My Open Letter To Justin
Hello, @Justinsunsteemit. As @inertia said, Welcome to Steem.
It's been a rough start.
I speak on behalf of myself only, as the 3rd biggest community elected proxy voter & I am the 3rd largest Steem hodler on the entire blockchain.
I leave emotions out of things and think of business logic first. I am not here to be anti-Tron nor do I have any desire to continue battling you if you were to remove the sock puppet witnesses currently occupying our blockchain.
In order to move forward, you will need to retract your "hacker" statements. Now that you know the truth those statements should be retracted and an apology is needed.
Steem has lived with the Ninjamined stake, promised since day 1 that would not vote and be used for community development. Steemit INC (USA based company) provided guarantees to the community about how the funds would be used. We never locked Steemit INCs funds, nor forked him out.
As a show of good fate, I would like you to remove the sock puppet witnesses, so we can talk on the same level rather than from a hostage standpoint.
"Meanwhile we would like to reassure you that we intend to commit to Steem for the long-term and we plan to bring a lot more value to Steem than even the value of our holding. We see the potential for growth here for both of our chains is tremendous and sincerely look forward to working with you on an ongoing basis."
These are the type of statements Steemit INC made since day one. That is why a lot of investors invested in this ecosystem because we knew there would be funding for future development. I would like you to publically renounce interfering in our governance with the Ninjamined stake. These are not demands, this is me letting you know what I would feel comfortable with as a large stakehodler on this platform. The current 30% of the Steem supply is enough to cause strain on decentralized governance.
In the town hall talks, you said you would be willing to donate a chunk to the SPS (Steem DAO) to help fund development and further decentralize the stake, as always intended. This would lower the amount you hodl thus lower the threat of a possible takeover if you ever go back on your word.
You ask us to say we won't support witnesses that freeze funds. Asking us to agree to that spins the narrative. We can agree that we started off on the wrong foot, there were no ill intentions at all. Ned did a shady deal without informing you, and with the hostile token swap/migration marketing, lack of communication, Zion account voting SRs in, Ned keeping all this a secret, and weeks of time passing, the witnesses implemented an easy to reverse soft fork. I, OF COURSE, would NEVER support any malicious witnesses that went "rogue" to freeze user funds. I have never voted for a malicious witness and I won't start today.
Regardless of the thoughts here, we can agree there was no ill intent. We simply wanted to inform you of what you purchased and see how you would react. From there we can either fork if we disagree and move on or work together if the plan sounds good. At least we wouldn't be blindsided. So if users want to "fork" out your stake, that would create a new chain and we would have Steem and the new chain. I would not support anyone forcibly taking anything away from you nor anyone else. From the VERY beginning, we wanted to know your intent. This is all voluntary.
Getting exchanges to vote was the worse thing you could have done and I hope you understand it is best to communicate directly with us asap when you have concerns.
With all of this said, of course, I would not support any witness with ill intent, meaning to cause harm to our blockchain.
Once you remove the puppets, and you do what you say you're going to do in that open letter, I believe there is a shot at keeping the community here. Any funny business and it will lead to a fork and split the chain. I believe a fork is inevitable at this point, but I will never give up on STEEM, and I will always vote for community elected witnesses here. If there comes a day you retake the entire network and force us on tron, I will consider it game over and would move on at that point. But as long as we have community elected witnesses that have even a remote shot at getting in, I will stay here fighting the entire time. We just want our home decentralized, we don't want 1 person to make all the rules. So if there is going to be a fork, and you're publically promising to do the right thing, it puts us back at the same place we were with Ned.
I really dislike Ned. I don't really dislike you. I really disliked a lot of what you said and did, but I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt with the rough start. Regardless it does not matter what I think, STEEM is here, if you stand down and release our chain, let's at least see what happens from there.
This post was originally a response to Justins post here: https://steempeak.com/steem/@theycallmedan/q6vb16
Material On History Of NinjaMine:
The Steemit Inc. ninja-mined stake (SINMS) is said to consist of approximately 74 million STEEM tokens by those privy to the terms of the sale. Some of these tokens are liquid but most of them are powered up in @steem, @steemit, and @misterdelegation accounts. The sum of STEEM Power in these accounts alone is currently about 60 million SP. They also have almost 5 million liquid STEEM total. The rest of the total amount of STEEM is presumed to sit on exchange accounts.
With the 65 million STEEM and STEEM Power that is held between @steem, @steemit, and @misterdelegation As of writing a hostile attack by one party of the witness voting pool can be carried out. The top-ranked Steem witness have about 45.4 million SP of Steem user stake approval. If used, the 65 million SP of known SINMS can be used to attempt to vote the witnesses of one single party into the top 20 witnesses and thereby disrupt the consensus of the community.
References - Steemit Inc Discussing Use of SINMS
https://steem.com/2017roadmap.pdf -
Section 3. Steemit inc. “We plan to decentralize the @steemit account stake”
Section Decentralizing Stake
52 mins
“it's (the ninja mined stake) completely dedicated towards getting better and decentralizing over time any object that comes into existence I just centralized and its birth moment and over time to centralize this and we are at the very beginning of scheming over time it will decentralize so if there are issues with it today you know decentralization is a subjective and sliding scale hopefully it gets to the point where Steemit doesn't matter or Dan and I don't matter and you know that's could be years away I don't know but there's still a lot of growth to be had a lot of development to be done and it's fully in our objective to make sure that that happens”
Min: 33:24
Ned says that the Stemit holding is reserved for developing the ecosystem
Min:27:19
Ned says that the Stemit holding is reserved for developing the ecosystem
24mins - 28mins Ned talks about the mining, the steem INC got and how they would use it to decentralize the network.
44 mins - “not voting” “reserved to develop eco system”
48:30 seconds talks about stake + 49:16 seconds, we have no interest in controlling the entire blockchain and we want to distribute that power to others asap “others” could mean anyone. But still.
16:15 seconds (asked about stake) + 17:53, “my company mined a bunch and now we are using it to grow the eco system”
- https://cointelegraph.com/news/steemit-managing-director-on-acquisition-by-tron-exclusive
"Powell explained that the Steemit Inc. ninja-mined stake is intended to help with further support and financial developments of the Steemit blockchain."
Code Development for SINMS Use Restrictions
Steemit inc code implementation of features to temporarily freeze stake in the circumstances that occurred after the acquisition:
https://github.com/steemit/steem/releases/tag/v0.14.1
Section – Decline voting rightshttps://github.com/steemit/steem/issues/324
Thread from dan larimer about implementing the mechanisms used to temporarily freeze the stake for these
I believe I saw something very similar to this as a comment in Justin's latest post, but I'm sure you reposted for visibility.
Just like the exchanges, it is foolish for us not to be powering down. You should be using your influence to get other large stake holders to all start powering down at the same time. We can organize a sister fork and dump on Justin's chain; funneling that value into the sister fork. It will only take a dump of 2M-10M coins on Justin's chain for the value to tank under a penny per coin. There aren't going to be a lot of buyers on that front.
As you are already aware, these discussions with Justin are 90%+ likely to be completely pointless. We shouldn't even be talking to him anymore. CZ is the real target at this point, and it would be nice for him to know that if Sun botches this takeover more than he already has (very likely) Binance is going to be in a lot more trouble than they already are.
I support a sister fork where every account that voted for the puppet witnesses get frozen, and then we begin the long journey of figuring out which accounts to unfreeze and when. This includes the Steemit Inc. accounts, Binance, Huobi, Poloniex, a part of the Korean community, and a handful of low-stake holders who didn't know what they were doing.
Obviously first on the list to get unfrozen would be the Korean accounts and low-stake holders. The exchanges need to meet several demands before their accounts get unfrozen, and the ninjamine will probably be forked to null, as it's value is negative and 100% a liability.
Conclusion
We are not organized enough and need to start rallying support for a SINGLE fork now, rather than when Sun pushes a hardfork and we are on the backfoot. However, unless this stalemate lasts for months, we likely have to wait for Sun to FUBAR the chain before we have enough support to sister fork. I hope he bricks the chain. Still, we should have one ready to launch ASAP so we can deploy immediately. And we should be ready to dump on Sun and leave him with nothing. Also, we should be going over his head and talking to CZ directly about the severity of the situation. He doesn't seem to realize that we don't need a super majority to sister fork and do whatever we want.
If Sun Hardforks the Steem blockchain, that fork is no longer the Steem blockchain. CZ needs to be made to understand this, because Justin is not listening to us and talking in circles. JS has legendary tunnel vision right now, and doesn't realize his HF will immediately nullify all his assets, while if he stands down he can still get a return on the investment.
You act as if he has 0% support, but that is not what I have seen. There are a lot of people in Steem that were excited by the TRON/Steem combo news, and there are quite a few youtube videos from people like Hilarski and Freedompoint speaking out against the actions the witnesses did.
I believe the result of a sister fork will not go the way you want it to go. The most successful people on Steem are loyalists and will stick with Steem Classic, but a lot of the people here that are not very successful at getting on trending and such will go with Justin, even if it means becoming a token on TRON. If I am right, it means that the Steem community gets divided, when we all know how disappointingly small it already is.
What about SMTs or RC delegation? I'm not sure these cool features everyone has been waiting for will ever see the light of day if there is a contentious hard fork right now.
I think its better to go the peace pipe route for the time being.
okay i watched some Hilarski and Freedompoint videos.
im obviously a bit out of my element there
they have a lot of stake in the game.
however they seem to willfully ignore a lot of the facts that matter. both of them assume this all started with the witnesses freezing steemit stake. they both view the witnesses as greedy rich assholes that only care about self enrichment and dont represent the community. its all absurd.
this started when sun bought steemit then refused to talk to us and made constant contradictory claims about intent. freezing his accounts was not an attack or illegal. and we had no intention of leaving it frozen. they act like suns response was justified and proportional, using investor funds on exchanges to punk the chain with a devastating Sybil attack. i shouldnt have to explain why thats 1000 times worse.
they focus on the hatred spewed by our community, as if everyone should be a charismatic professional businessman. community will always have a full spectrum.
the witnesses make very little at these prices. devs hired by corporations easily make 10 times what they currently generate, and corporate devs dont have to deal with these politics.
they both want to "move forward" and think sun has value to offer. he doesnt
they blatantly ignore the extreme severity of this constant Sybil attack.
there are so many ways to pick apart their weak arguments, which has been done time and time again in the town hall meetings. the words fall of deaf ears.
thank you for pointing me in this direction, as this added perspective really makes a lot of the politics click into place for me. i guess perception really is reality sometimes.
written on an ipad
Do these people even have stake in the network? I'll probably watch these videos later but they seem like they don't have any skin in the game.
Let me be very clear: Justin Sun is not going to invest more money into this fucking fiasco. There is no chance that his chain gets more development than the real chain with the real witnesses. He is the most famous, prolific, and charismatic scammer in the space, and people keep falling for his bullshit hook line and sinker over and over again.
SMTs are basically done. Think about the differences between Justin's fork and the sister fork. There aren't any except a couple frozen accounts. If Justin's fork finishes SMT... the sister fork gets SMT for free, and vice versa. Well, probably not vice versa, because Justin has zero devs and he isn't going to hire more.
If Justin forks the main chain that chain will get dumped to zero and abandoned within a month. I guarantee it.
The absolute best case scenario is simply to buy Justin out of his position for whatever he paid Ned (I would lowball him for half as much) and send all those coins to @null and the SPS.
I would love to be proven wrong and will be the first to admit it. I'm wrong all the time. Personally, I think 10 years down the road Justin Sun will be the laughing stock of decentralization due to his actions and will have zero power and negative reputation across all networks.
Some people might indeed find it beneficial if a lot of "usual suspects" occupying trending went elsewhere, and left this chain. I expect something like this to be what people will try to weigh in when making a decision.
I can't imagine joining some kind of a platform full of people who only post about STEEM and fight all the time. Or... wait. I think I already did.
I'm left with an uneasy feeling about a split. The previous forks that took portions of this community away have always failed, and not just failed but failed miserably.
Think back to the Ethereum DAO hack. The main chain is the one with the most support. It is very obvious from witness voting that the new sister chain will actually be the main chain.
You'll notice I didn't say which chain would be dysfunctional, now that I brought that up.
It's more fun when you're in "absolutely batshit free association mode".
When this is all over let's drop acid.
I'm wayyy ahead of you...
"I support a sister fork where every account that voted for the puppet witnesses get frozen, and then we begin the long journey of figuring out which accounts to unfreeze and when."
Why would anyone buy Steem if it could be forked away? Buy Steem, but make sure to kiss a bunch of asses or it might get forked away. If someone owns steem they should be able to vote for whoever they want
That is so reductive I dont even know where to begin. A sister fork must freeze all the stake being used to attack the chain. The reason you buy Steem in this scenario is because Steem is a blockchain that defends itself from Sybil attack. To make the claim that "anyone could have their account frozen" because the attacking parties are being neutralized is absolutely absurd. Dont attack your own investments. Sorted.
Feel free to build your sister shitcoin with censorship over everybody.
Censorship over the accounts that attacked us and forced us to move to a new chain? Like, duh. That's the only difference that a sister fork needs to have to correct this situation.
Which accounts we unfreeze and when is certainly up for debate.
Are you simply pulling ideas out of your a....
Actually. Forget it. I wasn't here. Nobody saw me.
Out of my arsenal?
Freezing the accounts that attacked us isn't rocket science.
It's the obvious move.
You can see me?
I see three birds.
Is that you?
Speak to me, three-eyed raven.
press play
No woman no cry.
Where did he go?
If you guys do, could you make sure to post a list of witnesses you want us to not vote for so that we can make sure we don't accidentally vote for a Tron puppet just to find out that our accounts are now frozen. I voted for 30 witnesses and I believe I didn't vote for any Tron bots, but I just want to make sure.
I checked your wallet just to make sure, but pretty much anyone who has under 5000 SP (minnows and an plankton) would be forgiven pretty quickly (if not outright). This is especially true if the account in question was split voting and only voted for a few of the rogue sockpuppets. We don't really expect low stakes accounts to be fully invested in all this like the bigger ones.
That being said, all the witnesses running 0.22.5 are the "bad" ones. Currently, none of them have picture icons next to their names, and all the "good" witnesses do.
This is not an issue that small accounts likely have to worry about, as the main target is Steemit Inc. The exchanges are the secondary target, and the tertiary targets would be huge accounts engaging in split voting (which is mostly aimed at the sct community).
I'm really just talking out my ass here. I have absolutely no control over a potential sisterfork. It's honestly way above my pay-grade. I'm just voicing what I'd like to see happen.
Thank you. I understand.
Jeckyll Hyde
Being realistic with human nature, especially someone who is used to exercising lots of power, it’s impossible to change the deeply ingrained nature like that!
A hard fork is the most realistic solution! Sorry to sound pessimistic! But I have been observing many entrepreneurs and investors-politicians in my country, these people will never change because of their greed. Several of my acquaintances have been advisers to politicians,the rich and powerful. Corruptions are rampant because of greed! Very sad indeed!
Which is why we need to accommodate their greed-focused minds. If they understand one thing: it's money. If Sun pushes a hardfork on our chain that chain is no longer Steem, as it has zero community support. Sun thinks he needs to push a HF to make the banks solvent and get his ROI, but he doesn't realize that exactly the opposite will happen. It's mind boggling that he is so clueless about all this.
He said once in the beginning that the Tron community is very agreeable. Well, of course it is because Tron is a dictatorship. He hasn't dealt with a real decentralized community, yet.
This is going to make us more resilient! And I hope it get better soon. Can't spend anymore time on twitter, but it seems to be the battlefield.
Finally a constructive post with the intent to cooperate and move forward. If all parties would be willing to communicate based on reason rather than emotions we could be seeing a cooperation that could achieve great things. Hope things are turning around now.
This is one of the most reasonable posts I have read about this Justin Sun saga. You made very clear points, with the readiness to move forward - not the disturbing fuck-justin-sun posts. Thanks for taking up this leadership challenge. Cheers!
The post is 100% anti-Tron.
You are asking him to remove his Witnesses and say sorry for using the word Hacker, but you forget the fact that his stake was taken as a hostage before just because he did not vote on his witnesses. You are asking him to step down without the possibility of any guarantee that witnesses will not fork him out .... yea to the save the blockchain.
I do not support either side, but I think you guys really lack the proper wite to procced with negotiation and conflict resolution. Because what you are suggesting above lean more toward populism instead of conflict resolution.
Yep, this is correct. The only reason he won't remove his witness votes is because there have been no trustless guarantees that his stake won't be frozen again. @theycallmedan once that guarantee is made it seems clear to me that he will remove his votes. That trustless guarantee has not been made to him to this point.
Dude, do you ever sleep? :)
Thanks for everything you are doing for this community.
He bought 20%, one of steems top investments! not even a majority. Why should he have to communicate with you? This is supposed a decentralize system . A centralize system orders people to communicate with them. Does this mean any large investor must make his intentions know or have his account frozen ( hacked)?
Does this mean we should freeze all voting bot accounts and whales accounts until the community is sure they are not secretly working with each other? The discussion should be about why his account was frozen , if illegal,its a hack!
None of this would have happen if you witnesses didnt freeze his account.
None of this would have happened if on that very first tweet of his,he didn't mention the words "STEEM token-swap" "migration of Steem dapps to TRON" and then...complete lack of communication...
A very good debate for the community and our new community member!
It was a opportunity for sun to state his intention and for the community to react . The community had a right to hear his ideas from him and to respond.
Not witness speculation and destruction. WE completly scared away any new investors, and destroyed our relationship with top exchanges, does the community think we dont need them?
This. While not a fan of freezing his tokens, to say it was bold to come on the scene and announce he was killing Steem and we would have to swap into his new token would be an understatement. Lots of dick moves taking place here, but the audacity of declaring the death of Steem by Mr. Sun was where it began.
Sun would've tried to force a transfer of all Steem apps and user base to Tron against our will in any case. The very first thing he would do after he had acquired Steemit was to announce to the entire world that that was going to happen.
He was completely blindsided by the community response. If a hard fork were to happen, which seems increasingly likely to happen as the impasse we're in drags out, I'm sure a very small minority of Steemians will follow him to Tron.
Those of us who want money will be better off on YouTube or on self-hosted blogs. Steem is about something else first and foremost: it's about forming self-governed and decentralized communities.
First of all Freezing suns account goes against the very basic foundation of a decentralized community. We will never know what suns intention where going to be. The freezing stole that from the community. The community response is based on misinformation from witnesses. Sun was a new whale on the block and the centralized witnesses felt their influence threatened . They acted on speculation and not facts. A decentralize community needs to understand that things can change quickly .
I agree that it was a radical thing to do. I would have done it but only as a last resort. Are you aware of the history of the stake Justin Sun bought? By purchasing the coins Sun became nothing like an ordinary whale on the platform. Steemit, Inc's coins were pre-mined into existence for the express purpose of paying for the development of the core blockchain and not private gain. It may be that Sun was deceived by Ned Scott about the nature of the stack be bought.
He said it very clearly: to migrate all Steem apps to Tron along with the community and swap all STEEM for a TRC10 token. That is, to end the independent existence of the Steem blockchain and migrate the whole ecosystem to Tron, a centralized blockchain that Justin Sun has controlling stake of and which stake he has chosen to actively use. When confronted about this, he backpedaled a little saying that Steem would continue to exist - for now. Our witnesses became concerned when they learned Justin Sun had used genesis coins on Tron to dictate the governance on Tron.
No, it's clear enough what Justin Sun wanted. The witnesses did their duty to protect the chain as best they could. The only thing I disagree with them on was the timing of the soft fork. I would've postponed it somewhat.
Everything is in plain view.
Sun was no ordinary whale. His stake was far from unencumbered and it was large enough for him to nearly centralize the chain.
"...centralized witnesses...".
Witnesses voted in by the community.
That kind of extreme arrogance will get you precisely nowhere. If your side manages to hijack the chain, a sister chain will be created, which the overwhelming majority of the community will choose. You can't buy people and communities.
We actually do. Several mentions of token swap was made by Mr. Sun, implying the destruction of my current Steem tokens. He protests actions that pale in comparison to his intended plans for my and other Steem holders tokens.
All speculation. This is a supposed to be a decentralized blockchain , where enough money buys you influence. The community had a right to see exactly what his plans where. He only has 20%. THe community would have to support it. We just prove were a centralized blockcain of whales and voting bots. The black list is also centralization.
I certainly won't be joining in on the new chain if he gets his way. Still not sure why he feels its ok to destroy my tokens yet is upset that his were limited.
Agreed.
Couldn't agree with you more test45. The original witnesses need to stop being butt-hurt and let Justin work his magic. He has stated again and again he doesn't want to govern the blockchain and only did what he did b/c his legally purchased Steem were frozen. Decentralizing this blockchain will be the best thing that has happened to it during the last four years. Some are too blind to see that JS's acquisition of Steem is what will help this blockchain grow. If it forks I will be done with Steem unfortunately and I hate that b/c I really enjoy playing Splinterlands and have for over a year. I've spent a lot of trx on cards and always wondered what Steem could really do if it was decentralized.
Contradiction there.
Yes, I agree with your statement if you don't know the whole story; however, JS only took control of the blockchain once witnesses performed a soft fork and froze his legally purchased funds. DYOR dude. Please do not listen blindly to Steem's emotionally charged witnesses. It makes no sense for Sun to purchase something and then run it into the ground. In the past he purchased BitTorrent and Dlive and never tried to exert his dominance in either platform.
He doesn't have to communicate.
He bought steem that is believed to be for community development by the vast majority, and he shows obvious signs of not using it for that.
All he talked about how awesome tron is. Ok if this is true, why does he need to hijack our blockchain with our community development funds. Make tron awesome and we may choose to buy it.
It was done to unfreeze his account. Thats all. We live in a world ruled by legal documents, if Ned steem was 100% for community development their would be legal documents showing exactly what it will be used for. IT was over 12 million dollars!
This is Steem, there are no legal documents. We are in the court of public opinion limited by the parameters of code set by consensus witnesses.
What country is going to enforce a random document? Steem is its own sovereign currency.
Voting is not hacking.
I agree with this sentiment and I'm beginning to kinda want to see Justin's humanity surface.
I think one of the most exciting things about this entire event has been how it's forced the narrative to acknowledge the PEOPLE involved.
Justin is a successful business man who is steeped in a world that kills you the second your guard is down. As much as I despise what I've seen from him I want to understand and acknowledge how he got there, but not while making ourselves vulnerable to him. He's proven what he has to do to resume business as usual.
The way things are done here are in contrast to the tactics that made him one of the most powerful players in the space. It's our job to teach him how to work here if he's willing to learn. I think he can find multitudes of success here and we could greatly benefit from his presence but not while there's a gun in his hand.