to the genesis stake at the risk of being "punished" as some people in blockchain endeavours say!
Where there is a bottleneck there is Centralization. The witness feature is a bottleneck. So, this changes nothing, because Steem has always been centralized, but now it's highlighted and is harder to rationize away as many have done in the past.
As of right now, with what Sun has said on the initial announcement, this(the softfork) benefits the top witnesses. There's no evidence that this benefits the platform as a whole.
I view this as a coup by an Oligarchy to save themselves only.
I was not asked my opinion nor were the majority of stakeholders asked, so this is not a consensus and certainly cannot claim to be community supported.
My initial opinion was 180° from this, but after quite a few discussions and a bit of research my mind was changed. The witnesses should have done the same outside of their tight circles.
I'm not impressed.
And you are definitely not convinced LOL, oh man that was too good. Thanks for stopping in and helping to verify some of what I said in better terms :)
Very well put. The whole thing seems to have been a bit gung ho and aggressive. I can understand why they did it but I can't agree with it being the right choice
Thank you @meesterboom. Not sure if you were in the PAL discussions, but the turnout right there proves the community as a whole is strong on Steem and we could have all figured out some better options.
Agreed, more talking and figuring out instead of reactive jiggery pokery.
I have changed my Witness proxy to @enginewitty. I am also concerned about limiting purchased stake, if the ninja mined stake was a real problem why did they not deal with it years ago.
Appreciate the support! I will have an article coming out soon to further detail the 'ninja mining'.
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Well hell. I haven't been following everything, and keep hoping for the best, but this just sounds like more drama this blockchain doesn't need.
Par for the course huh?
Same wavelength??? I think we must have been in the same room when we wrote our posts!!!! LOLOLOLOL
I was sitting here shaking my head through the whole thing!!!
I mean - I can go back and read my last posts from before I left and pretty much read the same things. They do not care. They call shots (and have not had to fear anything pretty much... UNTIL NOW) and they reacted to protect themselves -but parade it around like they were protecting the blockchain.
There is so much that I have said to others in your post - like verbatim! It was HIS stake to do with as he pleased - and now it's confiscated like some corrupt government does with people they want to silence and shut down.
and yep. I cannot imagine a man getting to where he is now - by forgetting ANYTHING. And they messed with his money. still shaking my head at the nerve. the audacity
welp. it's done now.
we wait to see how it shakes out.... over time.
17 of the top 20 powering down? Could be for anything. But 17? out of 20? Interesting timing, no?
I know that's nuts. Ah, you see that number 17. That's the consensus number and yes, very coincidental. Or is it? Got a lof of shit for this post though, lemme tell ya. I'm sorry but I'd be super pissed if the bank froze my account I just opened a few weeks ago. I totally get that Justin Sun has pushed his weight around on TRON to get a few things pushed through, even fired a few people, so I understand the concern him coming here. I'm just shocked that they would do that to anyone. Doesn't matter who. What if all of a sudden they coded out @berniesanders or @smooth because of a disagreement and those two worked together and started downvoting the crap out of the consensus peoples content? Hypothetical, and not a great comparison, but still possible. What if because you and I are not on an even keel with some others that we get coded out? What if there was a massive argument between @blocktrades and @someguy123 (not likely, but anything is possible) and they both conspire to lock each other out? Just doesn't seem right to me. Maybe my morals are getting in the way here, idk.
I agree with you engine but for unknown reason I wanted to be positive. I wanted to be positive because I don't want to leave steem.
by the way engine, what's with this ninja mining? What they'll do about it? I think it seems fine for the past years, but why now?
Check my most recent post, I go in to more detail but basically, ninja mining refers to acquiring a large quantity of coins prior to public knowledge. You can also refer to someone else's opinion like @aggroed in this article he wrote a while back.
You got my vote engine ;)
Gracias hombre :)
Thank you for this @enginewitty. This whole thing has made me sick to my stomach. Too many good points for me to pick them out. Other than:
And, if I had to power down, I would. I admit that I came for the prospect of earnings and stayed for the community (as the mantra goes). I am, though, after some of the crud, hanging around because I'm hoping that Steem does something. That it's plummeting at the moment, my gut says, is partly because of this and not just the usual vagaries of crypto.
Agreed hun. Media has a huge impact on prices. Just like the stock market.
I think we all know it is because some of the forkers have a keen interest in keeping their misterdelegation or steemit delegations for as long as possible. Also, it would be kinda mean to the people currently receiving delegations to 'improve' steem.
I also use the term ninjamine in airquotes usually. I cannot help but notice some of the other famous ninjaminers didn't have their accounts frozen.
That said, I'm cool with freezing the stake, just because I am keen to see the drama (I don't like justin sun) and have no desire to sell out of this blockchain anytime soon (I was always skeptic about the immutability). I think the fellow needs his arm twisted a little and his ego brought down to earth. Let's see where this goes. I'm optimistic this will lead to good things.
I think you need to check again ;)
I only removed one withness who changed, but several who didn't. To be honest, I think we should be wary of supporting those who didn't upgrade until they make a statement as some just don't fix what ain't broken.
I did, thank you. Have to edit the post now. At the time those 2 hadn't. Now it's just Timmy.
Actually it could entirely replace all the witnesses down to 30 and effectively control the blockchain unilaterally. I go into more detail of why this was treated as a more serious problem (when it already was a problem when Steemit Inc. owned it) post-sale here: https://steemit.com/steem/@pfunk/the-case-for-the-temporary-soft-fork
Read what I wrote there if you're interested in seeing the perspective from someone who was on the other side of the fence at first, and what I saw to convince me that while it wasn't a course of action I particularly liked, it was something necessary.
I will read it and fully understand it was for the safety of the chain itself, I'm just not so sure it was the only option.