My limited perspective on the recent steem/steemit news.

Some crazy news recently happened with steem/steemit an I'm once again a few days late to the subject.
I don't have a lot of time right now so this is going to once again be short, but, I wanted to make a quick post anyways.
Also, once again I might get some things wrong. I'm playing catch up and not as in the "know" as I used to be and even when I had more time I wasn't SUPER deep in the know like some people.

Photo by Aarón Blanco Tejedor on Unsplash

Basically... We appear to have had a steem clusterf!$%.
And this is probably the most worried I've ever been about the platform in the years I've been here, at least initially when learning about what happened. I am still a bit worried too, however, seeing the updates and the progression and the community rallying and so much outside news from around the world coming to the space... May even have some positive implications in the longer run.

Okay so... We have...
Accusations of criminality towards Ned for selling a stake which had been promised to assist the community.
Accusations of criminality towards the top witnesses for freezing said purchased stake by Justin Sun in an attempt to make sure previous claims were honored.
Accusations of criminality towards Justin Sun for colluding with/tricking exchanges to rig the steem elections to give him enough of a majority to reverse that action.

Holy f. There's a lot of blame, vitriol and anger to go around.
What seemed like it could have possibly been a deal which could have helped enrich pretty much everyone involved...
Has turned into a historical internet crypto conflict of the likes I've never seen before and which could possibly end badly for those involved.

There's a lot of speculation about what's going on, however, I think we should try to remember that the vast majority of us were not present during these deals and that maybe there is more going on than what we see.
I saw one person mention maybe there are NDAs involved which are sort of forcing certain "actors" to "play dumb" on certain issues. So, it's easy to say so and so did this or believes that, yet, in reality there might be a whole other hidden level that we just don't have the information to quantify.

With that being said, based simply on what has been observed... My personal opinions are as follows.

I'm supremely disappointed in Ned for basically selling stake that was promised to the community and then basically ghosting everyone/disappearing.

Many people invested a lot of money, my father invested a decent amount which I feel guilty about because I spoke and believed so highly in steem and I still do believe highly in it, it's just been one disaster after another and I can't deny there is some anxiety or worry that things will not end well in regard to that.

That's just... Really low and I wouldn't want to be Ned, that guy I think is likely going to basically have a target over his head for the rest of his life and who knows when someone who was an investor who got burned might recognize him in public and try to get revenge?

I wouldn't personally do that because I'm much more peaceful these days and I'm trying to promote love and forgiveness, yet... Many other people are not so loving and forgiving and people who may believe that they have lost a lot of money because of him I'm sure will be angry.

Next is... Witnesses for locking Justin's stake which was promised to the community... This one is difficult for me. I can understand a desire to want to protect the community from a potential hostile takeover or just from using or stealing those funds that were promised to the community.
HOWEVER... I think the most logical conclusion would be that Justin would see such as an attack and that would not be conducive to working together in the future.

That was a very risky and I think probably an unwise move, I think they should have waited for the planned meeting since Justin claimed based on my memory that he would respect and the honor steem community.

I'm mixed on this especially since I'm not a witness and I wasn't privy to the info, I dunno what I would have done... But, just from my recent exploration into peaceful communication I would lean away from communicating in "forceful" ways with someone who had just claimed to be a potential ally and someone who was going to help grow the community.

Then we have Justin apparently somehow colluding with or tricking three exchanges to use their stake to power up and vote in sock puppet witnesses to enact their own code to get Justin's funds which were promised to the community unfrozen... I highly highly disagree with this and I think this destroyed Justin's reputation among much of the community forever.

Apparently the way voting for witnesses works is that those with a bigger amount of stake have votes that are worth more? So, by getting the large amounts of stake from these various exchanges allowed him to bypass the "Democratic" process we have on the chain.

He basically accused our witnesses of being malicious hackers and then managed to forcefully take control of the blockchain in a way which I think was sort of akin to what a malicious hacker might do and also it was historical and disturbing.

This has shown me one of the major weaknesses of steem. And how it can be bought out essentially for the right price and a hostile takeover can occur systematically within a very small amount of time...
BUT, I am pretty certain this can be remedied with fork and those who don't like the new system can branch off and create their own chain with a new name and retain all the information from before.

So, it's not necessarily a fatal blow, but, I think it is pretty major and will probably hurt our reputation in the broader world and make it seem like things are out of control here. And I mean... That they could even make you change your name if they have enough money is concerning.

I dunno how smooth moving to a new chain would be.
We've had a few do this before, Whaleshares and Golos I think? I wonder if they are still going?
I wonder if they are on exchanges? I wonder how well steem would thrive if it had to fork to a new chain...?

Anyways... It looks like the three exchanges that helped Justin take over were Binance, Poloniex and Huobi.
And those exchanges as well have likely permanently damaged their reputation with many people.
There might be legal action taken before all is said and done in regard to these issues, however, I have to wonder just how much can be or will be done since crypto is such a new thing and so unregulated.

A piece of good news I saw is that... We have a "potential" new listing on Kucoin.
Based on what I read it sounds like they heard about the news and want to help.
I think there's a good chance they are just trying to make more of a name for themselves and by extension more money, however, I'm not in their brains and I don't know for sure and it seems like some good news that we have a new exchange that wants to help.

I hear there was a private discussion with Justin and steem witnesses and it seems and it has been uploaded to YouTube. I haven't watched it yet, but will include a link.

From what I read in the article I found this on... It reveals some interesting things.
Like I guess Justin said he doesn't want to be involved in governing and it seems like they just want to make money.
Also some positive stuff like they might be backing off some of their language of calling our witnesses malicious hackers and reversing their recent witness voting behavior.

Here's a comment related to that which I consider worth sharing.

"I pressed play.
Sun said, "Not interested in governance."
Sun should therefore stop governing, now.
Exchanges will have to wait 13 weeks. Good. The real witnesses lost money. Many on-chain services were shut down here and lost money. This mess has taken center stage, pushing many content producers aside, and they lost money. Everyone lost potential profit because of this. Staff quit their jobs. I can't say I feel sorry for those exchanges. Not one bit. They knew what they were doing and now they can face the consequences. No special treatment."

This really I think sums things up pretty well... Pretty much everyone it seems has lost money on this except perhaps Ned, though, he may not get away with this and time will tell in regard to that.
Plus, some of the most major steemit employees resigned after this... There have been some pretty significant negative results of this...

I really hope we can come to some kind of way to move forward without too much more fighting and loss, though, I kind of have a feeling there might be legal action taken somewhere in relation to this.

If legal action is taken, that could be both good and bad for steem. I think we all want more eyes on steem, but, not necessarily eyes looking with disdain or apprehension or eyes of certain people who want to regulate more.
Also, one more thing I wanted to mention real quick. I saw a comment from someone who suggested Justin should jump on the sue Facebook lawsuit.

There's a lawyer I think, I forget his name... But, he filed a lawsuit against Facebook for censoring steem ads on the Facebook platform, and I guess he needs some money for that effort and the potential payoff could be huge, so... I kind of concur with that, I think it'd be great if Justin stopped trying to govern steem and he went and sued Facebook and left us alone to do our thing. That would be major and bring a lot of attention to the crypto world in general, though, I kinda doubt that will happen though.

To my understanding there was just a Town Hall discussion about this stuff, so, I imagine there will probably be more new news soon.
I just wanted to quickly from my perspective mention a few things I found interesting.
There's some great longer articles out there on the subject if you want to learn more.
I think that's it for me for now. Peace!