"A period of peace before a disturbance or crisis; an unnatural or false calm before a storm."
-Wikipedia
A lot has happened in the last few weeks since the Steemit Inc. acquisition announcement. These events have changed Steem and the community forever.
Where do we go from here is an interesting question that I am not sure we have an answer to just yet.
Justin claims to not want to take part in governance, but it is exactly what he has done and continues to do. It doesn't appear this will change any time soon and in fact I think he will entrench even more.
All normal day to day communication between witnesses & Steemit Inc has halted. While many of us have tried to communicate, Eli, Roy, and Justin have made it clear they have no desire to.
The consensus witnesses hold 8 out of 20 consensus spots and I feel this will drop in the next 24-48 hours. I suspect once the last few consensus witnesses fall from the top 20 positions Justin will push through a hardfork that will allow exchanges and potentially Steemit Inc stake to power down in a 3 day period while other accounts will remain at a 13 week powerdown.
While Justin Sun has been hanging out in the SCT discord discussing shorter a shorter powerdown, he has repeated many times it would be exchange accounts only (potentially Steemit Inc stake as well). Much of what has been said has been lies and spin tactics. I spent over an hour talking about one of the sessions in one my recent videos. I fear this has turned into what resembles a political campaign.
Ned has also been seeing hanging out in Discord channels promoting another feature that he claims may show up in this hard fork. He calls this feature veto power which will give select accounts the ability to say no to a hard fork regardless of how many consensus witnesses approve it. This power of course would be granted to Steemit Inc allowing them to reject any hardfork they disagree with. It would potentially be handed out to other people or communities, but I suspect the only holder of this power will be Steemit Inc.
It is disappointing we have ended up where we have.
Why you should vote me as witness
Why a time frame of
How Justin would be able to take all 20 spots in that time?
He’s slowly buying and powering up STEEM, he will just catch up at some point.
I just think it is coming soon. It will probably be longer but I feel it’s coming soon.
Transformational Times and we are here to experience some aspects of life. We don't know what will going to happen with Steem tomorrow but no one can destroy the value of experience and essence it gave to it's users. Enjoy your journey and stay blessed.@themarkymark, We are in the
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Yeah STEEM is good as long as it still works and we can make money on posts to convert to btc! It is the experience of steem being such a disaster that keeps drawing me back in!!
We are diversified Beings and go through from diversified experiences, that's the beauty of Human Beings. Stay blessed.
Allowing fast powerdown to only a select few exchange accounts and locking the rest of us in is effectively GAME OVER for this chain.
I've seen a few comments like the above. I do not see that, in fact I see just the opposite. He has the money, he wants to make money, and he can do nothing right now other than wait for 13 week power down if he wants to make any money. I myself, while I have some steem, do not have any money to lose. I can wait and wait until the cows go home, and I still earn SP if I continue to post vote and comment.
All of us that have been through one or two of the last hard Forks understand that shit happens during the Hard Forks. Steem block Chain is not a simple thing like some others are. I don't know how the Tron Chain works if they just make hard forks and no problems, I don't know how complicated Tron chain is compared to Steem Block Chain. Are we comparing apples and ornages in that they are both fruit and have similar issue, or are we comparing bananas and 3 penny nails which have nothing in common?
Just think, we the Steem Community could become the Bikini Atoll of the block chain world when Justin Sun has his developers force through a Hard Fork.
So I will sit back vote, comment and post until the cows come home. Even though I don't post a lot, I do read, view and look at a lot, and vote and comment a lot. When it all blows up if it does, I hope there is a Phoenix that rises from the ashes.
I wanna help Justin lose all his money. Hopefully this market blood bath has kicked him, Roy and the his entire family square in the nutz. Justin dosent deserve Steemit.
Same. Dude is treating our blockchain / community like a toy that needs to earn his attention.
Fts our blockchain is "The Real Buzz Lightyear" and it's not because of a few slick coders. It's because of the people here, a people that Justin does not seem to be capable of relating.
I would jump for joy if suddenly he starting singing a different tune but rn he seems to be focusing on trying to save face.
I suppose that is what one could expect from a cold, calculating businessman but he sure as shit calculating wrong about us.
I don't mind being a squeaky wheel. Brats kissin his ass any day of the week..
Thanks for the vote brotha! 💪
I'm leaning more and more toward supporting a fork... Although I'm sure I haven't thought of all the ramifications. In under a month, this loathsome crypto cancer has centralized the blockchain of free speech.
Thanks, Ned! (Burn in hell!)
Yesterday I suggested getting the exchanges to vote in the original witnesses that they illegally toppled — that would be completely fair, but I don't see that as likely... Damn... This truly is a criminal, authoritarian takeover and Justin Scum doesn't have the balls to admit it... Just a multimillionaire pretty-boy sociopath who won't own up to his sick and evil ways.
I think you're a lot more worried than the average Steemian. A lot of us have already accepted that we'll have to fork away from Steemit (or let steemit fork away from the community), and the duplicated stake that steemit held can finally be used to fund the ecosystem. I get that this task is immensely difficult, but It's probably the only way Steem survives and lops off the cancer that is Justin Sun and Steemit Inc.
If a sister fork happened, the Steemit Inc stake wouldn't be used, it would result in the same situation we are in now.
I've already shared my thoughts elsewhere and believe the community needs to move past the stake and let it go, but it seems a lot people people are caught in a monkey trap and can't let go of the stake or find alternatives. If you say its not possible to repurpose the stake on a forked chain, oh well then i guess people will have no choice but to let it go.
You can repurpose it, but it would be counter productive. Only by eliminating it completely and using the SPS could we build something that will inspire investors.
The big stakeholders, witnesses, dApp developers, steem front-end services need to stand together as one. Put differences aside and make a decisive move towards a new era in Steem. Bring something to the comunity and move the whole thing to a off Tron amd co's chain, and back onto a community chain. Leave them their tokens with no other way tonuse it than through steemit.com. and fork everyone who is supporting the takeover amd deadlock out.
It looks like a Steem liberation movement is required, and needs to be done sooner rather than later.
Those who move will need to power down and burn their Steem stake to be active in the new chain.
The longer we all just sit and talk, the less time we have to move.
When people no longer wish to discuss "While many of us have tried to communicate, Eli, Roy, and Justin have made it clear they have no desire to." nothing more will happen, they will run this down to nothing and write it off as a bad investment.
Tend to agree with you @bmj time is now to move, neither side committing to progress after a month.
Let's see if I have that right ... leave this dictatorship of Tron to go to another dictatorship that demands the right to decide where I can hold stake? Gee what could possibly go wrong with that?
Not at all one ductatorship to another. They would have to change the governance (witness voting model) to be more distributed, and make it worth everyone moving to.
It can be done.... but it requires everyone to pull together to beat this deadlock.
if the new one dictates where people can hold stake .. it is a dictatorship ... doesn't matter how wonderful the distribution if is my freedom of choice is infringed
The point is, to effect the change, and take a stand against the current sitution, we need to move as one. We don't want a "sister" token, we want to move, or swap over to the new chain with better protections against a one-man supermajority. Part of the process would be the burning of the old account tokens to acquire the new. The idea is to make the new token the mainstream token by purging as much of the old token as possible... basically burning the house down on the way out... and exchanging one chain for the other. You can start back up on tronsteem with zero later if you want, noone will stop you.
good luck with your theory. Gonna be surprised if many will be interested in having choice removed from the equation. You can start back on one after compliance on the other is still dictatorship. Replacing one tyranny for another doesn't cut it.
What part of this gives you the idea of it being a dictatorship or tyranny?
"Move as one"
"Protections against a one-man supermajority"
The choice here is to unite, design and decide on new set of governance standards together, and move on. Or, we all sit back, do nothing, and hope for the best possible worst case scenario.
At the very least it may just force the hand of the swing voting proxy.token community to pick a side and end the deadlock.
While the price is in the toilet, it me be an opportune time to make a break.
That is quite alarming. Makes you wonder what other “special for us only” account permissions and features they will push over time when they start going down that route.
It has always seemed to me that Steem has been the 'anti George Orwell' in it's corner of the world. But reading your post made me think of this:
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
Then this one came to mind. "We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it."
Ugggghhhh. Keep fighting. It's now all there is.
Speaking of equality, I note that witness elections feature Steem tokens that are more equal than others, and always have.
User A has 1M Steem and votes 30 witnesses, influencing governance with 30M Steem (1M x 30 votes). User B has 100 Steem and votes 30 witnesses, influencing governance with 3000 Steem (100 Steem x 30 votes). The difference between their stakes is 999,900 Steem. The difference between their influence on witness elections, and thus governance, is however 29,997,000 Steem.
The more Steem you have, the more each Steem token you have influences governance, and this was coded into Steem by Stinc, who once had ~80% of the Steem in existence, and that Sun now owns. This is why his stake, which is between 1/5 and 1/3 of the stake extant, is able to completely control governance by electing a consensus of witnesses.
We aren't in danger of resembling Orwell's Animal Farm. We've long been on it. This is more like the oligarchy is being replaced by a solitary overlord. The community is just an asset.
Our Steem in it's dribs and drabs, doesn't impact governance much. I reckon the legacy Steem whales are doing all they can already to prevent their power from being eliminated and Sun having that power instead.
The devil we know vs. the devil we don't. Not sure which is which TBQH.
Edit: it's notable that ordinary votes have always featured VP, which depletes when votes are cast and recharges over time. This has been tested for four years via normal Steem operations, and is well characterized and understood.
Removing the multiplication of stake weight witness elections feature is a simple matter of applying VP to SP used to vote for witnesses, setting the depletion parameter to 100%, and setting recharge to 0%. Then each Steem used to vote on a witness would only apply once. The difference in stake held by User A and User B is 999,900 Steem, and the difference in the weight of their influence on governance would be 999,900 Steem, as DPoS requires for decentralization.
When witnesses and stakeholders address the proposal to implement 1 Steem = 1 vote, I have been struck by the immediate resort to FUD and claims it would require study, questions as to whether other DPoS chains have tried it, and claims the voting system as it is is fair and needs no improvements - even as Sun takes over the chain.
This reveals the degree to which legacy witnesses have been empowered by this extraordinary weighting of substantial stakes to control governance, and how much their power depends on it. The most striking thing about this to me is that these witnesses are so unwilling to address this inequity, they'd rather see Sun takeover the chain than change to 1 Steem = 1 vote.
What I expect to evolve from this situation is that Sun finds those among the current witnesses he can work with, and they become Sun's toadies serving our new overlord.
Another great philosopher (Alvin Toffler) said "There is no revolution, only power changing hands."
I've said before that this is not a new problem, only a new hand on the throttle.
I actually think he will gain the majority also at some point. I mean he can out money us.
I doubt very much he will drop a hardfork, but of course I could be wrong.
If he does any number of issues could arise, but I'd be guessing if I threw them out.
I'm not having any positive feelings we are making progress with anything. I see Justin powering up socks and pushing deceptive narratives in Discord to gain even more power on his socks. He says he doesn't want to affect governance but that's all I see he is doing.
I think the best approach may end up being creating a sister chain based on a snapshot from right before Sun's sock puppets gain supermajority. Cut out Steemit, Inc's stake. If the Koreans or whoever drop community witnesses in favor of the socks, cutting them out, too, should be considered.
"He doesn't want to"... yet. He first wants proxy.token to drop those 7 votes so it's cheaper for him to achieve 17. His approach is so blatantly obvious.
He can‘t sell the STEEM while still holding up governance?
Correct.
I think witnesses have to agree on a proposal and collectively pose it to JUstin through a post on Steem. And take the community's feedback when crafting that proposal. Then the community can see something specific being proposed and can unite under that strategy (unite means put their votes on the remaining community witnesses to get them in top 20).
This way concrete negotiations can begin.
Wouldn't you say so?
J.S. has a Blockchain, it’s TRON. He wants to assimilate the STEEEM community while making a good profit with selling the Steemit ninja stake. That is his Endgame.
Here‘s reality:
The longer we stay in the Sun, the more we get burned.
Yep. I guess I want to take the conversation to "What do you suggest that we do?" It's proposals time.
I will set up a witness server this weekend. We should prepare to leave the sinking ship as soon as Sun announces radical moves. Question is, how can we protect the stakeholders best from the ongoing robbery plans of J.Sun (Toke Swap) while maintaining (regain) free governance.
The more we're ready, the less likely it will happen, because that's J.S. Vietnam scenario. He is taking a hard hit by DLive at the moment. There exactly this worst-case scenario is playing out at the moment.
TRON overtook, announced the token swap and every big streamer including PewDiePie left immediately, leaving behind a ghost platform.
Yep, the more prepared we are, the better the outcome.
You got any good article covering the DLive overtake and subsequent abandoning of the platform? I think it can help. Past behaviors like these show that worries are not overblown at all.
Wow, that is pretty horrible. I think someone mentioned that the longer and longer this goes on the weaker our standing becomes. It seems most likely that some kind of sister chain fork is in our future. The powerdown changes along with the veto power would be a huge detriment to the existing chain.
Time to pack our Stuff an leave? I‘m in!
Is that even possible considering the exchanges?
Who knows. I am not going anywhere until the other shoe drops. It just doesn't feel good right now :P
Interesting question. Given that the exchanges obviously aided Sun in his takeover, lied about it, and took their customers rights to exercise governance of Steem to do so, just how relevant are those exchanges? Is there any reason to rely on them for fiduciary trust given what they have provably done that violates trust on every level?
Personally, I wouldn't spit on them if they were burning.
Is the fork ready?
Changed the logo? Into a fork? Funny and bitter :))
Side Chain for the actual community?
I am kind of surprised no one has sought injunctive relief, either from Sun or the exchanges, yet. Renders the commitment of the best heeled of those that claim to be opposing Sun's takeover less certain.
Something I note with considerable distaste is that IRL it is so common as to be ubiquitous that controlled opposition is posed so as to capture actual opposition movements. Since I have seen no one address such political manouvers, I did. This is a political event.
While there are economic factors involved, Steem is essentially a voluntarist government without a state. A moment's reflection on the political world should enable grasp of various polities that would be strongly opposed to success and growth of such a government. Rumors that the CCP is backing Sun should alarm Steemers in this vein.
I recommend folks standing in the breach, such as yourself, be familiar with 'The Art of War' by Sun Tzu. It's not a long read, and is particularly applicable in view of the Eighteenth Tenet:
Most of the relevant aspects of Steem, Stinc, Sun, and Tron are impacted by deception, and politics must be war, because it is entirely based on deception.
There are highly relevant passages regarding methodologies of deception that Sun is obviously undertaking presently. You might think it's silly to consider this ancient pamphlet about contests with pointy sticks useful regarding financial manouvers intent on control of a cryptocurrency blockchain platform, but it's people contesting for it and people haven't changed during the time between 'The Art of War' being published and today.
Peace
Edit: I noted @theycallmedan's tweets claiming Sun sought to sell him the founder's stake. He says he turned it down.
Why haven't ya'll bought it if this is true? Sun wouldn't have offered it to @theycallmedan if @theycallmedan didn't have nominal funds for Sun's offer. Clearly ya'll have nominal funds as a group.
Srsly bro, this definitely casts this takeover in a whole new light if @theycallmedan is telling the truth. It specifically points to ya'll deceiving the community regarding your opposition to the takeover if you could just buy the founder's stake and end the problem.
WTF?
What Justin bought has no value to anyone but the original owners. It is not a stake you can just sell off for profit, it was promised for development, marketing, onboarding, and infrastructure. It is basically a gift card.
Imagine I promised someone I would spend $100 to complete a project. Then I go to a third party and offer to sell that $100. What value does it have if they have to honor the original commitments, who would buy $100 to just have to spend it on something that yields no ROI?
To Ned and the original Steemit, it had value as they can sell it to perform the promised 4 duties listed above, make some money on salaries. If those original commitments are to be honored, there is no incentive to buy it.
How and why would the community raise around $5M USD to buy it only to use it for those 4 duties. You are better off just funding those 4 duties without the burden of those commitments.
OMG this is the blockchain, supposed to put the promises in the code, or they mean nothing!! It's too late, time to move on and fork, or stay, either one, or both!! Good Luck!!
Not that you're wrong, but that leaves Tron with between 1/5 and 1/3 of extant Steem. That's currently a problem, and while I sure can't do much about it, there's them as can, if they want to.
It is a big problem. The stake should have never been sold. There is no reason to buy that stake unless you plan on breaking all previous promises.
Corporations transfer assets and liabilities all the time, and I've not seen the documents relevant. The tweets and statements from @ned and Tron don't at all contradict your assumption @ned intended to break his word, but it's not possible to know WTF the actual conditions of the sale are.
Regardless of what @ned and Tron want, having them out of the picture would enable Steem to move on without their agendae hampering ours. I note the community as a whole, and probably some of it's users individually, has the wherewithal to make that happen.
You seem to find the idea of doing so inconceivable. I'm not saying I advocate doing this. I don't find the idea beyond considering, so I thought to consider it. You seem not to have actually given it consideration, and you may have a good reason for looking at it that way.
If you do, I'd like to hear it.
Justin said he can provide those sale documents but I doubt we would ever see them.
I have considered every scenario I can come up with and this is far from end game.
My recollection of what Sun said was that the documents prove he didn't know, but that NDAs prevent him revealing them, which leaves us without them.
I also noted Eli Powell stating that she discussed the witnesses predictable reaction with the Tron team, so am confident they weren't ignorant of those representations that affected Stinc and it's stake. I am thus confident Sun is lying about not knowing. If he didn't know his only recourse would be against @ned, and that's laughable for an accredited investor like Sun.
It's not over til it's over. You're right about that.
I wanna help Justin lose all his money. Hopefully this market blood bath has kicked him, Roy and the his entire family square in the nutz. Justin dosent deserve Steemit.
Hopefully this will be fine, and all good plans will run smoothly without obstacles in the middle of the road,
It’s so sad, I feel like we are on the the Titanic just waiting for it. I wish there was something else I could do, I wish I was a billionaire. I’d go buy all the Steem in the world including Justin Sun’s. I’d put it all back in the community as this place has been a real life - lifesaver for me. I love this blockchain and community so much. Thank you so much for all you have done for the entire community.
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Interesting article, very deep