Is Steem facing an Existential crisis or are we just Paranoid?

In the short time that I have been on Steem, I have encountered a few changes and problems that the community has got together to tackle. Some of the issues were minor and only required making small alterations to the code while others required wholesale changes.

The recent acquisition of Steemit by @justinsunsteemit represents the greatest existential threat the community has ever faced and Sun's silence, coupled with rumours of a move to "move the Steem Blockchain to Tron's network" has led to widespread paranoia that spiralled into the recent Softfork.

I chose to be cautiously optimistic about the Tron and Steemit union. In recent times, it has mostly been beneficial to the community as a whole, with lots of new members coming through from Tron network. The 'cautious" part of the optimism was the off chance that Sun had intentions of actually "onboarding" Steem to Tron. I can't wrap my head around the techy side of that statement, but considering how often it was talked about in Spam blogs and websites, there might be some truth about the rumour.

paranoia

The paranoia spread a bit further when news about @justinsunsteemit strongarming the witnesses in Tron Network through the use of ninjamined stake and considering Steemit is the flagship Application of Steemit network, it wasn't out of the question to hold similar suspicion.

For those without a tech background, Ninjamined stakes are derived in the initial stage of a blockchain's development. They are gotten through announcing a coin without any prior warning or buildup and mining it then. Steemit Inc. is the pioneer dapp, and they have a shit ton of those stakes that could technically be used to veto decision-making like say moving the community to Tron Network for example, through backing their witnesses with the said stakes that is presumably way more than we probably know.

Now here's where things start to become interesting; remember that paranoia I talked about earlier? Yeah, it seeped into the other witness that presumably have the good of the community at heart to secretly conduct a Soft Fork that @therealwolf describes as a Protective Soft Fork.

The statement read(mine has a few minor grammatical corrections but retains the crux);

Today, on the 23rd February of 2020 at 10 PM UTC, the majority of Steem witnesses have accepted a temporary soft fork (v0.22.2), which immediately prohibits certain operations from Steemit Inc-owned accounts.
This software update is temporary, reversible and no other accounts have and will be affected.

In other words, "Listen @justinsunsteemit and @steemit, we're shitting bricks, and we're going to need you to say something" and well, the whining finally got to @justinsun's ears. This led him to release an open letter to the community, where he said a couple of nice things about the community and then scheduled a town hall meeting with every stakeholder on the 6th of March. I'm hoping he'll tell us not to worry about the rumours but if they are correct and then he'll let us know how far up our asses he intends to screw us.

As much as the witnesses I gave my vote to have mine and the community's interest at heart, I find it concerning that they made such a big decision in secret. I also think it is somewhat ironic that the top witnesses could make a "secret" decision because @justinsunsteemit and @steemit may also be plotting something in secret. Something that hasn't actually been confirmed by anyone.

I'm not trying to play Devil's advocate. Far from that and for what it's worth, I think it is a good move by the top witnesses to curtail the activities of Steemit Inc. until we get a clear view of their plans. That notwithstanding, I also question making a move out of paranoia and unfounded fears.

For all I know, @justinsunsteemit is a businessman, and the only thing that matters to him is making a profit, hopefully not at the expense of the community. So we wait to see how things go, and I'll be keeping my fingers crossed for some good news.