My Thoughts On The Fork to Hive.

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So, we've had issues on the steem blockchain for the past couple of weeks. This was due to the standoff between the Steem witnesses and Justin Sun's accounts, all of which was based on the argument of whether Justin would adhere to the initial agreement between the Steem community and Steemit Inc.

I have made my stand on the issue known over the past few weeks as well.
While I am for the community, I wasn't okay with the fact that the Steem witnesses froze Steemit Inc's stake. This is because i knew we could have done better at negotiating than that. I have seen a lot of people who didn't feel this was the right decision to take too.

I think that by freezing the stake, we basically exposed and instigated the hostility, and enabled Justin to retaliate with force to undo the changes we made. I believe that these series of actions have lead to where we are today - A stalemate between the witnesses and Justin's Witness accounts, with both sides having seemingly irreconcilable differences.

• For Justin, he wanted the exchanges to be able to power down their stake as quickly as possible (Maybe as a promise he made to them when they helped him reclaim his stake), and a promise that the witnesses won't try to freeze the stake again. But he doesn't trust the community entirely so he's refused to bring down his witnesses.

• For our witnesses, we believe Steemit Inc's stake belongs to the community.

With both sides unwilling to back down on their decisions even after several negotiations have taken place, it's understandable that the simplest solution for both sides was for one side to fork.

But it'd be great to clear the misconceptions going on here about whether some community members are on this side or on the other side.

Whether it was or wasn't a necessary evil, I think that not supporting the 22.2 Softfork to freeze Justin's stake doesn't necessarily mean one's automatically on Justin's side. This is because people see things differently, and they are entitled to their opinions on this chain and we cannot force our opinions on them. We can only hope to present an argument beyond reasonable doubts to explain why we did what we did, and hope that the person understands it from your point of view, and possibly, make some adjustments.

Hence, equating non-support of the SF to mean support for Tron's is pathetic.

People do not deserve to be censored because they don't readily agree with the narrative of the larger community, especially not on Steem. It's one thing to openly declare support for one side, and it's another thing to be open and objective about the matter, and to choose to hear from both sides in order to establish common grounds for a negotiation that could result in a win-win.

That said, I think that flagging or ostracizing an entire group/community members because they didn't hop on your idea is in fact censorship.

Where Do I Stand?

• I did not support Softfork 22.2.
• I did not support Justin's retaliation by taking over the top witness positions.
• I do not believe both sides handled the situation well
• I support the fork to the new Hive Chain. I believe that it is one of the powers of decentralization, and without the willingness from both sides to reach a compromise, a fork is inevitable.
• I will be exploring both chains whenever I find the time to.

_Groot*