An Open Letter to the Community
On February 22, 2020, Steem Witnesses launched Soft Fork 22.2, with the sole intent to freeze the original stakes owned by Steemit, Inc.
Originally, as the core development team behind the Steem blockchain and key contributor to the ecosystem, Steemit used their stake for continued development of the Steem blockchain, onboarding users, and not voting for witnesses. The TRON Foundation is committed to add value and grow the Steem ecosystem and intends to use part of the Steemit stake for such executions. With that in mind, on February 13th, both TRON and Steemit planned to meet to discuss the future road map, with respect of the Steem community. Unfortunately, the Witnesses’ decision created a need to reclaim the stake and vote in new witnesses to usher in new policies for a healthier ecosystem and community.
Soft Fork 22.2 was maliciously structured, intending to freeze a handful of very targeted accounts and taking away their rights and possession to their owned asset, and may be deemed illegal and criminal. The group behind this could essentially do this kind of attack to any Steem community member, on any terms they want. They even threatened to hard fork, and nullify all existing STEEM token, putting every good STEEM holder, developer and community interest at danger. This is very much against every aspect of the original purpose of decentralization and the core value of the Steem blockchain and community. We can’t let it happen.
On March 2, 2020, Steemit regained the staked accounts, so as to course correct the hostile behavior led by a small group of people, and resume the order of the community.
Commitment to the Community
- The Steem blockchain will not be abandoned or merged to TRON unless the community decides so.
- Deploy in the next Hard Fork as soon as possible to reduce power down time to 1-3 days in alignment to other mainstream blockchains, while open for discussion for better economic implications.
- For the next 4-6 weeks, the Steemit team will be using the voting rights to resume the order of the community while having an open channel for meeting community members and Witnesses. The goal is to protect the Steem blockchain from bad actors, add transparency, and receive community suggestions and advice.
- After the 4-6 weeks period, the Steemit team will give the governance back to the community when it’s back in order and mutual agreement.
Product Roadmap
The Steemit team had a very productive and exciting conversation with TRON on the future roadmap and we can’t wait to share this with everyone. The following features are what we will be focusing on:
- Maintain Steem blockchain running in parallel with TRON
- Launch Smart Media Tokens
- Launch Cross Chain Atomic Swaps
- Improve Overall Steemit.com User Experience And Onboard More Users
Smart Media Tokens (SMTs)
SMTs are on our public testnet. We have GitHub testing issues created that once completed will ensure confidence in the release.
Alongside the SMT release is the SMT Wizard, a simple front end for creating SMTs, and client libraries. Client library work is mostly done except for small changes being made to the protocol during testing and is awaiting testing.
Cross Chain Atomic Swaps (CCAS)
CCAS will use a combination of Hashed Timelocked Contracts (HTLC) and Header Only Verification (HOV) to seamlessly move tokens (STEEM, TRC-20s, and SMTs) between TRON and Steem.
Steemit.com User Experience Improvements
Steemit.com is an opportunity to onboard massive numbers of users into our ecosystem through a social network / viral media model, now with TRON’s ecosystem and resources, this goal is more achievable than ever.
We are on target for feature parity with reddit.com. With communities core launched, we are very close to this goal. The remaining tasks are around onboarding, including an invite system for new accounts, and optimizing content discovery.
Specifically, our primary goal is to emphasize the organic and sustainable models for growth that Steemit.com enables. We plan on doing this by:
- Lowering the barriers to entry by streamlining the signup and first-use experience on steemit.com and on the Steem blockchain.
- Contributing to the quality and authenticity of the user base by implementing an invite / referral signup system.
- Enhancing the quality of user experience on Steemit.com by removing ads, optimizing the front page, making the rewards system easy to use through browser extensions, and integrating the wallet with the main site.
Enhancing the mobile experience.
More Rewards to Witnesses
Community is the core to the Steem ecosystem, and Witnesses should earn rewards accordingly given how important their roles are. We will come up with a plan to reward Witnesses privileges in Steemit like staking rewards.
More Users
TRON is known for its thriving ecosystem, and now Steemit has access to TRON’s active 15 million user community, a distribution network of over 600 million DAU, meanwhile leveraging TRON’s powerful marketing resources as well as some top industry leaders.
More Content
A social network without content won’t go far. Steemit.com has a perfect foundation and we will reward more to the content creators and/or curators to feed the users.
More Development
More developer support will be provided. Not only do we have access to more engineer support, but also we can run more hackathons and devote more capital to support the development of community projects.
More Liquidity
We’ll be learning a lot from TRON’s team on how to build a healthy exchange relationship and we’ll be having more conversations with exchanges to learn the best way to get listed and have more trading pairs.
A Brighter Future
Steemit and the Steem community is one of a kind within the current blockchain landscape. It had its own history, but now with TRON’s resources and ecosystem behind it, it’s time to course correct and build a healthier and thriving ecosystem around this dynamic community.
This will be nothing but an exciting future.
The Steemit Team
Do you understand this is exactly what we wanted to prevent?
With this move you:
Preventing this is the reason why softfork 22.2 was implemented in the first place. But how stupid where we to not include befriended exchanges. We discussed it but we could not believe crypto-world would be so stupid. Apparently exchanges pick a side.
Please understand you have killed a wonderful community of four years. Real people. From all over the world. Not bots or gambling apps.
Maybe your chain will continue, but it will be an empty shell. Happy pumping.
seriously, they used the stake to downvote comments....
@ben is a steem whale. Early Adopter. Not sure how he is aligned to Steemit....
That account has been sold.
The changing of the private keys does support this inference https://steemd.com/tx/24fcc974e1318a2665b6bc30c871d3247959203c
It's a Justin Sun/Steemit account.
@ned is/was a steem whale. Early founder.
sunkimjong and his comrades
lol.. hahaha
And changing the powerdown to 24 hours for what reason? That doesn't make sense and obviously won't be a community decision! Centralization at it's best!
So his exchange buddies can power down all the customers' funds they powered up to save STINC stake.
After centralizing the chain so totally and all of the dapps shutting down in protest, it would otherwise take weeks for every single user to rush to the exits as fast as possible and the price of STEEM to tank to zero. This way, the dumping can commence the day after they unilaterally change monetary/issuance policy of their centrally-managed, centrally-issued, unregistered publicly traded security.
I think it's more likely that they had to agree on doing this in order to have the exchanges move along with powering up all of their user's STEEM.
They knew that as soon as the SP on the exchanges was used to give back voting rights to the Steemit Inc accounts, those in turn can implement the new fork and they wouldn't need to use the tokens on those exchanges for voting anymore.
So the power down is likely added to allow the exchanges to power down quickly again once everything is "back in order", so that their users won't be too mad.
Why? Of course to un-power all what's recyclable, and probably to somewhat defend against any attempt to enforce things like https://developers.steem.io/apidefinitions/#broadcast_ops_decline_voting_rights with its 30 day period, but of course that one is dead anyways, as it can be issued ONLY by the owner of given account (owner decides to do a self-locking). It's dead because no malicious user will ever decide to self-lock the voting rights, and I don't expect steemit or justin or exchanges to do that, especially now. Considering that the steem API probably doesn't have any "lock that bad guy" ops (that could be easily misused), then changing the power-down period now can only mean one thing: INCOMING RAPID FUND DRAIN.
Changing the power down is being done so the exchanges that unethically, if not illegally powered up their clients Steem and voted with it can power it down quick and replace their clients Steem before SHTF.
He proves what he is: a pirate?
When Steem Inc held the most coins and Freedom could decide who can go to top 20, we already knew steem chain is centralized.
For the exchange, if the users can withdraw the coins as will, then there is no problem for the exchange to use the coins. If the exchange prevents users to withdraw, then it's another story.
When firepower the spammer retaliated me just because I reveal the truth and cleaners refused to help, none of your witnesses willing to help. When the whales put the upvotes for sale and the front page is filled with garbage, none of you witnesses care. Now you witnesses realized that you may not be able to collect money without doing anything, you guys acted super fast. Yes, I agree some of the top witnesses have contributions to Steem, but what you did is far less than what you paid for.
Let me tell you, the spirit of Steem had already dead long time ago.
because it's not "officially" inc accounts lol
softfork was soft af
no exactly.
little could one know exchanges just pick sides.
So you mean witnesses started this hostile behavior without taking into consideration what the consequences could be? Looks to me like a plan that was quickly setup out of fear and the biggest shouters got their deal. Freezing their accouns was by far the biggest mistakes you guys made
Look, I didn't even agree with the SF after I found out about it. However, I give the witnesses props for taking action. There was provably a problem, as we're seeing now, and they did what they thought would work.
The laws they believed they were following weren't followed by @justinsunsteemit, and there is a point beyond which actions can't be predicted. Criminal acts by multiple exchanges does come under that shield IMHO.
The witnesses didn't steal the money, and didn't expect exchanges to steal their clients money, but that's what the exchanges did, albeit they might return ownership of those tokens to their owners.
The witnesses not predicting that criminal act is completely understandable.
I see your point. I see the dilemma. HF225 is like "violence" against "soft violence" (at least inc believe). I believe that was all you guys can do at that moment, but I don't think HF225 is all they can do at this moment, to me it looks more like power tripping. But what otherwise with that SF, expect him to negotiate or? How can we know if it's trustful and enforceable even when he agrees on something.
The way I see it, the 'contract' with us has been broken. Trust is lost. In essence, this isn't really "STEEM" anymore since the rules have changed.
As such, we must remove our emotional attachment (formed over the years) from it and treat it as business. It's just another shitcoin now.
yay probably the dpos system in steem is also fundamental flawed, a real decentralised should be trustless, based on rules/codes, not trust. Sad sad, have to move on.
it already says in the post above that stake will be used in the future. So it's basically saying what softfork222 wanted to prevent that it will be done.
I wonder how many of that so called 15 mil users on Tron are bots, proxy and bag holders who just go with the flow. Does anyone in their community even contest things? We might not be the most pleasant bunch but at least we're not just yes men for everything
They don't exist.
There's exactly one person from Tron that's commenting here and it's @will-richards.
For the record, I kidnapped @will-richards from a Tron discord.
Simple: all of them.
Sure looks like it, I've never heard a bag holder of Tron shit on anything they do.
You answer yourself ... It is not exactly Steemit, the most crowded platform of being human.
Nor is it the platform that most helps human beings to enter and participate.
In fact. To all the people to whom I have invited Steemit, they have escaped.
After verifying the content they found here. For them it was more like a conversation between aliens. That a conversation between human beings.
What makes it impossible to retain users... Tron will be crap. Personally, I don't know him.
But Steemit, I know him; and for a new user or person who is not a blockchains fan. I can assure you that Steemit is absolute bullshit. Equally.
And I have already checked with many people.. Trust me.
Both need the ideal change. At least Steemit. That is the platform that I know.
It must become a simpler, natural and realistic platform.
It is required not to talk so much about Steem, Steemit or blockchain applications, to let in other more normal problems for society in general. Other themes that in Steemit in many cases are prohibited or very badly received.
And facilitate understanding and use at the slightest expression..
justin sun loves bots and gambling dapps so he can't understand our feeling
What if Justin is a bot masquerading as a human?
Dun dun dunmnnn
Brought to you by the CCP Android department. No relation to the mobile operating system.
lol now they are downvoting!! Stupid!!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
You did this to Steem. It's exactly an accurate description but it fits well enough.
Streisand effect
The Streisand effect is a phenomenon whereby an attempt to hide, remove, or censor a piece of information has the unintended consequence of publicizing the information more widely, usually facilitated by the Internet. It is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, their motivation to access and spread it is increased.It is named after American entertainer Barbra Streisand, whose 2003 attempt to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, inadvertently drew further public attention to it. Similar attempts have been made, for example, in cease-and-desist letters to suppress files, websites, and even numbers. Instead of being suppressed, the information receives extensive publicity and media extensions such as videos and spoof songs, often being widely mirrored on the Internet or distributed on file-sharing networks.
I think all exchanges should: https://developers.steem.io/apidefinitions/#broadcast_ops_decline_voting_rights before being allowed to operate on the chain, or before people trust their funds to them. But of course, it's now a far too late to shout about it :|
They do and don’t care....this isn’t a normal company.
" But how stupid where we to not include befriended exchanges." I rebutt that this question is not accurately worded. Perhaps something more along the lines of "How could we not have thought about all the multitudinous "tricky" ways required for dealing with a Chinese person in business relations - based on ASSUMPTIONS we make as "non-Chinese" as to what is "fair play", versus wat is "beyond the bounds" of fair play?"
I am actually finding this all very entertaining, in a twisted way, because it vindicated my original gut feeling about this as soon as I heard the news of the "partnership". Aside from all of the "scammy" top dApps on the Tron blockchain (which is PROOF that this dude is not exactly the must trustworthy/straight-forward guy in blockchain) I just find it humerous that as China is literally on lockdown right now we're seeing this sort of thing play out in the microcosm. The bottom line is that, Chinese people "do business" in a totally different way. And so when you ENGAGE them in business dealings you're simply going to be "tacitly agreeing" to dealing with their "tactics". I have not doubt in my mind that Justin Sun BELIEVE that what he is doing is "the best option at this time". And it may ultimately lead to "progress" of some sort. But everyone is going to have to ACCEPT, going forward, that by engaging with Steemit we are all now "tacitly agreeing" to this kind of managemet behavior. As for me, I initiated the 13-week "power down" of all of my ~ 2,600 Steem, with the understanding that the "13 weeks" will be a "trial period" for Justin Sun to prove to me that it is BETTER for me to keep my Steem staked in Steeit versus converting [that] Steem to DEC and putting it all into the @splinterlands game, whose admins' ethics and business practices I have MUCH more confidence in, because they have EARNED that confidence through transparency and fairness over time. Steemit is just ONE dapp. There ARE - and WILL BE others. I find this situation to be more ENLIGHTENING than anything else at this time. Everyone needs to make their own choice. I am still willing to give Justin Sun the next 12 weeks to "show me what he's got". But I'm also wise enough to do my due diligence. Either way, I think things will work out in the grand scheme...
So basically you hostile takeover Steem's governance claiming it's because you're striving for decentralization, and yet you do it by centralizing governance by voting the top 20 witnesses with one super powered up account.
But screw the 4 years and thousands of witness votes from the community that's been here every day for years, right?
And the fucking exchanges used customer funds! Its beyond unethical.
you know the old saying... not your keys not your coins.
Not long ago I found this brillant operation in steem docs: https://developers.steem.io/apidefinitions/#broadcast_ops_decline_voting_rights - the community should have required any exchange to do precisely that on their technical accounts, so such things cannot happen.. too bad I learned about that op a week ago and I myself didn't consider the exchanges when SF was being prepared :|
AIUI, that op was explicitly created to render whale stake nonvoting to be able to remove the centralization of power risk to the chain. Today, that risk became non-theoretical. (That's actually also a pun. Hi @ben!)
AIUI: Exactly. Today: actually, I'd say it also prooved that this op was very much needed, and very much forgotten, and probably it's mostly rendered useless now :)
Buy more STEEM and vote for your witness. It's really that simple! STEEM was DPOS from the beginning.
I'm kind of happy they showed their hand and that the soft fork happened. We had till the town hall to discuss all of this and they pulled a fast one. There's not going to be discussions, just dictating.
I initially thought that the supposed 'town hall' was just a tactic to delay the valid witnesses while they (Steemit Inc.) re-grouped and implemented a takeover. Sadly I was correct.
Edited for clarity.
I honestly didn't think that lol how naive I was, here I was thinking okay we can now bring parties to the table but it looks like we're as divided as ever. I wonder if any of the witnesses will stick around for the great handing back of the chain
I doubt there will be any handing back. Justin Sun did the same thing to the Tron blockchain recently (with the aide of Binance) and has not 'handed it back' either.
I admit I know zero about Tron and never been interested in it. I don't get why people like these want to get into decentralised projects? Why not focus on something you can control then if thats what you want.
I think that calling something 'decentralized' has marketing appeal for someone only interested in making money.
Perhaps also Mr. Sun has control issues and can never quite deal with a truly decentralized platform but likes to be looked upon as a pioneer in the field for more complicated and perhaps narcissistic/megalomaniac reasons.
Manipulators see lotsa potential victims when looking at something decentralized. It's what they do for a living.
Is time to grow in other decentralized social networks such as creary.net. Witnesses! Here is a tutorial to create a node in this community. The consensus it is 25 witness nodes. tutorial https://creaproject.io/set-crea-witness-node/
Good luck! You just lost whole community, the most valuable thing here.
Good luck! You just lost
Whole community, the most
Valuable thing here.
- jacekw
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Holy shit, didn't see that coming. You're actually trying to establish an order with premined stake while talking about decentralization? Did you have stroke in the meantime or what?
Fuck this shit, you actually showed that soft fork was absolutely neccessary.
Btw i dont think you have 15 mil active users, whole crypto combined doesn't have that much😂😂😂
By removing our witnesses you have proved to be not worthie of our trust. We should have forked you out completely.
we know who's behind his ass
In a response to this I have shutdown my Steem Apps for iOS and Android: https://steemwallet.app - removed from appstores.
Additional apps have already been shut down by their respective owners to signal distrust in the centralisation of the Steem Chain:
C.R.A.Z.Y.
I support this. All STEEM apps/infrastructure should protest by going dark and maybe even using a MEMO to inform all users of the hostile takeover and its implications.
@justinsuntron and @steemitblog should know that without the STEEM Community, Justin bought nothing but a big pile of worthless SHITcoins.
Sounds like an excellent idea to deprive 'The Community' you're claiming to fight for of the tools to interact with the blockchain. insert facepalm
Right? Some community support there.
They can be reactivated on a future forked chain which will be community based. No sense allowing justin Sun to benefit from their hard work.
Meanwhile, said community (assuming the aim is to move get everyone over to said hypothetical forked chain) has been blinded, maimed and deprived of their tools. Still not seeing how Steemit Inc or Justin Sun benefits or get's hurt by the removal of those tools.
If the aim is to 'seduce' all current chain users to come over to the new chain (again, there is none, so hypothetical) by taking away their tools on this chain, then it's certainly a hamfisted way of doing so.
I'm not seeing how this has anything to do with Justin Sun or SteemitInc benefiting from those tools. It's the community that benefits (or not right now) from them.
metcalfs law. The less ppl who use the cheem chain, the less it is worth. The more sun/tron fears they purchased a dud. Also it means that if steemit/tron wants to bring back these dev tools, they are going to have to spend their own money either for the hardware or the software development.
Ah I hadn’t realised we already went from trying to protect and safeguard our blockchain to razing it to the ground.
It's not our blockchain anymore.
Burn it down. Scorched Earth. It's a tactic. YMMV, but so does other's.
Good job!
Now that it's apparent forking doesn't work this is the best way to fight this kind of bullshit.
welcome to steem yall
What's next? All steemians to be quarantined?
Forcibly removed with drive-bys.
🤓 That ^^.
What the hell?!
"New witness" accounts were created yesterday and today they are steem witness? How? Everything is on the blockchain.
What we can learn from TRON? How to centralize the ecosystem? How to impose censorship?
THIS IS NOT STEEM WHAT WE WANT TO!
Only #SteemClassic
It is interesting that nobody complain when witnesses did same thing 2 weeks ago :D
Comments fiesta!
Really? You like dictatorship?
How is that a same thing when you had consensus witnesses with an intention of preserving Steem and now one centralized entity trying to force things?
P.S. They downvoted most opposing comments here.
It is not what I like, just how I see the situation.
Because they are teaching people a lesson in being not hostile. Should have not started this war in the first place. The witnesses didn't preserve steemit. They were on the verge of killing it.
Ass kiss much?
He really thinks Justin will pick him up in his new Steem order.
Can't write much?
I write a lot actually. Thanks for noticing.
I just noticed you got a thriving blog. Keep writing and one day you got enough pennies!
This is in no way similar. A witness consensus voted by community stake is a decentralized action.
Exchanges taking customer funds to do a hostile takeover and completely centralizing the chain is an abomination of crypto.
Steem, at this moment is 100% centralized.
There is no point in it being a blockchain.
Community stake ? You needed what ?blocktrades and or freedom vote to be in top 20 ? Is that the community consensus ?
I seriously don't know if that's the case
Vast majority of witnesses and community members were on board with the SF. This is an action by 1 guy that bought himself a blockchain by telling his friend CZ to use customer funds to takeover the chain for him.
Has this not always been the case though? I've maintained since forever that all it takes is one wealthy bad actor, a youtuber prank or something and bam, centralised on a whim. Decentralization has always seemed somewhat of an illusion mixed with a pipe dream to me that only really functioned because Steem isn't popular or known
not really, because you can't buy that much from exchanges and not skyrocket the price.
It was only really ever as decentralized as @ned wanted it to be. Perhaps it will dawn on folks that @ned never did this, even though he could have at will, at any point in time.
All of us only ever spoke freely because @ned wanted us to, and that includes all the admiration for his hair.
Miss him yet folks? I sure do.
Don't miss him at all; he set this up as an inevitability from the very beginning and made no effort to fix. People on twitter have predicted such a 'coup' via exchanges specifically for years. I ain't wishing back anyone who created such a scenario
Welcome to capitalism!
Customer funds?
Exchanges bought a lot of STEEMs 2 days ago causing +25% price pump...
They literally bought blockchain.
They didnt buy 100 million Steem. The price would have gone up much higher.
I di mys because it was like taking an aggressive stance and blowing the first strike. Fear is never a good advisor and the results are obvious. The other has to strike back if not intentionally than just in order not to lose his face.
Now please could we just go back to the table and try to deescalate before everything gets totally out of hand ?
Yours Jan
Now that's an optimist when you don't think things are totally out of hand now.
Too bad Justin didn't have the courage to sign the post instead of using the Steemit Inc team as cannon fodder. Cowardly to say the least.
I still do have hope. Because when we are really spiralling into an all out war then we are all going to lose big time. Just like in every other war. And I seriously can not believe that we are really wanting this to happen.
How do you not get that this is war? This was a complete takeover. This is exactly why Bitcoin and Ethereum are not allowing on-chain governance. It always gets corrupted, just like on EOS and TRON, on-chain governance never works.
Don't you remember what a shitshow in eth went down in 2017 ?
It was not a shitshow. People had freedom to choose, which is not a shitshow. On-chain governance is worse (read: coercive) than vote-by-node. Ethereum Classic is technically the original Ethereum chain and they are very free to remain doing things as they wish. However, the majority of people and projects chose the chain known today as
"Ethereum" because they felt different about the decision.
Steem is different. Because a very small number of nodes decide everything, all you have to do is hijack the nodes, which happened here, and boom, chain is officially centralized and under the control of one corporation. Consensys does not have that kind of power.
How do you not grasp that Steem is now @justinsunsteemit's personal possession? There is no war. He won.
Victori spolia.
He didn't write it.
how do you figure he didn't write it? well his people at his instructions would be more accurate... it's clearly not been written by the Steemit team we all know even though it has been written to appear it was.
Did you expect anything different from a one-percenter shitheel?
Exactly de-escalation is what we need. Things usually go south when people get emotional and let emotions rule over common sense. The emotional response has been impressive and has been resulting in an impressive escalation
What would be the point of negotiations? @justinsunsteemit has all the power. What can you offer him? Who would take his word?
Not me. Who will use those exchanges? Not me.
All the negotiations are done.
Steem is over.
He has got the chain in his grip but he already got others so that is not really what he wanted I guess. The community and ppl he has absolutely not, steem is more than just the technical topics behind the Blockchain. And by the way even though it was not that clear I yesterday it was not Justin nut blocktrades and freedom who decided the witness and in the end what code the chain is running.
Some of us did.
Wtf? Ben’s account who has been inactive since...forever, now upvotes those comments? Controlled by Justin? Wtf is going on?
Who knows...maybe @mottler jumps in too...or even @freedom if he pulls back the delegations...
Disgusting
ben...
ben|ned
Extreme...
The ownership was updated several hours ago if you check Steemd.
looks like it belongs to steemit.
One of many sock puppets.
Ned said he would hide his stake and seems to suffer from little man's disease enough to burn us all down with it.
A few people did.
where were you? There were tonnes of heated debates after the soft fork.
Spot on!
witnesses started this by blocking accounts. This is action-reaction, and they should've seen this coming.
Anyways, a hardfork in inevitable IMO, could've gone much smoother without the 222 drama though
100% behind your statement. Justin/Steemit/Tron, none of them started this. I call it karma
The very first thing he did as the owner of Steemit, Inc was to declare he was going to dismantle the chain.
but if he really had no intention to use that stake to vote for witnesses then there was no problem with that. He could wait till the meeting, make an agreement, where it would say he will not us it for voting witnesses... But he wanted to do this, he does not like to not be in charge...
Witnesses were going to protect the blockchain from ninja-mined stake and centralization of the blockchain.
Now it's centralized power.
Don't go full retard.
Why they didnt protect before? Because Ned told them he will not use it? It is laugh
@ned didn't use it.
Think about that.
YES, controlled by the second largest name in the whole crypto industry. And you just unleashed the beast. We should be proud of ourselves.
feel free to read this and see why https://steempeak.com/steem/@joseph/the-history-of-steem-steemit-launch-in-the-words-of-dan-larimer-from-the-early-launch-days
Reserving this comment space for when I'm not having a rage stroke.
Find a new space I have marked this as my fave comment so far.
Deep breaths, man, deep breaths.
Joins in quiet contemplation
Mutual
hahahaha
Everybody's allowed to vote their stake. Always has been.
Ah, the @sneak comes out of the woodwork. You must sense your time is come. That pesky @ned and the decentralization he favored has finally been eliminated. Now is your hour.
Come forth, and strike!
No. that's a lie. After the witnesses suspended the founder's stake from voting, until the exchanges fraudulently reinstated it, that stake was not allowed to vote witnesses.
lol
You told me I was asking questions out of place, you're right, no one had a chance to react to this.
How compatible with TRC10, TRC20 and various ERC standards does SMTs intend to be?
Posted using Partiko Android
I think one ERC1155 multi-token contract for all Steem tokens could work
I shall follow you in just sit back and relax on my large coach and view the war unfolding :)
U got the best idea on how to react to this mess!
If it has been your intent all along to use the Steemit stake for further Steem blockchain and community development according to what has been promised to the investors and users who have stayed here for 4 years, then why not just commit to it in a trustless way?
This was the absolute worst way to build trust with the community going forward. A sad day for decentralization.
Who cast the first stone?
Why do we need to cast stones anyway ? Out of fear ? Out of whatever ? Damn we are not learning at all
Steemit.
Steemit did.
Are you stupid or just pretending to be?
I'm totally stupid.
Look at this @ben doing some downvoting, piece of shit
Was this written by the CCP?
Immediately threatening the top witnesses, whose responsibility is the integrity of the blockchain and community, with legal ramifications while using OTHER PEOPLE'S MONEY WITHOUT PERMISSION to gain voting power to undermine those witnesses by using funds on exchanges is as authoritarian and fraudulent as it gets. I can't believe how long we've been contributing and advocating for Steem as a decentralized, censorship resistant chain. I'm very disappointed. A little embarrassed actually.
HOW IS THIS ACTION NOT MALICIOUS!??! It was done to prevent this exact action by Sun which by its very nature betrays and corrupts the system by centralizing it. This is actually causing harm to everyone on the chain. This is the actual, malicious act.
No rights were diminished and no property was taken away. What a bunch of emotional pandering.
Again, was this written by the CCP? The gall! To claim that centralizing a chain to save it from centralization is just about as close to double speak as you can get. By betraying the mission and nature of the chain YOU have put every Steem holder, developer and community interest at danger.
I guess I'll just have to wait until the discussion on March 6th, but I can't continue to promote Steem while this Civil War takes place.
For what it's worth, I'm for a hardfork to a new Steem chain. Maybe Steem Classic isn't the right name for it, because it'll be too closely tied with Steem Tron.
we could call it "not-steemy"
Haha thanks for showing that we were right all along. SteemIt stake was supposed to be nonvoting so you colluded with exchanges to bypass DpoS governance just like you did on your shit chain Tron
Ladies and gentlemen, Steemit is now owned by the Chinese government. Bow down and salute your communist overlords
They are socialusts,...
theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-there-is-no-communism-in-russia
Rule by force is the disease, who and how are symptoms.
They know how to push opposing comments down too. So stupid.
Go fuck yourself Steemit inc!
I will NEVER support you anymore nor develop for your proprietary blockchain!
You finally revealed your true face: FAKE decentralization advocates!
as expected...
A day that will live in infamy. A small community stood against a tyrant. Few stood up to the collusion of centralized exchanges to try and overtake a chain.
STEEM is not the tech, STEEM is the community. I suggest you stop your attack, let the community vote in the witnesses, not centralized exchanges using MY and other Steemians funds to hurt their investment.
Whatever u signed up for this, stake is stake, this is the law if the land. If you don’t like it now, leave! U should have known what you have been investing in the whole time. Quit bitching and moaning and grow up! I’m a steemian too and i’m happy as pie to see this change. Speak for yourself, don’t let the door hit you in the but on the way out! cya! I’m staying now, like your post said weeding out the week! bye
Calm down, people!
Without community, these boys are worth nothing. Let them enjoy their shit show!
YOU HAVE MADE A BIG MISTAKE!!!
STOP IMMEDIATELY JUSTIN!!!
Do you really think you can take over this chain??? Don’t be stupid!!!
OMG!!!
Now we will wipe out your stakes for sure!!!
I understand your shock, I'm surprised as well, but the plan you've just stated won't help in anything but further escalating the conflict.
I didn’t state any plan. I am not a plan stater or executer. Just super disappointed.
I'm referring to "Now we will wipe out your stakes for sure!!!". That's what they were afraid of. That's a pretty hefty amount of money, and I'm sure the now-main-investor wasn't happy about losing control over this pool of money. IF the wittnesses were clear about their intents and IF they were super-transparent that they absolutely will not erase it, then maybe today's takeover weren't happening. Just maybe. But I'm sure that agitating the crowd to erase those funds will not make the situation lighter. That's all what I wanted to say.
I am pretty sure we will end up with two chains now. 100% centralizing the chain was not the way to go.
At this point Justin is worthless in the blockchain space. Tron will tank after these actions. What a scammer!
Yup. Everything looks like this is going to happen. Especially 100% wittness pool + 24h powerdown. I'm actually pretty surprised that it's 24h, not 1 minute or "immediate". I wonder why did they even considering leaving any delay. But, we'll see. There's some slight chance that this will actually be positive. Wanna a lotto ticket, anyone?
What do you mean 24hr power-down? I just tried, it is still 13 weeks. or is it only for their accounts?
Further escalating what??? He already took over the chain. Its like i beat you with a bat and someone comes in and tell you: "Hey dont be mad, youll further escalate the situation".
Its already escalated dumbass
If you are lying on the floor bleeding becuase you just got your shit beaten out of you, will you further shake your fists at the attackers? That's how you get killed IRL by an angry mob. It works only on the movies where some superhero in a plastic suit may rescue you and congratulate you your courage in dire times. I absolutely agree that it's just about as escalated as it could ever be. But will shouting empty threats help in anything? If I shout Im gonna erase them all, will that fix anything? If we all shout this, will that fix anything? The best we can do now is to either GTFO to another medium/chain so they loose all their customers and momentum, or to somehow get it all on a more diplomatic/al way instead of kicking around and stealing candies one from each other.
Youre already dead...
Well, now you did exactly what the community feared you would do and what was the reason for this softfork all along.
You have just proven all of them right.
I wonder how the government regulators will feel about a single organization unambiguously unilaterally dictating the price feeds for the SBD conversion.
Now that the blockchain has a single operator, they can manipulate the SBD conversion rate to whatever they like.
Right now, the only thing getting pegged are the existing holders of STEEM.
2 Mar 2020: The day we learned that @dan's DPoS experiment is finally and incontrovertibly a failure.
with Exchanges, which can vote with not their funds.... from now every PoS can be considered as failure
It seems that they can and did. I don't even think there is a reasonable presumption that they should not. After all, the money is entrusted to them and is under their control. Why shouldn't they vote it?
Because it deprives the actual owners of the funds, to whom they have a fiduciary trust, of their private right of ownership of those funds, which includes the sole and exclusive right to vote with those funds.
No part of their contracted arrangement with exchanges forfeited that lawful right of ownership. The exchanges seized those funds and exercised ownership of them in violation of their fiduciary trust. Hanging's too good for 'em.
Remember your legal theory when you have a daughter in school, under the control of authority figures there.
Surrendering the funds to a second party by depositing them to an exchange deprives the "actual owners of the funds" their right of private ownership of those funds.
Money in the bank isn't your money. It's the bank's money, and a corresponding liability to you.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_is_nine-tenths_of_the_law
https://sneak.berlin/20191119/your-money-isnt-yours/
Money isn't voting rights, and Steem is. Powering it up does prevent it's use by it's rightful owners, and violates the fiduciary trust these exchanges undertake.
Banks are thieves, which is why I don't use banks.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law
Possession is nine-tenths of the law is an expression meaning that ownership is easier to maintain if one has possession of something, or difficult to enforce if one does not. The expression is also stated as "possession is nine points of the law", which is credited as derived from the Scottish expression "possession is eleven points in the law, and they say there are but twelve."Although the principle is an oversimplification, it can be restated as: "In a property dispute (whether real or personal), in the absence of clear and compelling testimony or documentation to the contrary, the person in actual, custodial possession of the property is presumed to be the rightful owner. The rightful owner shall have their possession returned to them; if taken or used.
Maybe they should be able to do that, maybe not. But for sure, locking up stake of their clients by converting to Steem Power (with all implications of that) IMO is a crime.
not your keys... etc. by sending DPoS tokens to an exchange, you give up your voting rights, and make them your "proxy".
I hate it too, but those are the rules.
Crimes aren't generally matters of opinion, and most cryptocurrency exchanges have "locked up" their customer funds offline for safety purposes, taking several days to access them from cold wallets. This doesn't seem that different to me.
What laws do you think have been broken, in which countries?
Philosophically I agree that whoever owns a token should be able to vote with it. (Nevermind the discussion of whether or not STINC was bound by their promise not to vote).
But any DPoS chain that wants me involved going forward need to have some sort of mechanism that still prevents this type of take-over from being possible.
Maybe a delay in time from when tokens are staked to when they can be used to vote for witnesses/BP combined with max votes being reduced to 5 would be sufficient.
Kudos! I confess to admiring your way with words here.
Thanks!
Decentralised means freedom of speech mate. Obviously that's not a thing here anymore...Nice $18 downvote on my previous comment.
@justinsunsteemit studied in the typical #mkultra inductee universities and became the new trojan horse for Gen Y wannabee trusted Knight Steemplars of the CCP & PLA.
http://www.gq.com.cn/celebrity/news_182560eb97720e71.html
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gq.com.cn%2Fcelebrity%2Fnews_182560eb97720e71.html
RIP Decentralization !
Huobi and Binance are joining the party to overtake STEEM with their friend TRON.
Decentralization lost I guess...
Sad time for STEEM that actually proved it was decentralized when OUR witnesses resisted an hostile takeover with Justin Sun lying from the very st day !
Decentralization was lost long time ago.
It never really existed as long as the founder's stake did. The illusion of decentralization, freedom of speech, and all the rest was merely the result of @ned's largesse. Our freedom was what he wanted, so that's what he allowed.
Nuff said.
Saw that too huh🤔😆
Where does this statement stem from?
From an obvious disinformation campaign spearheaded by Steemit Inc!
An appeal to steemit users:
As this drama plays out, please reach out to the friends you’ve made here and make sure you stay connected even if this place falls apart. Love you all
You are dealing with more than a business here – you are dealing with a community. A community that has been here longer than you have. Steem & Steemit “Elders” have poured their passion into the site & currency over the years, and with that invested time & passion, they deserve some respect. You bought the company – not the people. Money can buy a lot of things – trust isn’t one of them.
Since the moment you took hold of Steemit (through an unannounced sudden back-alley deal), you have done very little to address the communities concerns or answer their questions. You are the new kid. You can’t come into this and expect to be accepted and earn trust by keeping everyone in the dark. The balloon drop with confetti cannons while changing every topic to “TRON” isn’t selling it. We are not the TRON community – we are the Steem community. The fireworks that light up your sky when you talk about TRON are just for you.
You have done nothing to understand and empathize with the Steem community & witnesses. You can try twisting what the witnesses did (freezing the Steem accounts you own) as much as you want, but the move the witnesses made was with a passion for protecting Steem – an act out of precaution for what they love caused by your silence on your intentions & way of shrugging off community questions. Your actions today were done selfishly, recklessly, & shows your lack of empathy and understanding. You have effectively lost any chance at trust from some of the most passionate Steem users & witnesses. You did not do your part when you entered this community to introduce yourself correctly and clearly state your intentions. You came in as a TRON salesman, and sorry, none of us were buying – we already had Steem.
I think more than your move today, the most unfortunate thing we learn from this, is the fact that you didn’t hear the community. We were talking. We had questions and concerns. You just didn’t care enough to listen. You did whatever it took to get your Steem back. Pretending you did it to gain back control of the community is “transparent” and we are seeing right through it. You have proven that you care more about the money than you do the community. You are the bad actor.
This should be a lesson to all witnesses and all fools around here who were against fork 0.22.2.
Happy now? This is what they wanted all along....
If they didn’t do that, he would not have shown his true dictator face. Now I am glad they did the soft fork. Better to know earlier who you are dealing with than later.
Oh...we knew exactly who we were dealing with. It’s just that some people are romantically naive...
Do we really expect some progress at that meeting? Sheeesh....
I didn’t. Now I know.
I was giving him the benefit of the doubt that he could have been a good guy before shitting bricks but clearly never trust a commie.
My objection to 22.2 was that it did not fix anything and in some comments even mentioned that a "...billionaire could still but majority stake tomorrow". Guess this is tomorrow. The lesson to be learned is don't take a knife to a gun fight and don't piss off a billionaire.
There wouldn’t be a consensus to freeze a giant stakeholder’s assets if they purchased their stake in the open market.
As a matter of fact this would have skyrocketed the price and would have been beneficial for everyone. Do you feel benefited now?????
This stake was mined...illegally...and transferred to the highest bidder whose intentions were unknown....or should I say...known?
My position is that, perhaps, one solution might have been a body of second thought, much like second bodies found in most democracies. IE Senates, Legislature/Congresses.
We could have a requirement of 51% of all active witnesses for code approval and only the top 20 to decide on a version for consideration as the next HF.
Anyway better minds may have a better solution.. Yet even if forked this issue must be addressed in future versions of DPoS.
All stake was. Every Steem was mined, except those produced by inflation and delivered as rewards - based on the mined stake.
[citation needed]
You have some inside information on the negotiations? Care to share?
Assumptions aren't facts.
Exchanges voting with customer funds to remove all 20 community voted witnesses is a criminal action! This is exactly what the community wanted to prevent by temporarily freezing the ninja-mined assets of Steemit. On the plus site we and the crypto community as a whole are now learning a great lesson about the weaknesses of a DPOS system and how to improve it in the future. We need to deescalate the situation now and work an a better Steem 2.0 which is more decentralized.
Irony as thick as a rhinoceros' hide.
On top of the rest, Ben (one of Ned's account) is now heavily the 95% of the community that is standing to them, and upvoting the other 5% of scumbags.
Centralization : Done
Censure : Done
Good job, Steem looks more and more like China by the minute.
So basically steemit has full control over everything that goes into the steem blockchain.
1-3day powerdown. WTF!!! we never wanted that. We already had a massive debate about it saying anything lower than 4 weeks seem risky due to how account recovery works and such.
You've already thrown in a ton of things you are planning on doing without even consulting the community and we have no say now cause you've just demonstrated that at any point in time you can take full control of the blockchain.
There is absolutely no way anyone can trust the blockchain as it is now. There is no decentralized governance anymore as you've just demonstrated.
Well done.
There was never a decentralized governance system in place to begin with.
Congratulations asshole, you just alienated the whole STEEM community.
I think Ned knew just what he was doing by selling to Tron. He knew how the Witnesses would act.
JSun should have known to call steemit, steemit and not steemy at the AMA. He should have known we are Steemians and the word SMT.
Think about what all has happened from the perspective of an angry person with a toy everyone wants that you own but no one likes you.
Now it is getting even better because everyone is fighting in the comments from fear and disbelief while watching our home fall apart.
Everyone knew how much money JSun has. Take away a new toy from someone and do you think they will be happy?
Would you? if you, meaning anyone on Steem, had a billion dollars and spent some pocket change on a new toy just sit back while people took it away from you.
Okay, not all of it away, but tied you up in a corner to sit and think about what you have not done yet...
We Steemian either ALL stick together and now wait or leave. Either way, fighting in the comments with each other and calling people names brings us Steemians farther apart not closer.
Now if you had just written the post above would you want everyone fighting and not talking to each other like below OR it quiet so you do not know what is going on?
Just my thoughts.......
Exactly. There was never any confusion on their end, but they sure instilled it with a few purposefully guided word raps and fed the dogs their bones. They have been giving @ned shit for years and trying to bully him into doing this that and the other. SO, he said, fine, you don't like me, ta hell with ya. Let someone else deal with you for awhile. Now, the new guy, isn't as tolerant as the last guy. He'll take his toys back and punch you in the damn face. Just sayin. It is sad everyone calling them names and when it comes right down to it, they haven't GIVEN THEM A GODDAM CHANCE TO DO ANYTHING YET. Sorry, got stupid there for a second.
The only stupid you got there is thinking he even needed a chance to do anything.
He doesn't need your chances. His mind was made up day one.
He doesn't need you in his new platform. He doesn't even need the community. There are enough people in China to fill the void.
We're all doomed! Run for the hills!
Tis a minor inconvenience.
Who the fuck are you? You don't even have any stake here you poor little bitch.
I'm Batman! The Joker? The Riddler. Nobody.
Are you sure you are smart enough for this comment? 😂😂
Prolly not.
Just because your stupid does not mean you are not correct. 😎
Facts are facts. Regardless how people feel about them.
I can't help but stand back and slow clap!
I do not ever debate the idea of "right" or "wrong" , but I do appreciate playing chess which has moves and counter moves.
Anyone can see there has been actions and reactions. It seems like the witnesses idea to protect the chain was to use gasoline to put out a fire that wasn't even burning yet due to fear...and now it is burning.
I think when it comes to decisions that are made it is simple...if someone makes a decision they should be willing to live with whatever comes from their decisions...... Welcome to #newsteem 😂😃
Well put hombre. Who in their right mind, knowing it could be easily countered, would have done what they did? Just saying. It was like going to play football against the Seahawks when all they knew how to play was Jenga.
Generally I don't comment on the articles I read, I haven't participated in the platform for a long time but I always try to be aware of what's going on. Today I find that the mood here is very agitated and I want to allow myself to give my opinion if anyone is interested. I speak on behalf of the community I did not know about steem, of those more than 5000 users who follow my account of which perhaps many are inactive by not finding what they expected or seeing too hard a way. I want to summarize what I have found and please correct the areas where I am wrong. We have always been crying out for investors to be able to keep breathing, then one appears @justinsunsteemit who invests so much money that they buy about 20% of the shares. But since that is a lot of influence, we are afraid of not knowing or suspecting what he might do with that power and we try to block him. The user moves his influence in some exchange houses to defend himself from that attack and at the same time he counteracts taking control of everything, then he appears here trying to convince us that it is something temporary and of his intentions by means of A Roadmap but the indignation that those who lost the power feel leads them to attack him by means of comments and protest actions.
This is my point of view on:
The purchase of steemit inc. is something you'll notice is a good thing because a major investor has set his sights on our platform.
Fear of abuse of power
As far as the rules are the same for all users where SPs represent the influence a user has or can have on the platform, a user who invests a lot is entitled to that Influence he has bought (it is his investment). SF should not have been applied just to affect this user, since it is not a decentralized act. I agree that we should protect ourselves from one person deciding for millions, but why wasn't it applied globally so that no one with more than 300K SP could vote? Maybe that affected the interests of many who are offended today?
If we really want decentralization something like this should have been done to choose our witnesses: votes under 500 SP add up to one when collectively they reach 500 SP, above that every vote is worth 1, the delegations do not count. We will have witnesses really elected by the community and not by whales as it is now or was before. Because what the new investor has done now will happen before without anyone being bothered, for example a user with 2 votes from 500K SP users had more right to be a witness than a user with 500 votes from users with 100SP, is that a fair election? Well, they wanted to prevent someone else from doing what many were already doing.
I think that the solution to the conflict is to implement a vote like the one I have described so that the community really chooses its Witnesses and does not continue to attack someone who not only put faith in our platform but who is still open to dialogue.
By the way, if he has influence in the exchange houses he is in my opinion an excellent ally.
I downvoted you because of your...
LOUD formatting.
You shouldn't bold your way into getting noticed. Thanks for your thoughts.
I didn't know it was forbidden, it was enough to let me know to correct it but you first used your punishment vote. That's the problem that has kept steem from growing, you think punishment is the way because you have the power to punish, but then you complain when someone else with more power than you (@ben for exaple) uses it against you. It's a vicious circle that doesn't solve anything. The first correction should be the advice, and the punishment ultimately when the advice is not followed. See how you've been a part of the current state of steem? I've already corrected, I hope you can remove your unnecessary flag.
Done! Upvoted instead.
TRON is known for its thriving ecosystemTRON is known for its shady snake oil marketing, ridiculously blown up numbers, and straight lies into users faces. Or do I live in a paralell universe?
Why didn't you make hf22-5 changes public on github?
I don't find any information right here:
https://github.com/steemit
Does this mean, I simply have to hope that Steemit.com didn't added any other malicious stuff to the code-base?
RIP Steem - A wonderful community ruined by the greedy actions of a few. I can't believe that you used customer funds sitting on exchanges to make this happen. Disgraceful.
Fork out their stake. Now to decide what shall we call the new Fork of Steem?
Steem-Safu?
Holy crap - You've just shown your WILLING to do the EXACT same thing you are saying is HOSTILE to do?
Bitcoin and Ethereum communities tell everyone over and over that on-chain governance does not work...
How many blockchains need to be dominated by a small party for you all to get it. On-chain governance always leads to corruption. It did with EOS and TRON and now Steem. This is the result of on-chain governance. Its faux "decentralization" and the little people always get fucked.
You never understood what it was you actually bought, Justin, just like you don't seem to understand that the power of Steem is the community behind the platform. Good luck saving your reputation in the global crypto community.
Using the stake from exchanges to take over the blockchain is also a crime and illegal act if you don't get it. This is a stupid move from you Justin. Now we all understand that you are as bad as Ned.
After all this, I had hopes on steemit and stayed neutral on this. Now I'm skeptical about the future of this chain.
You guys open your big mouth to talk today and give an announcement. Where did you keep your azz on 13th when all this shit happened. I guess the announcement and all this should have been told to us when Ned met Justin in a bar to sell off Steemit.
I guess this one action will make people understand how bad you are. Such a shame!!
Today may not be the end of Steem but this place will be full of shit. Sad day for the community.
Did you know that we HAD a tool that could prevent that?
https://developers.steem.io/apidefinitions/#broadcast_ops_decline_voting_rights
It was explicitely designed for this reason: lock-out voting rights of accounts that should not be able to vote at all. Sounds like exchanges' virtual/technical accounts, right? I'm so sad that I accidentally learned about that operation only like a week ago.. [thanks to inertia186's https://github.com/steemit/steem-ruby/blob/f477239d45212fd2294f68364c32b80f91f42089/test/steem/broadcast_test.rb#L38 :) ]
It's hard not to agree with most of your points @bala41288
I wonder how things would look if soft fork wouldn't happen. The moment when this fork took place - I felt that our community declared open conflict with Justin and I figured that if I were him - I would do anything and everything to remove current witnesses from their positions. I really feel that we didn't give him any reason to avoid doing it.
Cheers, Piotr
What the what now? So... this was never a decentralized blockchain but a bad illusion of one? Shame I wasted so much time on it. Prepare for mass exodus and posts of community leaders announcing what crypto-blogging platform they're moving to. See you all there, I guess.
Where?
Not sure yet. Waiting to hear community leaders (aka witnesses) decisions. There's no shortage of options. I am currently trying to understand uptrend.com and a few others. Gosh this sucks.