Jumping Off The #stopthepowerdown Bandwagon
hopping-on-the-stopthepowerdown-bandwagon
Playing Devil's Advocate
Every ICO on the Ethereum network was "ninja-mined". Every DAG (directed acyclic graph) was "ninja-mined". Tron was ninja-mined. EOS was ninja-mined. Ripple is a joke. In fact, if the coin doesn't have a proof-of-work consensus algorithm, odds are that project was pre-mined in some way or another.
Even the definition of pre-mine is a little unclear at this point. Bitcoin miners that get into the game today will look back at people who got to mine entire blocks with a laptop and cry out, "That's not fair!" Even Satoshi Nakamoto premined a huge chunk of Bitcoin.
At its root, the concept of "ninja-mine" is simply centralization, and whether we like it or not, every blockchain suffers from centralization, from coin distribution to network nodes to development.
There seems to be an overwhelming sense of entitlement in this space. Many who join our ragtag financial resistance turn green with envy and jealousy as the wealth of others is paraded on the transparent ledger in front of them. This is especially relevant on Steem because the highest paid content is curated on the trending tab by design. Our noses get rubbed in it like a puppy who doesn't know what they've done wrong.
Transparency
Name another coin whose centralization is more prominently and publicly displayed than ours. That blockchain does not exist yet, not by a long shot.
Just take a look at Binance. They are holding 60 million coins out of a total of 189 million. Are there hundreds of Binance holders running around exclaiming how unfair it is that Binance holds a third of all coins from its own premine? No, I've heard about no such concerns. The centralization of other blockchains hides in the shadows while ours sticks out like a sore thumb. This is a good thing. The first step toward recovery is admitting one has a problem.
What we all need to realize is that crypto isn't a good solution. It is a "good enough" solution, and for a very very long time that is all it will ever be: good enough.
Why is this same outrage not being directed at central banking? How have they deceived and enslaved humanity for the last century with the invisible chains of debt slavery? You must boil the frog slowly if you don't want it to jump out of the pot. The transition went quite well. Somehow a huge percentage of the population still thinks that fiat is backed by precious metals.
If the Fed can print however many trillions they want, how are we getting mad at Steemit for spending money they can never reprint? The answer is quite simple: the transparency of our blockchain has an enraging effect on the community.
When any idiot can come here and see that our economy isn't working like its supposed to it's so easy to point the finger and have a temper tantrum. I've seen so many rage-quits over the last year. I hate to break it to you friends, but you just opted back in to the most broken system you could have ever agreed to: fractional reserve central banking.
Every coin is ninja mined
Every single blockchain starts out with a very tiny community. As that community get's bigger the coin actually becomes relatively more centralized because the original group still controls the majority of the coins.
We all need to drop our entitled attitudes. One day 5 or 10 years down the road the mob will be pointing at us and calling us the ninja miners. We'll be the one with all the coins as the average person tries to scrape together a few dozen to get some of those valuable resource credits for free instead of having to pay for them.
In five years we'll realize how petty we were being for crying about centralized stake. By then we'll be the ones being criticized along with the rest of the top 1%. MySpace has 40 million users today. Forty... million... that's 7.5 coins per person, and I control over 5000. So realistically it would only be like one coin per person, and 40 million is not a lot in the grand scheme of things.
Great perspective as we need to get this latest arguement out of the way and continue to cone together as a community to decentralize no matter what the biggest stake is doing or will do. We knew about it before starting here so while we have been disappointed that they could not achieve the development to move the technology more along, we should not let it dwell on us for what is still needed to be done.
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The only time we need to express outrage is when huge stake holders are actively blocking us from doing the right thing. If we have enough consensus, this is impossible, as we could nullify all their inflation, with the threat of fork as last resort.
Nailed it 100%. As Andreas Antonopoulos likes to say: "We are not the early adopters, we are the crazy ones. Early adopters, will join us lunatics, in a few years."
And as I like to say: "There will be a time where people will fight over a single steem token.."
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Stratos will be, in a way, ninja-mined. In the beginning ~half the stake will be given to SP holders and ~half to yours truly. But I hope to fairly quickly sell off my stake as the network matures as a sort of mini-ICO.
I can see Steemit’s perspective - they are the sole developers, the sole creators, etc. And they could deserve their own share. But also I do think that they should have given away their last share of the ecosystem years ago. Maybe put it into some sort of reward pool like Stratos is doing for developers.
This whole thing is so much drama... already many witnesses have pledged to not complete freedom 21 unless the power-down is stopped; there will likely be no freedom 21 fork in the end. If the fork was ever proposed and there was a chance of it going through, as long as Steemit Inc retains their SP they can just spin up 20 witnesses and vote against.
I don’t know, I like the idea of the power-down but the side effects could be catastrophic.
No matter what goes down I'm honestly not worried. There are so many developers on board now trying to make this platform happen. I get the feeling this kind of growing pain and subsequent centralization is going to be the main theme of the entire space.
We will continue on failing to scale gracefully over time, just like the Internet.
Great post, I certainly consider myself an early adopter even though it’s been less than a year since I’ve been here. I do think of the future Steemians that will join after the coins stop flowing, what will that be like? How can users continue to earn money on votes if no more coins get created? Interesting prospect.
I don’t have a big issue personally with early adopters of a coin that takes off, at least presently. That could change of course but it’s like a small business: to grow your business you start with people you know around you. If it takes off then great, people you know benefit, if it doesn’t then that sucks and people lose money and sometimes respect for your vision. I do see how this gets complicated in crypto with the ninja mining principle but with all the projects out there it’s hard to see what one takes off and what doesn’t.
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Great perspective, as always. It's easier to complain about a lot of things when there is transparency. The systems that do much more evil but is quiet about it never draws attention to the corruption because it's hidden.
Still, it's stinc's stake. But I've seen a lot of comments about them using a part of that steem to setup a developer pool. Would be excited to see that happen, but we really cannot tell a registered company what to their stake.
I'm glad I'm an early adopter of cryptocurrencies. I control less than 1000 Steem and I am okay with growing that steadily with hours of honest work rather than fanning the embers of an empty pull request on github.
I agree with you that of course this system isn't the panacea, still is way better than the actual status of the fiat world but also I understand @aggroed 's intent to stop the power down and have an agreement to use properly those "ninjamined" funds.
It's a more complex issue that initially seemed I have to admit, and I'm debating with myself if the power down is a good thing for us or not.
In one side we can say that this is good for decentralization, so Stinc might go away and make the power down or go to the hell if they want, but in the other hand we all know that if that Steem is selled it might take the price of the STEEM very low, putting more pressure than we have already with this bear market.
The main problem imo is the lack of transparency of the operation, if we could know what the Stinc intentions are, probably this issue wouldn't be so dramatic for many people.
Anyways they can do whatever they want with their money, that isn't in discussion, at least imo.
Aren't pre-mined and ninja-mined definitions completely separate? Pre-mine usually relates to early adoption or distribution before that coin's usual mining method becomes available. Pre-mine is usually a fair event.
Ninja-mined refers to coins acquired in completely unfair ways, unavailable to the majority of users at the time the ninja-mining occurred. Such as a blockchain owner giving some crypto to his friend just because he can.
The account powering down in question is made from ninja-mined coins and this affects all of us negatively.
Because it's the right thing to do in both scenarios. The mistake there is not getting mad at the Fed.
I don't think Steem, Inc is that transparent. Sure, it's way more than average, but it's still way below "decent".
If you create a cryptocurrency, and you own all the coins, that coin is worthless. The coin doesn't have value unless people are using it, and because you own all the coins, no one is using it. This is how giving money away for free (airdrops/POB) is actually a profitable action.
How is a Ninja-Mine worse than a Pre-Mine? In the ninja-mine, miners were at least given the chance to mine coins. In every ICO, 100% of the coins were premined and sold by the developers.
The logistics of the ninja-mine actually make us immune to ICO/IPO regulation, so that is kinda nice.
In the end, all that matters is trust, decentralization, and actual use as a means of expressing value.
That being said, I agree with most of what you are saying.
I don't see how this relates to anything that has been said so far.
Pre-mined, acquired before mining. It's an investor thing. If you have the budget to do so, you can seize this opportunity along with anyone else who meets the wealth requirement.
This is crap. It's coins that aren't even supposed to exist, usually given to someone in a very illegitimate way. Simply put, it's abuse. They cause nothing but devaluation. The fact they exist or have existed at some point spells out developer bullshit.
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Stinc like most will sell their coins at the bottom. They are not investors or traders, like 95% of the market, they will most likely sell on emotion.