I agree that there needs to be some solution to the spamming and reward milking that Hive people are doing. But this "soft fork" seems like a really bad idea to me, two wrongs don't make a right. It would be nice if the Hive people would simply choose to stop their obnoxious behavior here, but those sorts of appeals seem to have fallen on deaf ears.

It does strike me as somewhat hypocritical that the Hive people would be upset about this, since their argument with their own soft fork was that it's totally normal for blockchains to reject transactions and there's nothing wrong with it. If they wanted to show that they have the courage of their convictions they could execute the "decline voting rights" option here and focus their attention on Hive. Unfortunately many of them seem to think that tearing down Steem is necessary for them to succeed.

I hope that this idea is merely saber rattling as a prelude to peace talks and not an indication of how Steem will be governed going forward. Witnesses picking and choosing which accounts to honor transactions from left a bad taste in my mouth when they did it, it does the same with the roles reversed.