Hi there @inertia! Thank you so much for your insightful reflections. Your help is very valuable for the study.

I am intrigued by these points and would love to ask you a couple of follow-up questions, if that's okay. Your response would be greatly appreciated. I would also be gladly available for a chat on Discord, if you prefer.

And since witnesses / node operators can run whatever software they want, the only reason to raise an eyebrow is the speed that they switched.

In retrospect, do you think the communication was appropriate about the fork taking place? How could it have been better communicated to the stakeholders affected, other than delaying it?

If they took more time to allow apps to be informed, it might not have had any adoption impact. But delays would have also opened a vector of attack against the hivefork.

That's interesting, can you tell me more about that? Why would a delay of the hardfork have caused a threat?

This was not the first time a community split was attempted.

Is there a trail of evidence of prior forking attempts? I would love to have a look at these.

To some extent, the previous softfork made this possible. Without the turmoil caused by the witnesses who froze 20% of the supply, the exchanges would have never entered the story.

In retrospect, do you think the softfork was appropriate? And was it appropriate for the counterparty at Steemit Inc to react in the way they did?

That response was considered but deemed unlikely, by the witnesses who froze the assets.

Did those witnesses take any precautions to prepare for such a response, or did they simply take the risk? Also, are there publically available sources of their considerations?

It created an environment where a viable hivefork would eventually become accepted.

So, the Hive witnesses were in a sense united against a common enemy (which was Steemit Inc)?

Without the turmoil of the softfork, I don’t see how. To some, the “dev fund” was the linchpin.

This sounds like the softfork was the initial cause of the dispute, whereas others have argued that it was a reaction to the dispute. Do you think the intention to centralize control came before the softfork, or after?

Meaning, when one gets frustrated with a chain, they can try the other. That can work in both directions.

Do you think both (or potentially even more) platforms are economically sustainable?

Thank you again for your help and I look forward to hearing from you :)