RE: Ain't No Sunshine
decentralization is a sliding scale, and prior (old top 20) governance was certainly more decentralized than 20 puppet witnesses controlled by one entity. But I think also it is a huge stretch to say that governance was truly decentralized in any meaningful sense before. On the scale of decentralization, witnesses being elected by at most a couple dozen large stakes is so close to 20 puppet witnesses as to be practically indistinguishable when you zoom out IMO. Changes to the voting rules are badly needed. They were badly needed prior and the need has only grown more dire. Steem has never been decentralized, the initial stake distribution started us out on a terrible foot in that regard and the reward pool payout mechanism has been too easily gamed the entire time to achieve any really meaningful progress toward decentralization. The biggest factor in evening out stake distribution has been whales getting out of Steem by dumping their stake, which unfortunately just opened up the exact vulnerability that was exploited RE exchanges holding more Steem than stakeholders have staked on the network.
Yeah, it is a funny old place, but the stake was slowly spreading further out. It is a pity it was used in this way and the exchanges have a fair bit to answer for in my opinion, as I don't think staking coins and voting is their normal order of business.
While I know that only a few accounts had the majority of say, I think that even that was "relatively" decentralized as that stake was often spread across competing individuals and some of those who actually give a crap about Steem.
Interesting times.
!ENGAGE 25
yes agreed on the "relatively" decentralized, and particularly in comparison to Tron takeover. I think one of the saddest things to come out of this was Binance CEO saying that a DPoS blockchain having rules in place to prevent exchanges from voting would be grounds to deny the listing for new applications. This is a very real concern for any DPoS chain, not just Steem. Pretty disappointing to see the largest player in the space say they wouldn't even list a project that had a safeguard in place to prevent exactly the SNAFU we just saw.