By now, many of you are already aware of the soft fork 0.22.2 deployed yesterday (sunday 23 feb 2020) by the top 20 witnesses (with two exceptions) and several backup witnesses (https://steemit.com/steem/@softfork222/soft-fork-222)
This was a significant and important fork aimed at protecting our blockchain from a potential takeover. Since day one as a witness, I commited my efforts to this network and its community while doing my best to preserve it. I've always been among, if not, the first responder(s) whenever we had bugs, system halts and emergency patches, and will continue to do so.
What happened that prompted this soft fork?
Ned Scott, ex-CEO of Steemit Inc (@ned) dropped a bombshell on our heads when he announced the sale of Steemit Inc to Justin Sun from TRON (@justinsunsteemit), on Valentine's day (14 feb 2020). The news were met with mixed feelings by the community. Some welcomed a new partnership with TRON, others (like myself) advised caution. As I slowly learned about Justin's personality, through tweets and articles describing previous dealings with his own community and other acquired projects, my concerns grew about what he was going to do exactly with STEEM the blockchain. For instance, there were tweets about (forced) swaps, Poloniex getting ready for those swaps, while other signals as in "don't worry, your chain and community will stay as they are" were contradicting those claims.
Furthermore, many tweets were deleted and reposted to suppress comments clarifying errors, or expressing opposition to the "partnership", or simply deleted for good. To appease the masses, Ned and Justin held an AMA (15 feb 2020) that didn't really address our concerns or answer important questions from the community; it was more of introductions and hot air. So basically, we were still at square one. Also, some announcements boast a strategic partnership while others boast an acquition. Those are two different things, make up your mind Justin: when you acquire something, you own it, it's not a partnership.
- Coming Soon: STEEM Token Swap
- Why Is Justin Sun Lying to TRON Holders? Follow The Money
- TROM Communit -in Uproar as Genesis Coins Used in Super Reps Vote
- Banned from the Blockchain: An Ethereum developer’s tale of migrating to TRON
Also, what bothered me more was this tweet:
It gave a perception that TRON was responsible for the release of communities on STEEM!!! Let it be known that Steemit's developers have been working on that feature for over 1.5 years, so it was a rapacious move on Justin's part to neglect acknowledging their work and take credit for it.
With such piling indications, one may wonder if we can trust Justin at all with our community and our blockchain. What he acquired was a company and its assets (stake in a blockchain, employees, etc), NOT a blockchain. I don't know if he understands the difference between Steem and Steemit, but given what we heard during the AMA, he seemed to mix them up frequently. Whether it was language barrier, unintentional ignorance or malicious sale by Ned, the lack of clarity in Justin's statements was overwhelming.
So, in the face of such uncertainty, there were two options:
- Stand by, do nothing, and risk being taken over by a new comer holding Steemit Inc's ninja-mined stake (SINMS) with a precendent of using a huge stake to enforce certain outcomes.
OR
- Act in a preventive manner to enforce what the SINMS was intended.
The soft fork
After careful consideration and lengthy discussions with the other consensus/non-consensus witnesses, projects leaders and investors, I decided to act in order to protect our blockchain and support the soft fork 0.22.2. It was a difficult decision for all of us, but I believe it was the right move in the best interest of our blockchain. I will stand by it until we get guarantees that the SINMS will keep its promises as intended.
Without sounding too pretentious, I'm proud to say I was the first witness to test the fork's code. I would like to acknowledge @netuoso for his effort in writing this fork, as well as the multitude of witnesses who participated in testing it. It was a great show of solidarity and support for our blockchain.
One aspect that displeased some community members was the secrecy and lack of public discussion about this fork. I don't blame them, I wish we could have held public consultations, but as with any security threat, we had to keep things under wraps (while hoping nothing got leaked) in order to be efficient in the execution of the fork. This is not new, security issues were always treated as such in every previous patch or soft fork. But in this case, please accept my apologies, my (our) intention was not to hide anything from the community. If things were public, matters would have been way more complicated if there was a reaction on Justin's part (powerdown, transfer) in which case a hard fork would have been needed, complicating thing much further. With a soft fork, the blockchain and the exchanges can still function without any drastic changes or lengthy server replays.
What comes next
Following the fork, Justin announced his willingness to reach out to the witnesses and open dialogue (https://steemit.com/steemit/@justinsunsteemit/open-letter-to-steem-community). I welcome that, it's what we've been hoping for. We're currently preparing for our meeting with Justin, hopefully we'll come to an understanding that benefits us both. But keep in mind, my priority is STEEM and I will keep doing anything necessary to protect it.
Notable posts
I invite you to read some notable posts by other Steemians that explain in more detail some of the things I didn't cover here:
- The Fundamental Underpinning of Blockchain Consensus
- Statement on Steem Soft Fork 0.22.2
- The Case For the Temporary Soft Fork
- soft fork 22.2
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Creativecoin curator https://www.creativecoin.xyz
Available & Reliable. I am your Witness. I want to represent You.
🗳 If you like what I do, consider voting for me 🗳
Check my guide about Voting for Witnesses.
Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses. Next to my name, click the once.
Alternatively you can use SteemConnect to vote for me or set me as proxy
Available & Reliable. I am your Witness. I want to represent You.
🗳 If you like what I do, consider voting for me 🗳
Good write up man.
We're not getting absorbed.
Not pretentious at all. We all worked very hard to ensure the Steem chain will continue to function without interruption for all Steem users (minus the SteemIt, Inc owned accounts). Without you and others help vetting the testnet this soft fork may have been quite a bit HARDER.
Steem on!
Justin need to understand :)
lol I was very happy with this outcome and basically have the same opinion.
I've pulled all my delegations from the projects I have been supporting, and I will powerdown my own account.
There is just too much of a history of dishonesty in Justin's Tron past to justify my standing pat at the moment.
Truth will out, sooner or later, and I can always power right back up in 3 months, if his open letter results in a free, open, and stable Steemit.
Thank you and the other witnesses.
I was 1 click from doing the same, and still on Stand By.
Justin Sun is a clown, I am very happy we do NOT have him representing Steem. I have never complained about @ned and would like to keep steem out of the shit show that Tron is, I will never buy Tron or Endorse it so I would have to dump all of my steem and SBD if Tron owned the blockchain or had a bias voting power.
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Good post... I am hoping he just leaves the Steem blockchain as it is and just works to promote Steem and Steemit to improve the value of his Investment. Easy. That’s what I do if I was @JustinSunSteemit