My Personal Thoughts - Steem/Tron Saga

in #steem5 years ago (edited)

This is a very long and rambling video where I discuss my personal experience of the days leading up to the Steem Community Witness initiated Soft Fork 22.2 and The Tron Hostile Takeover a few days later.


I walk through my thoughts on the situation, while also covering where the Ninja Mine even came from (and why it's different), the clear threats to the Steem Blockchain, how certain aspects described in this hostile marketing from Tron were actual items listed in the sale and therefore payment was dependent on them occurring (and therefore a very valid threat), do I think this was all avoidable, and what happened in those "Witness Chats".


This is an hour-long, yes a whole hour, rambling video of my opinions and only that. I speak for no one and represent no one but myself.


As promised I do try to answer a few community questions after my rambling, around 40-minute timestamp (if you want to fast forward).. but most were answered through my explanation of the situation though.. in my own words.


The video was one take, unrehearsed, no plan.. just me talking my way through my experiences in this situation leading up to where we are now. What I think, and what I experienced.

... and apparently, I had a lot to say. Due to the size of the file, I had some issues uploading and therefore it's a day late. Since the time of recording, we have already seen a few more updates (and got more questions sent to me).. So I will try to record another (shorter one) soon. To update everyone on where we are now and what the next possible steps may be.



The following are just my honest thoughts and opinions. They do not represent any group or attempt to speak on anyone's behalf. This is just me... saying what I think.



**2 of the 3 Exchanges involved in the Hostile Takeover I mention in the video have started powering down as of yesterday.

**I will go over the most recent updates in the next video.

**As mentioned in the video, this is a good post that shows some of the concerning messaging coming from Tron, leading up to the Soft Fork https://steempeak.com/steem/@pfunk/the-case-for-the-temporary-soft-fork


Much Love,

Justine

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It's a good idea to relate your personal experience of these events, for improving public understanding, and for the sake of posterity. I agree that the founder's stake has been a sword of Damocles hanging over our heads as long as Steem has existed, and that witnesses have failed to resolve that threat heretofore.

I have personally engaged several current and former consensus witnesses in an attempt to better decentralize Steem, and still do presently. One issue that is pressing is how large stakeholders are advantaged by the extant witness voting mechanism over lesser stakeholders. 30 witness votes without depletion magnifies the influence of larger stakes over witnesses, and this appears - whether it does or not - to compromise witnesses regarding their positions due to their dependence on such stakeholders.

I will not detail supporting evidence of that pandering resulting from the problem (despite much existing), but will show the math that explains how larger stakes are enabled to wield influence, disproportionately to their actual hodlings, over governance.

User A has 1m Steem, casts 30 votes for witness, and wields 30M Steem influence over governance. User B has 100 Steem, casts 30 votes for witness, and wields 3000 Steem influence over governance. The difference between their hodlings is 999,900 Steem. The difference in the weight of their influence on governance however is 29,997,000 Steem. Heretofore witnesses have failed to rectify this imbalance in influence on governance, and an accusation can reasonably be made that, due to the general misunderstanding of this magnification of stake weight, historically consensus witnesses have been willing to pander to the interests of the most substantial stakeholders to secure their positions.

I have discussed this current dilemma with many stakeholders, current, and former witnesses held in high regard generally, and have been given estimates of the stake held by Tron presently of ~100M Steem. Under the current witness voting paradigm that theoretically enables Tron to wield 3B Steem influence over governance, and this dramatically contributes to Sun's ability to instantly undertake control of the blockchain at his sole option.

Clearly, this is a problem, and like the founder's stake itself, has been a problem with decentralizing governance as long as Steem has existed. This voting mechanism was coded by Stinc, which held the largest stake on the platform, and has refused to abstain from voting through codified mechanisms, although before Tron did so this stake has never before been used to effect governance directly. It is obvious why Stinc did so.

While making the change to 1 Steem = 1 vote may not completely prevent this stake from being capable of arbitrary centralization of blockchain governance, the principles of decentralization, and of proportionality of influence of stake critical to DPoS, strongly support doing so. All that is required to make the change is to deplete VP for witness votes 100% without recharge (until votes are withdrawn, whereupon VP recharges 100% instantly), and merely adding VP code already deployed and well proven for ordinary voting with appropriate parameters is all that is necessary to do so.

In discussion with a consensus witness since this hostile takeover has been undertaken, I have been struck by their unwillingness to substantively address this disproportionate influence of substantial stakeholders over governance. Frankly, their approach to the matter raised a stench of undue influence that triggered the smell test, and forced failure. TBQH, they sounded exactly like Roy Liu, making statements that meant nothing. I have also discussed this with other community consensus witnesses and former consensus witnesses with less objectionable results, including agreement that this change reduces Steem's vulnerability to Sybil attack, such as it now suffers via the founder's stake deployed by Tron.

In the event we resecure Steem governance from the present attacker, it is of critical importance that we decrease our susceptibility to Sybil attack from this vector, and normalizing the influence of stake on governance so that all Steem holdings equally weigh on witnesses is essential.

This problem has strengthened Tron's hand in it's attack on our blockchain, 30x. It's time to acknowledge the weaknesses of Steem that have allowed this existential threat to manifest, and arrange to resolve them to make the blockchain more secure and more decentralized.

Thanks!

I believe you have gotten this reaction because much of what you suggest actually changes the base design of DPOS. If stake weighed voting is not what you want (and I have my own issues with it at times), then dpos perhaps is not for you. And I don’t mean that negatively.. it’s just some of these things are basis of the whole design itself.

As far as witness vote expiration, how to avoid issues with exchanges voting in the future etc.. I feel all these things have been openly debated and may be experimented with in the future.

This situation isn’t just about a large stake holder though, as you imply.. it’s about a fund that was established in ways that gave them an advantage and all of this was “accepted” based on the idea that it was done in place of an ico as a way to find development for the Steem blockchain. Therefore it’s very different imo

You can have stake weighted voting of witnesses that use mana, just like votes on content do. Things just like that (and others) have been mentioned on here for a couple years now but none of the top witnesses thought it necessary to do anything about it, mostly because they were all being kept in power by a handful of accounts. Changing that would have affected their paycheck.

Mana has to do with regeneration of vote amount.. RCs etc.. how does that have anything to do with witness voting or how would that even be beneficial? Or are you saying you don’t feel there should be 30 equal weight witness votes?

Yes, I am saying that every vote for a witness you cast it uses your witness voting power. How many votes you wanna cast depends on how much weight you want to give to each vote. 1 full power vote or any number of smaller votes. It's essentially one vote per stake, but the weighting of that vote can vary.

Please reread my exegesis of how witness voting currently works, and what I propose is necessary. In no way do I suggest anything other then DPoS. What I note happens now is that larger stake's influence is multiplied 30x.

That's not DPoS at all, but stealth oligarchy. Stake should be proportionately represented in influence on governance in order to effect DPoS, and that is what I propose.

The abstention of exchanges and the founder's stake from voting is a separate issue, and I also recommend both of those parties execute code already available to restrict their accounts from voting.

I do specifically address the founder's stake advantage, and agree with your characterization of it's threat to decentralization as remaining unaddressed.

Perhaps you're tired, and did not understand the comment. Regardless of why you didn't understand the comment, your reply indicates you did not understand it.

tl;dr

  1. I do only discuss DPoS, and not some other mechanism.
  2. the problem I discuss is disproportionate representation of stake in the present witness voting mechanism, not DPoS at all.

" The difference between their hodlings is 999,900 Steem. The difference in the weight of their influence on governance however is 29,997,000 Steem."

How is that DPoS?

  1. I do specifically address the founder's stake and agree with you that it has been a threat as long as Steem has existed, that the witnesses have not resolved.
  2. I did not address the founder's stake or exchanges abstaining from voting in this comment, but agree they must abstain, and have said so elsewhere.

I don’t agree that casting equal votes somehow makes the playing field unfair.. and this all is completely irrelevant from my post tbh. So in my current very busy schedule, I will not be taking the time to debate something that I feel is completely irrelevant. Whether stake should be able to cast 30 votes, and therefore “control consensus” is a fair question, but considering any changes to decrease this could be simply countered by making multiple accounts sort of defeats the purpose. Imo.

I appreciate your opinions and will look back on the decisions of this that have been brought up, but I think the idea behind it is quite flawed imo.

Whether stake should be able to cast 30 votes, and therefore “control consensus” is a fair question, but considering any changes to decrease this could be simply countered by making multiple accounts sort of defeats the purpose. Imo.

No. Creating multiple accounts would not allow you to circumvent anything, since those accounts would now have less voting power. So if we reduced the max vote to let's say 5. And you still want to control all 20 witness positions, you would need 4 times more STEEM than before. Because in order to get in 20 witnesses you would need 4 different accounts each voting 5 different witnesses.

I’m for decreasing witness votes, but stated I have no interest in debating mana voting.. which apparently has pissed off some people. I don’t really care anymore 🤷‍♀️

"...casting equal votes somehow makes the playing field unfair..."

Sad you seem to misunderstand very simple math.

Try to get some rest. I know you've been busy.

No, I don’t misunderstand simple math.. I just have this horrible fault of actually understanding how the blockchain works. And for the record never attacked you here, just said I didn’t agree with the base thing you were saying needed to be fixed and therefore didn’t see the need in debating it. If you want to, go make a post about it...

Thanks, have a great week.

So, how do tokens with greater influence on governance, 30x times more influence, become equal votes? I do not understand your understanding.

Do please explain this to me, since you know how the blockchain works and understand the math. Because tokens with 30x the weight of other tokens do not seem to be equal to me.

@valued-customer you are not wrong, I'll use a solution (of sorts) to illustrate the larger problem.

Lets say we restrict any top 20 witness so it gets maxed out at 10-25% of total stake votes, and the more votes a witness has from the same account, the faster the steempower vote decays, or some counter intuitive algorithm that encourages periodic review of votes and diminishes the repeat big votes. eg. 1 SP that is a new vote has 100x more powerful (capped at 10 - 25% of stake) than 1 million SP that has voted the same account 90% of the time last 1-2 years.

Unfortunately dpos is still an oligarchy in some sorts even with 1 SP= 1Vote (vs 1 SP = 30xVote), hard to change unless stake holders becomes radical long term altruistic thinkers (aka not humans yielding power) .... E.g try telling OPEC (shieks) and Russia (putin) to start mass investing 90% of their resources into clean tech and deleverage from oil pollution for it's people's and planets sake...... it's just too much inertia (greed) to overturned.

best to hf Steem (if it's to survive) reboot a new block chain into some sort of Egalitarian-Weighted-DPOS blockchain, how that would work would probably need some gifted architectural foresight.

Such a EW-DPOS would surely encourage new ideas to be implemented quicker and equally let bad ideas die off faster, this would naturally speed up the blockchain ability to evolve faster.

or go leave some ideas with @theoretical so when he create a new social media crypto it deals with DPOS damaging weaknesses revealed by Steem's experimentation.

https://steemit.com/blockchaindev/@theoretical/c3cjk-hello-world

You made a very nice video, but DPoS is hardly perfect. Its an experiment and valued-customer is simply suggesting tweaks, not the complete removal.

Frankly, I believe we should change the stake weight to a stake amount * stake duration system. Its still a DPoS (or Techno-republic as I think of it), you still have witnesses and the general idea, but it guarantees the most loyal to the blockchain have the most influence.

It would also protect against opportunistic whales performing a hostile take over. Your stake may be nothing like Justin's, but in this system you can win by being more devoted long-term. If you and others decided it would be worth it to you to stake for a much longer duration than Justin would be comfortable with, it could be easier for you to maintain the status quo.

Justin showed us that the current system is more of "Proof of Bought Tokens" than proof of stake. If influence was based on both amount of tokens staked as well as length of the stake, then you can say its a true skin-in-the-game system.

I agree it’s very flawed, even said so in the video.. in fact dpos is so flawed I’m not sure it can achieve what we have attempted for it to do, add in an inflation pool that encourages individuals to devalue the ecosystem for a quick buck and we have the shit show we have today.

I’m aware the gentleman wants to tweak it, and I fully encourage that and have seen many talks about it. What I said, originally, is I felt like much of his ideas actually questioned the base layer of the chain. Now reading his over 20 comments on my post.. I see he simply wants to reduce the number of witness votes an account can cast, which I agree with to a point. From the first comment, that wasn’t clear.. and having seen his interactions previously.. didn’t feel like debating the base layer of the chain today. So I believe I simply agreed to disagree.. which he then needed to insult me, and spam many of my comments with nonsense.. and now has taken over my post of how apparently I’m working with the evil stakeholders or some shit .. so quite frankly.. 🤷‍♀️ I don’t have much more to say.

Fair enough, if you are being harrassed no need to respond to him. I have not been following all the comments, just that one from him was quite lengthy and caught my eye.

"I see he simply wants to reduce the number of witness votes an account can cast..."

No. I reckon you should be able to vote 1, or 500 witnesses, but your votes are based on VP, just as ordinary voting, and for witness votes that VP depletes 100%, and doesn't recharge.

This means that each Steem you vote with can only vote once. Not 30x. This means that if you have 1M Steem and Bob has 100 Steem, the difference between your stakes is 999,900 and the difference between your influence on governance is 999,900.

Each stakeholder then wields as much influence on governance as they have stake. That's what I propose, and that's what I think most people think stake weighting works like now, but does not.

That's a very interesting idea. I had only thought of simply using our current VP mechanism to deplete witness votes 100%, and not recharge them until and unless they were withdrawn, and then to recharge them 100%, which makes the code easy and pretested (for four years now), but adding a powered up time variable does have merit, if adding to coding and testing complexity.

Thanks!

I have realized how deceptively you manipulate people. I note that @ngc has long done exactly this through the @berniesanders account. I also note how the consensus has been controlled via this 30x magnification of a few massive stakes.

I also have observed the Hegelian Dialectic in operation before, the creation of a left-right divide that prevents any rapprochement between the subjects of such leadership, and see that same policy could be ongoing on Steem, through the posturing of Ned/Sun on one hand and the consensus witnesses on the other.

Working together you, Ned, and the witnesses have engineered this crisis to manipulate stakeholders into passionately supporting the oligarchical governance of Steem that has been long delivering over 90% of rewards to whales - like you.

I hadda sober up before I saw it, but I did, and now I see it. You have served (not this account, but this user, who controls the @ngc family of accounts) as a mastermind manipulating the society with your ability to adopt personae, and also to coordinate support for consensus that constitutes a cabal of profiteers from the outset of witnessing. You have long worked with @ned to do this, and may be coordinating with Tron to do so now.

"User A has 1m Steem, casts 30 votes for witness, and wields 30M Steem influence over governance. User B has 100 Steem, casts 30 votes for witness, and wields 3000 Steem influence over governance. The difference between their hodlings is 999,900 Steem. The difference in the weight of their influence on governance however is 29,997,000 Steem."

This 30x multiplication of the influence of the largest stakes on governance has enabled your cabal to maintain an iron grip on the consensus, and now has enabled Tron to utterly centralize governance using Stinc's stake with @ned's help.

Depleting witness vote VP 100% without recharge completely defeats this scheme, and that is why members of the cabal have so long pretended to fail to understand the problem and the solution, retreating to puerile misunderstanding and a posture of incompetence as is so often seen IRL politics.

DPoS is broken, and 30x magnification of the largest stake is one of the breaks that has allowed Steem to be threatened with complete centralization. These breaks have made the consensus cabal a lot of money, and pretending to be retarded has prevented rational discussion. When that failed, Bernie's bots could drive people off the platform, as has been successfully done repeatedly.

I almost sympathize with proxy.token voters at this point, except I see that their tactic is the opposite of what will decentralize governance of Steem. Supporting either side in this contest supports oligarchical dominance via magnification of stake weight on governance. Both the consensus cabal and Tron profit from the mechanism.

Supporting 1 Steem = 1 vote for witness is necessarily opposition to both overlords, not splitting support between them. I will be considering how best to proceed given this new grasp of the machiavellian political machinations you've long undertaken, and what that means in relation to establishing an actually decentralized consensus.

Thank you very much for enabling me to grasp how prone to manipulation I have been. I mean that sincerely, as few things could make me more vulnerable to overlords.

Many solutions (better than what we currently have) were mentioned by several users on here for years now, yet none of it was taken seriously. As you mentioned mostly because it would have impacted those in power. Now that they (some) are out of power, you can bet they will do everything they can to get it changed.

Some witnesses, at least one, that remain in consensus now, continue to avoid making this change, as I cited in the comment.

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In discussion with a consensus witness since this hostile takeover has been undertaken, I have been struck by their unwillingness to substantively address this disproportionate influence of substantial stakeholders over governance. Frankly, their approach to the matter raised a stench of undue influence that triggered the smell test, and forced failure. TBQH, they sounded exactly like Roy Liu, making statements that meant nothing. I have also discussed this with other community consensus witnesses and former consensus witnesses with less objectionable results, including agreement that this change reduces Steem's vulnerability to Sybil attack, such as it now suffers via the founder's stake deployed by Tron.

I have always considered discussion as something very important to reach the truth or to evolve ideas, conceptions, and concepts to something better and more effective, to advance and reach new frontiers.

What I have learned in recent weeks is that "critical thinking" is something rare, really rare. and as with mainstream media, populism and the FUD were widely used to advance agendas and gain more power and support. The people who are currently in power (Sun / Witnesses) here are demagogues and will do everything to keep their power intact, the population is easily controlled by playing on their emotions, their fear, their culture, their ethnicity and, more importantly, their "greed", and I think this will continue as is as long as the flux of money one the chain is mostly controlled by a few people (projects).

“Who controls the food supply controls the people; who controls the energy can control whole continents; who controls money can control the world.” ~ Henry Kissinger

The op is getting over 203$ for stating a list of known things and is more inclined toward one side (I am neutral but fuck you). I couldn’t care less about how much the post gets to be honest (we are habituated to this), but it seems that the opinions of some people matter more than the opinions of some other people (no matter how much the idea is well contracted), same as with mainstream media who control what the population know and see even though everyone has the freedom of speech or the illusion of it. I don’t know what’s worse, leaving under an ideocracy where you always loose, or a dictatorship where you have a 50/50 chance that the guy is good.

To end with, I am convinced that almost everyone knows the truth (regarding the current situation), everyone knows the solution, and everyone knows what should be done to make things better and right. But no everyone is willing to do the right thing regardless of knowing the whole picture. This is primitive and chokingly savage, people are fighting each other like a bunch of primates without any rules or native wit, because involving reason and logic will make them lose something, losing something so the ecosystem as a whole can thrive. But hey! who cares if your strategy is not ethical, the end justifies the means.

I decided that from this point on, I would not participate in any discussion that concerns the "Sun / Witnesses" situation. Not because I don't care about the chain, but rather because I believe my time would be better spent on something or a place that values my time and opinion. The solutions are just there waiting to be implemented, what’s lacking is the will to implement them, and since we are on a chain were the majority of people have unspoken contracts with each other (circle-jerking/curation projects), things will not move until people start to understand what accountability is. In politics, people say that the government is just a reflection of its population. If we keep electing people just because there is a “money” factor in the equation than the chain is doomed.

PS: I see that po also downvoted you ... maybe next time, you should try something like:

Trigger warnings: logical things involved, possible brain activity and information stimulus.

The post is getting $200 because I’ve been working for over a week behind the scenes to ensure Steem is in every news organization I can get to pick up the phone, and the people Voting it know that... but sure, bitch about rewards... this place is truly amazing...

Behind the scenes ... giving heads I guess.

and the people Voting it know that

You are pathetic and dumb as fuck, and you will always do as told. You can't even do simple math FFS, probably why they chose someone like you. An obedient secretary, zero critical thinking, zero logic, acting like a retarded parrot with a severe case of cognitive dissonance. A disgrace to the women on this chain, a puppet, a person with no honor or integrity.

There are other people more deserving than you, people who can do math, but no one gives a shit about them, probably because they don't have a pass to enter the lollipop club. Next time you want to play the PHILANTHROPIC card, at least decline the payout.

Get lost viper, we have enough grannies seeking attention here.

Keep this in mind, your lust for power and attention will cause your doom.

The clock is ticking, can you hear it? Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock, Tick, Tock ...

Now go to your Gods and ask them to downvote this comment.

I like being flagged. It means I am hitting them where it hurts.

I note that OP is effectively defending her magnification of influence her larger stake avails her. While I have resisted mentioning it, that would explain her nonsenical claim of 'equal' votes that are 30x more influential on governance.

Just base avarice and lust for power.

Sad.

I actually explained to you why I downvoted you, and you continue to bash me in comments with the most absurd accusations. I stated repeatedly these are my opinions .. and I’m not defending shit. If you want to just throw absolute bullshit out to just be heard and noticed, feel free dude.. but you’re the one who wanted to start insulting me as I said I had no interest in debating the topic you brought up at this time.. I didn’t do shit to you, and still here you are acting like a victim. Grow the fuck up.

I don't care that you flagged me or you make pretense to not have been extremely offensive. You presume to tell me how to speak, and where, and take umbrage that I don't obey.

The fact is you're misrepresenting how witness voting is influenced by 30 full weight votes, and you're defending the mechanism Sun used to take over the damn blockchain, and that is what I seek to stop.

You're changing the subject and making this about persons, and that's disingenuous, and a harm to the folks that may not understand how Sun's ~100M Steem can weigh on governance 3B Steem.

Don't claim this has nothing to do with the hostile takeover. Or that I somehow attacked you, when I addressed the matter. If your identity is so wrapped in defending the mechanism that enabled Sun to attack Steem that criticizing that hostile takeover method is an insult to you personally, then you are far less capable of rational discussion than I expect.

Cut the bullshit, and address the issue or face the consequences of your personal attacks and obscuring the attack vector we need to secure.

"User A has 1m Steem, casts 30 votes for witness, and wields 30M Steem influence over governance. User B has 100 Steem, casts 30 votes for witness, and wields 3000 Steem influence over governance. The difference between their hodlings is 999,900 Steem. The difference in the weight of their influence on governance however is 29,997,000 Steem."

This made Sun's attack more powerful, and centralizes governance on Steem. It's easy to fix, and that's why I mentioned it. All that has to be done is to use the same VP mechanism we use on all rewards voting to deplete witness votes 100%, so each Steem can only vote once on governance.

Then User A's 999,900 Steem advantage over User B gives User A 999,900 more influence on governance than User B, just as their stake allows.

Why are you trying to divert attention from it?

I’m telling you that these changes will take further discussion and most importantly - a hardfork. Which requires plenty of notice to exchanges to let them plan to update as well.

So as I’ve said repeatedly- I agree that the system needs work but it doesn’t fix the problem right now and I didn’t see the point of spending hours debating something right now that doesn’t actually fix the current issue.

I apologize that I misunderstood your first comment, there was a lot going on in it and it took reading all your other comments to even understand what problem you were attempting to address. But, as I had tried to point out with my reply - that’s not something I see value in debating at this time as its irrelevant to the current situation, as it’s not a viable solution currently.

So you can pretend this is some sort of conspiracy that I am “diverting” from or covering up for those “evil stakeholders”, or perhaps you could listen to what I’m actually saying and stop being such a dick. I don’t really care either way tbh.

I don't care either. Nothing except the capitulation of Tron will resolve the present threat to Steem, and that's the fact.

I am glad you may better understand the problem that contributed to Sun's seizure of governance of Steem, but it's basically irrelevant now, and the comunity is left between a rock and a hard place: the new overlord Justin Sun, or the legacy oligarchy that has continuously controlled governance for the benefit of a few massive stakeholders that have thereby gained the vast majority of Steem produced via inflation.

Continuing to posit that the mechanism proposed to eliminate the 30x weighting of large stakes, which is the same VP that has been tested for four years via ordinary voting, is somehow unpredictable and dangerous continues the long obfuscation and dismissal of danger of this centralization of Steem governance, and the ease of equalizing every Steem used to vote for governance, and decentralizing DPoS rationally.

Do have a nice day.

The post is getting $200 because I’ve been working for over a week behind the scenes to ensure Steem is in every news organization I can get to pick up the phone, and the people Voting it know that... but sure, bitch about rewards... this place is truly amazing...

Seriously, and then she has the nerve to get all passive-aggressive bitchy with you in the replies. What a joke.

Was this before or after he insulted me for stating I didn’t want to debate an off topic at this very moment?

True words!
I decided to stop talking about the Tron Steem saga since yesterday. Never felt freer.
Common sense, as they say, is not common at all.

I wonder if we should adopt the electoral college, that is the U.S. voting system for electing presidents. Justin Sun might be equivalent to the popular vote but with money instead of votes.

I note that the electoral college has not enabled Constitutional governance to continue unabated in the USA. Steem is broken. I see no point in replacing that with something that is as broken as American electoral politics.

America is the best. So, you hate the United States. It is the best system ever. Period. That is why people try to come here. That is why the world watches what we do.

"So, you hate the United States."

WTF?

You have no idea what I hate or love. Just because something is flawed doesn't make it hateful. Keep your judgment of my personal and uncommunicated internal views where they belong: no where.

Maybe the world watches what we do because we bomb the shit out of people around the world. Maybe not. But your knowledge of me ends where my words quit delivering it. Don't make shit up.

That means you do hate it. That confirms it. America is not bombing the world. That is whatever infiltrated America and uses America to do terrible things. But what America became is not 1776 but more 1984. America was Anakin Skywalker but the United States was seduced by the Emperor and turned into Darth Vader. But then Luke Sky Walk Trump came to try save Vader and redeem it and we are still in the middle of trying to save the USA and I believe in trying.

"...what America became is not 1776 but more 1984."

Why do you hate America? If you don't love your overlords, you can just move to China.

It's provably false to state I hate freedom, and you make that implication with your claim I hate America. It's just as applicable to you. It's a deplorable tactic to make false claims about anyone that disagrees with you. We haven't descended to it before, and I again recommend you not do it now.

People make false statements about things all the time. Stefan Molyneux wrote a book about it called The Art of the Argument. That is why I love America so much, for the foundation it stands on.

This + we have to remove proxy voting. We have many dead voters here. Users are selling their votes for a few upvotes or some other bribe and than leaves. Resetting proxy votes before important decision will be a good start.

Democracy vs Republic:

I wonder if people want Steem to be decentralized through a voting system that may resemble a democracy or even better a republic and that is a contrast from being governed through centralization. But at the same time, I wonder if a certain flavor of decentralization would then mean anarchy as in a void of power as seen with what might be a flaw in the design as seen in the fact that Tron Overlord Justin Sun was able to sneak in via buying Steemit Inc and via colluding with exchanges to take over and govern a Steem blockchain, a blockchain that should be decentralized according to many people and yet was flawed in the design by the fact that it was manipulated as seen in what Justin did.

Constitution Blockchain Code

Perhaps, we want a certain type of decentralization that is governed by the blockchain code which could be compared to like a national constitution. So, of course, Steem has blockchain code and yet it is said by many that there is a flaw in the mechanism of democracy as that can result in mob-rule as seen in how Tron was able to take over via cartels (exchanges). That's why I prefer republics over democracies.

Four Branches of Steem

I would be in favor of three or four branches of Steem to resemble that of the United States government in order to keep things balanced and perhaps we need three or four sets of witnesses, meaning a group of witnesses for each branch of the Steem blockchain or architecture.

Limited Anarchy

I prefer anarchy as a counter to authoritarianism but only to an extent. The world does not have absolute anarchy and never will. Governments generally grow excessively too often. That means people should always fight to make governments shrink.

In conclusion, Steem is still my favorite blockchain social network and I do wish it the best.

We should try to find ways to keep the voting system balanced somehow.

"The world does not have absolute anarchy and never will."

On the contrary, in fact you and everyone on Earth has complete autonomy, despite that force might be threatened or applied, and this is in fact actual anarchy. Nothing but your perceptions refutes this actual situation.

The fact is that every person on Earth is the Autarch of their sovereign life, and nothing has any potential to change that, ever.

That comes down to your definition of anarchy. There are several different definitions to anarchy and I'm not sure which one you are using. What you were saying may be as vague as a certain type of communism. But regardless of what you are saying, you know that empires rises and falls. That means no anarchy in the sense that rulers come in to rule over people. When there are no rulers in the mist of anarchy, then rulers come in and fill in that vacuum, that void, that donut hole, that absence of power, and they take advantage of it in the same way Tron Overlord Justin Sun did.

What I mean is that no matter what someone tells you, you decide what to do. If they say they're the emperor, God, the President, your mom, it doesn't matter.

They're not the boss of you.

You are. You always have been and you always will be. No one rules you.

You are without rulers over you - unless you let yourself be ruled.

Yeah, I believe in freewill.

Thanks for the history lesson, I think its important for all of us to know as much as possible before we make our decisions. I honestly think even if this results in a fork its still a pretty amazing case study of how decentralisation and old style of corporate governance does not mix and you'll need to find a new mix to work together.

Lol if anything this is a very expensive lesson for everyone, but we won't be alone there will be plenty of blockchains that go through shit and some will just die from it. A lot of the capital in the space is just speculation and eventually, it will be squeezed out of the chancers as some start to develop and pull away from the pack.

I think a lot has happened here worth saving and if so, more power to the people I say

Yes I think the backstory and the things that led up to the decision of the softfork are important to know and I hadn’t seen it covered yet (I may have missed it).. as sometimes narratives get twisted and it’s hard to know the truth.

I do agree that no matter what happens, this most definitely is a story for the history books.

heard you were spreading drama with your usual flavor of love...just drop by to get my fill :P

Nah, I was just trying to take the time to share my experiences and to give information for anyone who wanted it... as I didn’t make a post everyday to tell about the amount of hours I spent working on PR to ensure Steem was in the news.. you know.. the usual thing to do around here, tell everyone how amazing you are in a shit post everyday. Then was then met with trolling from accounts who hold no stake, yell really loudly and insult people and then bitch about being treated badly. I’m trying to remember why exactly I was trying to help save this place tbh 😃

But good to see you DJ, I missed you ❤️

Muuaaahh, miss u 2 ❤️ ..... also u look great on ytube, keep the tussled hair look, suits u.

p.s. you're too good for all them sensitive and salty steemians :P

Random comment about STEEM related things just so I could feel like I fit in.

Random reply not about Steem as I think you are lovely and here is a cookie 🍪 🤗

Technical response to this. Roughly seven paragraphs and a few images to help prove my point. Some math. A Ned meme. No profanity which is unlike me but I wanted to be taken seriously for a change and sometimes you gotta make sacrifices. All that just to say I agree, feel humbled, and would like to say thanks. Then I later added 'you ain't so bad yourself' with a quick edit.

Rip TL;DR

I did watch some and try to read some of the comments and I'm sure you opinion is great and I'm not the most concise person either and this sentence is getting kinda long and why am I even writing this.

TY for your efforts nonetheless.

Hahah, I’m so sorry.. it’s sooo long. It’s truly just me walking through the experience and probably not beneficial in the slightest. But for some random points that maybe people didn’t know leading up to the SF -

TDLR

  • witness chat was not closed door, had open invite up until last week. So not this “secret club” being made out to be. More people probably could have been there, some maybe were over looked in the chaos, but it wasn’t a closed club.

  • I feel the witnesses acted the best on the information they had and the hostile marketing Coming out of Tron. Much of which has been described as a “misunderstanding”.. but witnesses were given information that the sale actually was contingent on things like the token swap, so it wasn’t just miscommunication.

  • Communication was attempted by the witnesses to Tron multiple times for nearly a week; it was repeatedly denied by Eli from Steemit inc and Tron.

  • then I just explained the ninja mine a bit for those that weren’t aware of how it came to be.

The rest was just me rambling through a time line.

Thanks for your comment 🙏

Its a very good summary. Thank you ","

I picked up most of that from skipping around.

I have essentially tmsame reason.

I think too many people were sympathetic because they thought Tron people wsre ignorant of Steem and dPOS and Ned took advantage.

I don't believe this is the case, they hired people, they didn't care, the managed to wreck 22.2 very quickly. I don't think this is the action of someone who doesn't have a plan or know what they are doing.

Tron was being shady and quiet. 22.2 got em talking for better (or worse).

Thanks for your clear minded informations...

Here is an audio version of the video from @justineh's parent post.

grnsmspkgood.png

The origianl article featuring the video: https://steempeak.com/@justineh/my-personal-thoughts-steem-tron-saga

The original video on Youtube here:

Or here:

This is the direct link for the audio: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1f-bw4i82MFyjyCTPtcPoLHFNcZi1O5fL

If someone could upload this audo file to IPFS that would be awesome.

Enjoy!

When i read about the pop network, that got "robbed" by Tron Boy, i saw even more Red Flags...

How that was handled was very hard to watch, and due to the ability to control the narrative .. it’s something that went almost completely unnoticed unfortunately

control the narrative.? You and the witnesses have done a great job!
Hostile take over?
Freezing a large investors legal property is Hostile. If illegal then a Hack!
When will you and the witnesses come forward with a legal opinion on the freezing of legal property. The community has a right to know if Justin Suns account being frozen was legal. If legal then its not a hack and the witnesses are not hackers. Then we can move on to the actions of the exchanges. That is step one.

Then go hire an attorney... and perhaps look at facts when you throw out ridiculous statements on behalf of Tron.

So your saying the witnesses , froze 12 million of Justins legal property without any legal advice?
The community needs to know if the witnesses acted legally.
IF you dont know just say you dont know.
I dont act on behalf of tron , i act as a steemian trying to get down to the truth. THe witnesses , voting bots, and whales are controlling the trending page. THe CNN of steemit.

Dude.. take your meds and stop spamming me.

lol. Just red wine. ( organic)
Was just trying to figure you and the witnesses out. Your support team etc.
Trolling yes, spamming no.
Honestly im done, got the answer i wanted , understand i targeted you because your part of the witness group and i wanted to figure out the logic behind the decision to freeze the account. The lack of answer says everything. Always, acting in the best interest of the chain. I believe steem has the best utility on the planet. THe inflation distribution is it only downfall. Plus what just occurred.
Best, Test45

They cannot answer this because they acted illegally. There's never been any legal thingy with them from the onset. They keep rambling about how Tron took over the chain yet they ignore the genesis of the 'takeover'; Freezing Sun's legally acquired stake before even having a conversation.

Assholes!!

They also just censored my comments with downvote bots . They took my reputation down to negative. Just for asking those questions. They need to go.
Im 100% behide SUn now. They are censoring anyone who even thinks of supporting Sun or question the witnesses actions.

@justineh I am currently working on an audio version of the video featured in this post. I want to know if you approve me posting it in the comments here once I have it remastered and is uploaded.

This is a good summation of things and think that it should be spread and especially so to places where such video sites are censored.

Cheers!

Yes that’s absolutely fine, thanks for doing it.

sun 3.png

Lol at "stealers". Justin a football fan?

We calling thieves "stealers" now?

I can see him say it.

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