Urgent Community Petition: Steemit Inc. to Stop 34 Mil SP Powerdown!

in #witness6 years ago (edited)



Latest Update 2019-02-05

Power down rate has been reduced to the normal systematic selling rate of approx 700 000 SP per month. Before the reduction approx 8 million SP made it onto exchanges. The reduction of power down is a step in a better direction.

Latest Update 2019-01-22

Power Down still continues. One good thing however is that Steemit Inc. has agreed to consider giving funds to a community elect governing body, if you want to be part of the public discussions please visit the Steem Alliance Discord https://discord.gg/U7kQC8J. Please continue to support this petition and comment below until the power down is stopped.

Latest Update 2018-01-21

Power Down still continues.

Latest update: 2018-01-20

@ned and the witnesses present in the Steemdevs Slack seem to have made peace. We asked if we could set aside our differences and work together to make Steem great and Ned said “Yes, I will”.

I further suggested we all take a breather, have some cold ones and enjoy the rest of our Sundays.

Hopefully the funds that were sent to Bittrex 3 hours earlier will be returned to chain and future power downs stopped.


The Petition!

As duly elected witness of the Steem blockchain, I hereby bring to the attention of the community a matter of utmost severity; which requires community unity to present a case of dissatisfaction and a vote of no confidence in Steemit Inc. and Ned himself; should the current 34 million Steem Power power down of the @steemit account continue.

D-Day is tomorrow, where 2.6 Million STEEM would have powered down to liquid form to be placed on exchanges and hidden from view and accountability.

I ask that everyone in the community who is reading this and agrees, to please voice your concerns and reply with "Stop the Power Down!" in comment on this post. Resteems, social shares and further upvotes to this post to will be of great help to enhance visibility.

Why is a Power Down bad?

  1. Steemit's stake will be 100% liquid, which means it can be dumped at a moment's notice and negatively affect the market price of STEEM. There have always been concerns on the bitcoin chain about Satoshi's stake and what would happen if it became active and dumped on the market, in this case Steemit's total stake across all its accounts, is well over 30% of total supply (circa 70 Million tokens/SP) and such market crash fears will be greater than those that exist on bitcoin.

  2. One of the unique features of Steem is the 13 week vesting period which potentially creates a new taxonomy class of Limited Circulation Token (LCT) or Limited Float Token (LFT), this concept enhances the stability of the Steem price, in that it is slower to react to general cryptocurrency market volatility due to the fact that there are limited tokens in free circulation and most are subject to power down becoming liquid. By making an additional 30% of the total supply liquid, begs the question of what is the point of powering up if the central entity is not leading the way in promoting this feature, then vesting periods might as well be done away with because the spirit of vesting has already been broken if the founder and founding corporation are not vested.

  3. Steemit Inc. is largely criticised by the community for its current lack of transparency, moving funds off of the chain will only serve to allow Steemit to further operate in an untransparent manner and erode the trust of the community even more. Untransparent actions could involve selling more than their current programmatic selling rate of 800 000 STEEM per month, outside of the purveyance of the community; dispersing their stake across multiple anonymous accounts which could break community trust by influencing voting on content and witnesses, as well as issuing unsanctioned delegations to their own end and that of potential nepotistic consorts, further eroding the rewards pool towards benefactors of their choosing.

  4. Moving funds earmarked for the furtherance and growth of the network to exchanges, flies in the face of the recent "Proof-of-Keys" movement which urged users to move their balances off of exchanges to blockchain wallets where thier funds are secure and fail-safes like multisig can be implemented. The recent hack on Cryptopia and historical hacks on Bitfinex, MtGox etc serve to re-inforce that point.

  5. Dormant Virus Effect - by dispersing their stake across multiple anonymous accounts, Steemit Inc, will be able to ensure that their stake will traverse to any forked chain that retains user balances or benefit from all airdrops that might otherwise have excluded the Steemit accounts and as such ensure that they have dormant power waiting to be unleashed on any such new chains and greatly reduces the attraction to fork to new use-cases of Steem or airdrop on existing Steem users for fear of airdropping on an undesired monopoly.

Events that led to the Power Down

Seven days ago, ex Steemit employee Johan Nordberg posted (on his own repo) a Github Pull Request idea for a hard fork that would nullify Steemit's account keys for the purposes of freezing or forking their stake out of the chain.

https://github.com/steemdev/steem/pull/1

This idea sparked discussion between a variety of Steem stakeholders, witnesses and investors alike, where they took the opportunity to voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo and continual lack of communication, transparency and progress exhibited by Steemit Inc.

A few of the points being:

  • Steemit Inc having acquired a significant "ninja-mined" stake upon formation of the chain, done in a manner that constituted insider trading, by releasing buggy mining scripts with ambiguous instructions which only a few managed to figure out by the time they had amassed their stake. This stake has many risks, including those highlighted in the section above.

  • Hiring a compliment of allegedly 60 plus staff (some alleged to be nepotistic hires) before the late 2018 layoff and continually selling 800 000 STEEM per month to cover expenses; remember STEEM was valued between 1 USD and approx 9 USD during 2018 so their extracted value would have much more than today's USD value. Even with such a high extracted sell-off value and large staff compliment, all that was mostly achieved in 2018 was HF20, which had a hard landing despite Steemit inc. having sufficient sell-off resources to hire external, professional code validators.

  • The continual selling off of Steemit stake putting downward pressure on the STEEM price and CMC ranking; STEEM was once a top ten token and Steemit failed to capitalise on that.

  • The lack of desire of Steemit Inc. to openly collaborate with community developers to grow the ecosystem together and largely acting like sole custodians of the chain with a non-collaborative sentiment.

  • Continual delay of promises and roadmap milestones such as SMT's, which are now beyond a joke and almost past being relevant in the wake of many chains already offering basic token creation functionality. Many projects relying on SMT's, such as https://appics.com/ have now been left in the lurch as their ICO's depended on SMT's.

  • Lack of interest in investor communication, community communication as well as external marketing despite having hired PR staff during 2018. Ned's attempt at public communication via Youtube stream, dubbed "The Bridge" aired approx 2 episodes and then left abandoned without notice or reason.

Such discussion around the repeated failures of Steemit Inc. ensued and came to point where 60+ stakeholders, witnesses and dapp owners decided to move to a private chat which was created a few months back as a contingency to the Slack provided by Steemit Inc. Therein discussions were held over various solutions such as forking the existing chain to freeze Steemit's accounts, forking to a new token, entering into discussions with Steemit Inc. to establish a middle ground such as a community trust or governance model where Steemit would cede a portion of their stake into in addition to control of key github repos that should be under community governance or the status quo which nobody wants.

After Ned reached out to us offering to come to the table, a smaller focussed committee was voted in by the Slack channel to act in unison to first try to come to a mutual compromise with Steemit and this was further reduced to a few people who would engage Ned directly and report back to the committee. I disclose I was voted into the committee but am not one of the few in direct talks with Ned.

One of the first objectives of the talks were to establish a cease-fire where Steemit would cancel their Power Down in good faith that there would be no forking action taken while discussions were taking place. Despite assurances given, Steemit has not yet cancelled their power down and it will become liquid tomorrow, hence the urgency of this petition.

It has also been noted that Ned has made significant effort to engratiate himself with the public by appearing on three Discord shows, releasing the Hivemind post and creating an About Us page on Steemit.com stating their MVV (Mission Visions and Values), it is speculated this is all misdirection and only expedited for the sake of gaining public support in the wake of the recent happenings.

Steemit's Head-on Collision Course with the SEC

Recent media articles have shown that the SEC litmus test for a token being a security takes into consideration both centralised stake and development:

On June 14, the SEC’s Director of the Division of Corporate Finance Bill Hinman said that a key factor in determining whether a token is considered a security under existing regulations is the level of decentralization of the project. If a blockchain network is sufficiently decentralized and no central party has control over the majority of the project’s elements, including its monetary policy and development, the SEC director said in a speech that the native token of the blockchain network cannot be considered a security under existing regulation.

Hinman said: “If the network on which the token or coin is to function is sufficiently decentralized – where purchasers would no longer reasonably expect a person or group to carry out essential managerial or entrepreneurial efforts – the assets may not represent an investment contract. Moreover, when the efforts of the third party are no longer a key factor for determining the enterprise’s success, material information asymmetries recede.”

Given the stake Steemit holds and the level of centralised control over blockchain repos it currently has, will likely jeopardise the entire project into being labelled a security at some future point in time unless drastic measures are taken to reduce those two.

Article reference:
https://cointelegraph.com/news/crypto-assets-to-be-regulated-differently-in-the-us-potential-impact-on-industry

Further in another recent media release, the DASH Network have taken preventative steps to decentralise their token; by creating an irrevocable community trust where the greater network is named sole beneficiary.

With this setup, DCG took the first step to ensure that the Dash network would always have full control over the direction of the project, without resorting to the drastic and disruptive step of defunding DCG and developing an entirely new team to replicate its primary functions.

It also enables the network to replace the leadership team of DCG instead of necessitating replacement of the entire organization should it determine DCG’s performance is unacceptable.

Article reference:
https://blog.dash.org/dash-network-elected-trust-protectors-closing-the-governance-loop-4f07b46da03e

This event in the Steem network creates a perfect opportunity to reflect on the captive nature of our chain in respect to the centralisation of stake and development with Steemit Inc. as the core, and come to a mutually beneficial roadmap for a decentralised future where both Steemit and the community can thrive and co-exist with the aid of a community governing body, thereby further distancing the platform from SEC securities classification.

My Position

I personally echo all of the dissatisfaction over the repeated value extraction exhibited by Steemit Inc. without giving back significant growth and progress to the network, however I strongly believe they have developer resources and contacts that are of benefit to the community if used wisely and efficiently, I am thus in favour of mutual discussions to come to an understanding between the community and Steemit Inc. to come to a favourable solution which will be a catalyst for growth and structural reform to protect our network from being classed as a security.

The above is my desired first course of action, failing which I am a servant of the community and will consider carefully the will of the community before deciding what alternative to support. To that end I have created a Discord channel with the placeholder name Steem Reform where anyone is welcome to discuss and voice their opinion, Discord is important because it is where most of the community is at and allows for both voice and text discussions. The primary objective being the petition to cancel the Steemit Inc. power down and then discuss a reform structure alternative for the Steem network.

Quick Reference of some other public statements

Please contact me in DM on Discord, thecryptodrive#8144, if you are a witness, dapp owner, significant stakeholder or community leader and would like your post featured here.

https://steemit.com/open-letter/@timcliff/open-letter-to-ned-steemit

https://steemit.com/steem/@neoxian/dear-readers-i-am-against-a-hard-fork-that-would-steal-destroy-or-freeze-someone-s-money

https://steemit.com/transparency/@guiltyparties/open-letter-to-ned-and-steemit-inc

https://steemit.com/stopthepowerdown/@lukestokes/is-steem-centrally-controlled

https://steemit.com/steem/@drakos/my-statement-concerning-the-potential-steemit-inc-accounts-freeze

https://steemd.com/steemit/@steemed/open-letter-about-forking-out-steemit

https://steemit.com/stopthepowerdown/@aggroed/deescalating-and-working-towards-a-mutually-beneficial-solution

https://steemit.com/statement/@therealwolf/public-witness-statement-therealwolf

https://steemit.com/steem/@smooth/who-likes-hard-forking

https://steemit.com/witness-category/@ats-david/open-letter-to-stinc-and-everyone-else

https://steemit.com/steem/@jesta/the-recent-controversy-between-steemit-inc-and-the-community-the-premine-control-and-where-it-leads-this-blockchain

https://steempeak.com/witness-update/@reggaemuffin/let-us-the-community-take-steem-governance-into-our-own-hands

https://steemit.com/steemdac/@lukestokes/steemdac-a-plan-we-can-start-today-to-decentralize-steem-governance

Calls to Action

  • Comment your support in the petition to stop the Steemit Inc. Power Down.

  • Join this temporary community Discord server https://discord.gg/b7hggWs to stand united and discuss a way forward for the network as a whole. (I will hand over this channel to any governance structure elected if they desire it)

  • Upvote, resteem or social share this post for maximum voice and impact; this is a decline payout post so your voting power will not be drained and will not affect the rewards pool.

  • Post your own blog posts about your views on the Steemit Inc. power down, including the tags #sos and #stopthepowerdown


Thank you for your time in reading this and I look forward to hearing your voices be heard throughout the network, wise words once said:

“Fools multiply when wise men are silent.” - Nelson Mandela


Sincerely,


BuildTeam CEO and Steem WitnessRicardo Ferreira (@thecryptodrive)

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Image Reference: Pixabay

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It feels like a game of:

Let's pretend we aren't centralized.

Isn't it kicking the can down the road.. It's their stake. I don't see what we can do about it, and I'm not going to beg ned to be a good player.

I vote no confidence but stop short of telling him what to do with his stake.

....nothing like a bit of seized asset forfeiture to bring out the commie's !!

He should shove his stake up there where he keeps his head... But he should do it by himself. (haha, did I say that)

Lots of men are starting to do it by themselves, nowadays (not self rectal examinations), and it's not all good...

Enter a subtle segue into dropping a link.... (it will make sense if you watch the dtube..)...
Loving this editing malarky!

https://steemit.com/dtube/@lucylin/2uoiqvk0

It's their stake

This is the answer to all this drama, to be honest.

Wouldn't we all benefit from Steemit Inc powering down at a lesser rate?

Is there anything inherently bad in asking?

I personally hope they do power down and also sell.

Right now it is the worst of both worlds and this entire situation has highlighted that.

It's decentralized until there is a point of contention and then the stake is used to inflict power and fear on the community. (likely not even purposefully, just as a by-product)

T’is interesting how some have criticized Steem as being too centralized because of Steemit’s large holdings... only to get in a fit when their liquidation of those holdings would be the essential requirement for the decentralization they insisted was the ideal... 😂

I find this movement to be more worrisome than the power-down. Ned had an opportunity to realize that he was overreacting to something that wasn't especially important, and failed. That's a problem. But now all the top witnesses have the same opportunity, and are failing again, and once again escalating a situation that nobody ever needed to care about.

The complete success of Nordberg's troll of the whole Steem ecosystem, in which you are all collaborating, is ridiculous.

I'll try explaining this in a hypothetical scenario:

Imagine a week ago, all the witnesses had to do was click a little thumbs-down reaction when this pull request was first announced in the chat, or whatever system they use to privately communicate.

But in this scenario, they didn't. Instead, some stated they were neutral to the topic.

This neutral position became a debate about the merits of adopting "different alternatives." The debate became a credible threat over the course of 24 hours. This spooked certain people into a panic. Then there were powerdowns.

In this scenario, I fail to see how Ned had an opportunity to realize anything tangible one way or the other. Was this really the pull request or was it just a simplified version with only the teeth left in so people could see it means business?

On the other end, something had to deescalate, so that's why you're now seeing it all plastered on the blockchain ... if this hypothetical scenario is true.

The debate became a credible threat

I fail to see how this is the case. The existence of the shoddy pull request and not-so-secret private discussion make it less likely there's a secret competent cabal waiting to surprise fork out Steemit Inc., not more. Up until this point there was always the possibility that someone was doing that in the background and no one knew. Now there pretty much isn't.

In this scenario, I fail to see how Ned had an opportunity to realize anything tangible one way or the other.

Taking a major action in that scenario, especially one that had minimal immediate effect, is pretty much the definition of over-reacting, then, no?

On the other end, something had to deescalate, so that's why you're now seeing it all plastered on the blockchain

Top witnesses making unsubtle implications of getting together and launching an independent fork in an attempt to force Steemit to do what they want with its stake isn't exactly de-escalation.

They've put Ned into a position where stopping the power-down would be acknowledging that the witnesses have a right to a say in how Steemit Inc. uses its funds. As a corporate officer he can't do that; it's malfeasance. The only way out of this now is for them to back down.

The only way out of this now is for them to back down.

That's what most of them are doing.

openly acknowledging that "60+ stakeholders, witnesses and dapp owners decided to move to a private chat {...} Therein discussions were held over various solutions such as forking the existing chain to freeze Steemit's accountsI guess I don't see how @ned / Steemit, Inc is overreacting when @thecryptodrive here is ...." (my emphasis added but other than that, straight from the horse's mouth). We aren't talking about @ned / Steemit, Inc starting a powerdown solely in reaction to the github pull request. Actual top witnesses actually talked about doing this! And are actually admitting it in one breath while asking for the powerdown to stop in the next breath!

It was an overreaction because the technological ability to do that wasn't in the PR. If the witnesses wanted to decide that as a solution I suppose they could have, but 60+ people somehow getting a hardfork written, tested, and implemented without anyone ever telling Ned about it is a pipe dream.

The idea that they might have intentionally implemented an untested hardfork for any purpose is itself scarier than anything Ned has done.

Only one person issued the code and discussion ensued after that, the power down fuelled discussions even further.

Presumably that discussion did not include "let's implement untested code that is at best 5% finished." Someone would have had to do those things before a fork became remotely practical.

A fork is not anywhere near decided on and is just an idea being thrown around and voiced more so by some than others.

No one suggested that it was. You don't seem to be following the topic of this subthread.

It did not.

100%, you're right on here. It was I got fired butthurt, the employee that yells some stuff as they're being escorted out by security.

The more important thing here is how the discontented saw the viability of the moment.

Ned actually left the slightly more open format discussion Slack he created which had somewhere between 100 and 150 members, of which I was one for about 6 months, if memory serves me. So just for the record he started to withdraw.

How are top witness failing again?

Well, downvoting honest discussion is a good example.

not a top witness

Well at least there's something to be glad about.

"Sorry, I was mistaken" works well too

Steem lost a lot of credibility with the ninja-mine and it may lose even more credibility if you fork @neds steem away, because you will set a precedence that could later be used to fork anyone's steem away.

Also the damage from ninja-mine has snow balled and there is no stopping it. @ned and @dan used their ninja-mine to upvote a small group of people. Then these people created a voting ring and have been in control of the reward pool ever since.

Forking @ned's stake away will only help the voting ring to continue to sell steem at higher price. If you really think steem is worth salvaging, then allow @ned to power down his stake and buy it, so, you can reward decent content.

Forking @ned's Steem would be stealing it from @ned.

Calling it stealing would imply he earned it in a legitimate way.

Posted using Partiko Android

Steemit.inc is a private company and Steem is a public Blockchain, so what should the relation between those two groups be?
Sure, we can wish that Steemit.inc stops the powerdown, but what comes after that?
We as a community want Steemit.inc to work as close as to the user base as possible.
When they sell off most part of there Steem, than it gets transfered to the public...isn't that our goal to reduce the stake of Steemit.inc and increase decentralization?
If they keep the Steempower we have the same problem as before! Like @fyrstikken said a couple of weeks ago, if they really want to get rid of their stake, than they should sell it in an OTC transaction.

Once it is off the chain we don't know if it will be re-introduced under a myriad of anon accounts with collective undue influence.

@thecryptodrive

That's the reality, the "evil" part of running the business. In every corporation, someone or group control a majority of stake to keep the "power" of decision. The steem blockchain is no different, those whales get a large portion of stake (rewards) compare the rest of us.

I think the point for what it comes down to is. We need " smart money aka smart investors on Steem" who get control over the Steempower that Steemit.inc sits on.
If Steemit.inc can't run a good business than there stake needs to be sold and get into the hands of smarter investors.
The worst case for this situation would be if Steemit.inc sells its Steem to people who don't believe in the future of Steem, and who only come for a short term profit.
Either way Steemit.inc has to become successful or somebody else will in the future, if Steem has the potential and technology that we all believe in.
But don't get me wrong its good that we all express our opinion towards Steemit.inc and if the Powerdown call gets recognized by @ned that could help us to calm the situation and gain more time.

Posted using Partiko Android

Yeah that is another risk, imagine a competing project purchased that stake just to mess with us.

@masterthematrix

Nail in the head.

The powerdown will cause panic in the marketplace but in the long run it will be good to the steem blockchain.

But that doesn't stop other "investors" to buy bulk of steem and become the next "Steem Inc". And we go to the same issue over and over again.

Perhaps a more effective solution is a burn of some of their stake, which will have a positive effect on price and value of the remnant of their stake as well as the stake of all Steem users.

Why should we seek for short term profits over this situation? We need that Steem in the hands of great core developers who are pationed and excited to thrive this Blockchain.
If we burn the stake of Steemit.inc we miss the opportunity for smart investors to take offer the position of Steemit.inc
We all remember the news about the 70% lay off with Steemit.inc...and the Blockchain is still one of the most active and usable out there.
30Million Steem at 0.30cents are 10Mio USD that is joke in the Investment world.

Sure but we don't know the intention is to sell. Also currently the inflation of Steem is 8.5% so maybe at 800K pm the have only been selling the inflation, they can keep dumping forever. This does accelerate it more and if they sell could be a good thing, but again we don't know if they plan to hide it.

Exactly. OTC. This moving to the exchanges panics the market.

"This moving to the exchanges panics the market"
No thats a wrong assumption and actually Steem just jumped over 30% up the last two days.
Steemit.inc can't just dump over 2 Million of Steem into an almost no high volume order book. They have to adjust there sales to the market conditions.
And that attitude that we have to be aware of what the market thinks is totally wrong. We don't have to satisfy the "market" and if you wish to do so you make yourself a slave to the anonymous markets.

there sales

their sales

Da verbreitet wieder mal jemand Panik. Aber ich fürchte mich nicht.

Danke.
Panik und Angst helfen hier nicht weiter alle Beteiligten sollten sich wieder auf die Sache besinnen und miteinander reden und Loesungen finden.

How do you know the jump isn't manipulated? The timing is quite interesting. It's also not just that they can dump but they can also produce a hidden influence over Steem using Steem Power as well.

And I do think we serve others via markets. What do you view as being the ultimate decider if not the market?

I'm not saying that this market jump is anyhow related to the current events here on Steem, and yes most crypto prices on exchanges are manipulated thru wash trading.
If they want to use there Steempower for any other accounts they are free to do so. They choose to be a company and if they think they better of this way, than they have to take the responsebility for this action.
Anyway @ned is at a point where he has to turn Steemit.inc around into a community serving development platform. Otherwise others will be happy to take the opportunity.

Posted using Partiko Android

Of course it's being manipulated. Crypto markets are constantly being manipulated. Just look at the extent of the jumps and the timings. Steem has such a small market cap, it wouldn't take much to bring it to $1+. Then again, it wouldn't take much to bring back to 7c.

I say enjoy the ride. Unless of course you actually need your crpto to pay bills and stuff. In that case, you might be buggered.

All I know is I'm powering down. I have no choice when I have to assume at any moment the price of Steem could go to 1 cent. It might not be logical to crash Steem but the more unlocked Steem there is the less secure we can be in price prediction.

Maybe people got wind of the fork talk and want to double their tokens :).

Very good point. The redistribution of the ninjamined stake is the best thing we could ask for. That would remove the "overlord" effect that Steemit Inc has over the environment that is Steem.

Steemit.inc is a private company and Steem is a public Blockchain, so what should the relation between those two groups be?

it seems it' not that obvious. Not only Steemit Inc do control large amount of steem and the top dapp (steemit) but also they own github repository. Thus steem blockchain is more owned by Steemit Inc than not.

I can see both sides of this situation. Even though a power down could be bad for price... The lack of concentrated steem funds after selling can actually be good for the ecosystem. At the end of the day, price will depend on people using Steemit and creating interesting content.

Stop the power down! #stopthepowerdown

ummm I have been of the mind that a ST.INC Power-Down would lead to more steem in the hands of the many, it has been criticized by nearly all the new fish that it is too centralized, and therefore no different than any traditional system.

They have said they do not intend to sell it any more quickly. Therefore, either: a) there is no benefit to be gained in terms of distributing the stake, or b) they are lying and will sell more of it.

The costs of this action to the ecosystem in terms of lack of transparency and security and scrutiny of the dangerous block of concentrated stake will be incurred without any offsetting benefit in distributing it.

Thanks for the additional info, that helps. Do we know the rate of sale now??? They would need more Liquid steem to increase that rate of sales, which would not necessarily be a bad thing in a rising market. I have increased my relatively small stake +20% in Dec. due to the low prices :)

The stated rate of sale is 800K STEEM/month. There is no sort of audit or anything so we are mostly taking their word.

42.5 months to blow all that out...

As mentioned below in another reply: Once it is off the chain we don't know if it will be re-introduced under a myriad of anon accounts with collective undue influence, or just kept on the exchange to be powered up at a moment's notice. That is the transparent nature of the exchanges, is you don't know if the funds are going to be sold or kept for future power play on the community.

It is all pretty much trackable anyway, and even if it was not it's easy to see coordinated efforts by "anon accounts" doing things. That one chick who has dozens of flagging accounts with no real VP was figured out pretty quickly...

Petitions are silly things that silly people do when they want to differ action. I don't hoist another's flag.

But I will say something I've said before, I have no confidence in Ned's leadership and he has already sailed down the river.

It was very interesting to read about the back room dealings, but I do find it very sad they happen that way. The self important quasi-official sounding language of politics in the first sentences of your statement here are signals of the kind of politics that inspires you. The backroom dealings fit all the more.

If you truly think of yourself as a servant of the electorate, bring the discussions completely on chain and stop playing I'm A Politician on your private chats.

That was my agenda from the start, to open everything up to the public. But since negotiations happened with Ned got opened up pretty much on the same day we were cautious of how much to make public until we had tried to discuss with him in a calm manner without external politicking. The slack that was created was not closed, anyone there in could invite anyone. Only today did we inform Ned that we planned to make the recent events public and my first order of business was of my own accord to create a community Discord to facilitate open communication, as per the link in the post above.

Everyone start a power down!

You may all power down. I won't. I never have. and I probably never will, until the day comes that blockchain has reached mass adoption (everyone using it under the hood in their daily transacting, whilst unconcerned by security or code).

Steem is one of the very few actual great use cases of crypto-currencies / blockchain applications. The price per Steem token will decrease when everyone sells their stake, but eventually others will buy those tokens at a discount, hopefully decentralizing the distribution of Steem.

It's all good man.

On behalf of BuildTeam, the Steemvoter Guild hereby upvotes this post in solidarity with the Steem community.

are you not connected to the OP? ;)

OP? What's that?

Original Poster :)
I heard you were also with BuildTeam

Nice to meet you Crypto-Drive

Yes I’m the CEO of BuildTeam as per my signature on the post.

I want Steemit Inc to stop their power down. I would also love to see them commit to a power down rate per year or month and put their stake in a smart contract that honor that rate.

Is there a list of the people who signed?

Hey @teamsteem, thanks for your support. While we haven't yet put a stay on the power down, Steemit Inc is willing to donate a portion of their stake to a community fund with an elect governing body as custodian, which is a positive way forward. We also hope that the power down will be stopped soon or maybe that the intention is to send that power down to the fund. The list of people who signed are those in the comments herein.

Let them move on. Steem is stronger than Steemit.Inc

PS: Probably interesting to look into the "Disclaimer" Section of the bottom of the about page of steemit: https://steemit.com/about.html

DISCLAIMER

Steemit Inc. (The “Company”), is a private company that helps develop the open-source software that powers steemit.com, including steemd. The Company may own various digital assets, including, without limitation, quantities of cryptocurrencies such as STEEM. These assets are the sole property of the Company. Further, the Company’s mission, vision, goals, statements, actions, and core values do not constitute a contract, commitment, obligation, or other duty to any person, company or cryptocurrency network user and are subject to change at any time.

Note that it does not have a "Team" Section or so explaining who is behind this "Company". Is it Ned alone?

Likely majority stakeholder.

FOR the ST.inc Power down or against?

come make your case, the council hasn't voted on the issue yet.

I am personally against it. I think steemit inc has spent enough funds and shown it is not effective. They have wasted money rather than having a clear development map and following it. They have prioritised projects that were more to do with personal ego than actual benefit to the community. Surely, making the system cheaper to run, easier to on board new users, more decentralised and more community led should have been prioritised over SMT's

Get ready to ride the waves of the upcoming market manipulation!

Its private property, not a community chest, @ned can do what he wants with his money and the sooner he gets rid of hsi steem the sooner someone else can buy it and the distribution can be more horizontal and probably healthier

also it might be better for a private company to keep their money private.... they MAY need to Pay for some serious development of the website! Thats a Good thing!

They need to USE this steem and not just sit on it! That steem needs to be sold and spent on all sorts of new resources and human capital, we will also benefit from Ned selling steem and using it to pay for ADVERTISING to promote steem all across social media, imagine massive steem ad campaigns across youtube , imagine youtubers paid to promote steemit or an App ned makes for steemit on iOs and android that makes it easy or imagine Partiko giving out their own instant accounts to users who download their app, now imagine Partiko just paying for ads and promoting on youtub4e... @partiko or even @steepshot.app who already has a youtube video Ad could easily spend some money to promote that App and get users on boarded instantly with their own account Creation faucet, Not having to depend on steemit.com, well we could see steepshot or partiko end up being the MOSt popular steem blockchain gateway... that app as the front end partiko is light and works GREAT never gives me issues and is gonna end up

Legally you might be right. That being said there are risks. If it's being sold then OTC would be a better way. If it's not being sold then what will it be used for? It's a lot of Steem and can impact the economics of the entire platform.

Steepshot seems like a dead project. It has not been functional for days.

He disappears for a month and a half without notice and returns to tell us what we want to hear, stuff he should have already done. It's clearly a delay tactic to dump a bunch of steem. What was really insulting was the document saying they were going to focus on communication, after such a long period of total radio silence.
Ned needs to go, hardfork or leave in handcuffs

Yeah I mean I'm glad you can see the latest communication is so fake and only to save their arse. :)

I've always stayed out of discussions, no matter what it was about, but I can't keep still with this issue because it affects every single steemian what's happening right now.
#stopthepowerdown

My opinion:
Stop the Power Down.

You got a 92.05% upvote worth $0.044 from @upvotewhale courtesy of @eii!

The drama continues... 🤷🏼‍♂️😅

Posted using Partiko iOS

:) are you for or against the power down?

I’m against it but it’s there pre-mined stake so I’m like 🤷🏼‍♂️🤣

Posted using Partiko iOS

They can do as they please with their money. Everyone should feel free to do as they please with their capital.

You have no clue what you're talking about.

You have no clue what you're talking about. - Lil' Beanie 2019

Screen Shot 20190118 at 12.16.28 PM.png

They can only dump it once, and they dont seem the type to surrender control.
Time for the steem sleuths to sharpen their conspiring antennas.
100 new whales shouldnt be too hard to spot, nor 10k newly funded accounts voting the same witnesses.

They would if they intended to move on. That would be hard after their renewed commitment to the platform, kinda. However the fork cohort have handed Ned the perfect PR cover for flip-flopping - they had decided to fork me out, so I had no choice to sell.

And here we all are, drumming up the source citations for the upcoming Coindesk article to go along with Ned's interview in 6 months about his new crypto venture.

Yep, threats are rarely better than direct action.
One more memory decrease and a fork will happen, imo.
Until then the infrastructure is too expensive.

This isn't all. They can redistribute it to anonymous accounts and then upvote in perpetuity whomever. This presents a risk don't you think? It's a lot of Steem unlocked at once which produces a lot of uncertainty.

Ned has not explained what crisis exists to cause a dramatic turn of events other than 70% of Steemit being laid off recently.

It shouldnt be too hard to find the 34 new 1m sp whales, nor the 340 new 100k sp dolphins, though the 3400 newly powered up minnows that all vote the same witnesses might blend in a little more, imo.
If they use the stake, it shouldnt be that hard to find them.

The problem is you can only speculate they are Steemit accounts and won't have proof.

It may be strongly enough correlated but yes that's true. I predict they sell though, and not on an exchange but by selling their keys.

Good point, some other geezer might have 10M Steem sitting on exchanges.

Yes, a fork would be a pr nightmare, but it is weighed against continued abuse by the abusers.
Do we let the ship continue to flounder, or do we start overboarding the abusers?

I am thus in favour of mutual discussions to come to an understanding between the community and Steemit Inc.

..and we penalize you, if you don't comply?

Do you realize how ridiculous this sounds?
Veiled threats?
Even this being on the table as an option, sounds cringe worthy at best, to the adults in the room.

“Fools multiply when wise men are silent.” - Nelson Mandela.

And fools don't know when their own selfishness transcends bigger principles ...

Bad management and all the rest ?-fine! rip them new one.

Theft of another persons assets?

....Is authoritarian communism, dressed up as moral indignation and executed with a faux moral superiority.

Grow up.

I think you probably need to grow up yourself instead of constantly throwing around communist denunciations! Not every action of this sort is necessarily a communist one lol

I use the term communist to cover all aspects of authoritarian rule over freedom of choice - when involving the non aggression principal.

All authoritarian rule ultimately leads back to communism - just like the system we have it the west today.
Communism = the centralized means of production

Central banks are the centralized means of production when they control the amount of money in circulation, and the value of money..

All authoritarian rule, whatever the guise, ultimately leads back to communism sooner or later...

Communism is an authoritarian mindset, long before it is ever became an ideology, and waaaay before it was political movement...

I need to copy and paste this to a document...lol

Glad to hear you spell your thoughts out on that. You're very wrong, though it's good to see your train of thought.

Authoritarian rule is something separate from communism, which is one form of authoritarianism. That is a very well established fact.

It's clear however that in your opposition to communism you're willing to mismatch that.

Authoritarian rule is something separate from communism

Authoritarian rule necessities a continual move towards more and more centralization...follow that through, and you always have to end up with communism, at some point..

That is a very well established fact.

A fact? Says who?
That's a big claim... (and an appeal to authority, btw)

Note: It was an 'established fact' that the we were geocentric until Copernicus/Kepler/Galileo, proved otherwise...

I posit that all authoritarian rule will eventually lead to communism...

It's clear however that in your opposition to communism..

I'm opposed to authoritarianism.
Authoritarianism leads to communism, ergo I'm opposed to communism, yes..

It's an appeal to common definitions, those things which you check in on the door of a debate. You posit, but don't show, which I guess is fine because I do not have the inclination to school you on basics, just to highlight your lack of them.

I have given you a model, you have given me no counter to disprove that model, just remarks.

Why doesn't my model make logical sense?

Can you give me any historical precedent that doesn't follow the path of further centralization by an authority?
(irrelevant of the label attached to the name of the said authority?)

I know of none, and I've been studying history for decades.

Or do you claim that all historical precedent has no bearing, and is irrelevant information on which to structure a model?

So, why besmirch the name communism when you mean authoritarianism if not to avoid admitting you have been misinformed by folks you still recognize as authoritarians over your language?

If you mean authoritarianism, like you just said, then leave us nonmarxist commies out of it, eh?

Authoritarian control of production is socialism, einstein.

A centralized means of production is communism..

Words are fluid, and the 'old' definition (purist one?) of communism has changed - to mean precisely what I say above.

It is impossible (based on the definition I use and the commonly understood one), to not have an authoritarian system with communism.

Totally impossible.

Yes, and you think that by design to make it impossible for you to separate the two and become free.
Smdh.

Let go of your bars, its gonna be okay in a world where we all seek success for each of us.

Language evolves in society, it always has.
Gay used to mean 'happy' before 'homosexual' (for example).

I have another 2000 examples if you want them....

Language changes...

I have no ideology.
Who's the prisoner, here...?
lol

A petition?

Petition on the steem decentralized blockchain?

What's next, an election for the steem president and a constitution?

This is garbage. I'll never tell you what to do with your stake, because you own it.

No one tells steemit inc what to do with their stake, because they own it. And the reason they want privacy is because of idiots like you.

Stop the power down! #stopthepowerdown

Looks like you are in the clear. @suonghuynh is not powering down. suggest you don't mention it too much, you might give people ideas.

Mine is pretty much the same with others here! Just don't wana repeat over over again :)

reminds me of Charlie Lee Selling his stake in Litecoin at $330 odd - its now trading at $32

60+ stakeholders, witnesses and dapp owners decided to move to a private chat which was created a few months back as a contingency to the Slack provided by Steemit Inc

Who can join this slack? How do people get the opportunity to join it? Who decides who gets to join or not? Thanks.

It's fairly public and has been by word of mouth by major stakeholders, only proviso is that you are not employed by Steemit or a contractor thereof. If you want an invite DM me in Discord, or anyone else in the post reference list above.

Or bring it to the chain.

I have created the Discord channel to achieve this end, it is open and public to anyone and does not require an email invite.

I respectfully ask you to shut down your witness @thecryptodrive, and if you can identify any other top witnesses who were privy to the semi-private chats where forking Steemit, Inc's stake away was discussed, I would ask them to shut down their witnesses as well. You have clearly failed your primary duty as a top witness to protect the security and integrity of the blockchain. I honestly can't believe that you can in one breath admit that yourself and other witnesses/stakeholders discussed forking away Steemit, Incs stake, and in the next breath ask for the powerdown to stop. I would say this is the height of hypocrisy, but this is Steem so I suppose it is just par for the course.

I would strongly urge anyone reading this to remove any witness vote cast for @thecryptodrive and any other witnesses involved.

Do you work for Steemit inc? :)

I think this so-called "Dormant Virus Effect" is a really interesting scenario and also none of our business.

In addition to that, I think it's completely unlikely. Managing the number of keys alone would be a nightmare. Making sure the accounts look legit would be a pointless time-suck.

Pointless because why would Steemit, Inc. care about having dragon's teeth on other chains?

@jesta had an interesting take on the fact that hidden stake accounts could deter airdrops and beneficial forks. Also ned has no issue with multiple keys, he had me help him broker a deal to purchase 20 accounts just last year. Didn’t even say thank you after, so rude lol.

Are you referring to a similar amount of accounts as a "dormant virus?"

Stop the Power Down

Congratulations on your first comment. Welcome to Steem. Have this exceptionally small upvote as token of friendship.

P.S. do you know what a power down is?

Very amazing sos post

Such panic. Wow.

Isn’t there a way for the community to just take over? There are a ton of good developers here... can’t they community just develop SMTs and the future changes and hardforks of steem? I truly believe things would advance faster and more reliably.

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That would be great, that is the purpose of getting the community involved. One of the problems is the centralised repo, a developer would dedicate months of his life code and submit a pull request only to be ignored by Steemit Inc. This is why no one is very keen to develop.

I see... is that meaning it’s not open source? Sorry I don’t have much knowledge on how code development works. There are Steemit clones, so the code must be available. But I’m sure that would mean migrating away from steemit.com which most probably don’t want to do.

Posted using Partiko iOS

It is open source, anyone can submit code but it is needed to he approved by Steemit because they own the public repo.

So one way or another, they fully control steem and of course steemit. I just wonder, maybe them selling steem off and giving up on control could be the best way for steem from now on. Now their control can be measured in $ a few (dozen?) million, soon it may get back into hundreds of millions.

I'm just a tiny fish both as a steem holder and knowledge 'holder'. But looking from the roadside I'm on, seems the drama will continue.

EDIT: Now I see, Steemit Inc and Ned power down plus own github ownership, they will retain control on the blockchain and fork proposal that didn't get traction at first will not be able to change this, even if community would agree, after powering down and moving funds to exchanges.

Stop the power down 😫

Stop the powerdown. ADSactly Society never powered down. We invested serious money in this project!

Just get ready to buy up the ST.INC Coins ;)

They may not sell, just leave it on exchanges at risk or ready to send back at a moments notice to effect their influence on the community.

Your money might be serious but you're not.

If you want to help, consider buying 800k Steem a month.

I would love to help but I have only enough money to buy a pizza.

STOP the Steemit Inc. Power Down.

Stop the power down! #stopthepowerdown

Calling @originalworks :)
img credz: pixabay.com
Nice, you got an awesome upgoat, thanks to @thecryptodrive
BuildTeam wishes everyone a bullish new Year!
Want a boost? Minnowbooster's got your back!

I appreciate this information to give me a bit more background on what this is all about. I have listened in to the Discord chat twice now and I'm a big believer in steemit, the community, and have been here since 2016. User 50,418 here! @Darkflame

Excellent, this is just growing pains, pulling the band aid so the wound doesn’t fester beneath. All will be great.

It's not our business what they'll do with their coins.

LOL - have you ever considered a career in diplomacy?

"All that was mostly achieved in 2018 was HF20, which had a hard landing"

... I would have been harsher :)

Lol being a witness is a diplomatic role. Mainly got there through diplomacy.

I'm ok with the power down... I am not ok with STINC ducking the transparent nature of this blockchain and all of the potential pitfalls that can come from that. Thanks!

Let them lose their stake. More cheap Steem for us. Actually good news.

Congratulations @thecryptodrive! You have completed the following achievement on the Steem blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :

<table><tr><td><span><img src="https://images.hive.blog/768x0/https://steemitimages.com/60x70/http://steemitboard.com/@thecryptodrive/voted.png?201901190813" srcset="https://images.hive.blog/768x0/https://steemitimages.com/60x70/http://steemitboard.com/@thecryptodrive/voted.png?201901190813 1x, https://images.hive.blog/1536x0/https://steemitimages.com/60x70/http://steemitboard.com/@thecryptodrive/voted.png?201901190813 2x" /><td>You received more than 10000 upvotes. Your next target is to reach 15000 upvotes. <p dir="auto"><sub><em><a href="https://steemitboard.com/@thecryptodrive" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" title="This link will take you away from hive.blog" class="external_link">Click here to view your Board<br /> <sub><em>If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word <code>STOP <blockquote> <p dir="auto">Support <a href="https://steemit.com/@steemitboard" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" title="This link will take you away from hive.blog" class="external_link">SteemitBoard's project! <strong><a href="https://v2.steemconnect.com/sign/account-witness-vote?witness=steemitboard&approve=1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener" title="This link will take you away from hive.blog" class="external_link">Vote for its witness and <strong>get one more award!

I fear it will not happen the #stopofthepowerdown but life is full of surprises sometimes. No idea why people call this a bad movement here but I am tech idiot

Stop the Power Down!

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Stop Power Down!

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