Progress being made

in #steem4 years ago

Hello everyone, we know we got off on the wrong foot, and have spoken with many Steemians over the last few days, we have learned a lot about the community, and whilst still having a lot to learn, we now understand Steem a lot better than we did when we first started here.

Because of the miscommunicated and misinterpreted intention, we are where we are today, but the only way to move forward is through conversations. We’ve been making open conversations with many community leaders non-stop throughout the week to find a common ground so that we can reach consensus to a healthy Steem ecosystem together.

We're nervous that after such a difficult start to this experience that Steem users will freeze our funds again the second we're no longer occupying witness positions. We're requesting that Steem power holders tell us "We won't support witnesses that freeze funds now that more understanding has been reached." We’d like to focus on de-escalating the current situation, respect each other's needs, and reach an actionable plan. I’m happy to say we had some very productive meetings and think we will come to a solution very soon.

Meanwhile we would like to reassure you that we intend to commit to Steem for the long-term and we plan to bring a lot more value to Steem than even the value of our holding. We see the potential for growth here for both of our chains is tremendous and sincerely look forward to working with you on an ongoing basis.

TRON has been dedicated to bringing blockchain to the mass market, we’ve been building our ecosys through the years and we can’t wait to open that up to the Steem community as well:

Marketing & Distribution:

As of today TRON can reach over 600 million daily active users through our ecosys partners like BitTorrent, Opera. And we are one of the only 3 chains that have been embedded within all new Samsung phones by default. Meanwhile we welcome all Steem

Continued Development:

We are committed to the continued development as stated in the Open Letter:

Build a strong developers team
Maintain Steem blockchain running in parallel with TRON
Launch Smart Media Tokens
Launch Cross Chain Atomic Swaps
Improve Overall Steemit.com User Experience And Onboard More Users

More Liquidity

We will come up with a plan for more listings.

I am always happy to hear from the community about their ideas. Let’s talk about the future of the ecosystem and create a plan over the long term so that more people may enjoy using our world-changing blockchain platforms.

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Given your erratic behavior on Twitter following every town hall with witnesses or the community and all of the various statements you’ve made completely trashing the actual community’s elected witnesses, I just don’t find your words to be... credible.

One day you claim that you just want your money and want to leave. The next day you claim you want to stick around and build the community and pump money into development and marketing.

What should we believe? Are you the Justin that tricks exchanges into centralizing the platform by powering up their custodial funds? Or are you the Justin that wants to get STEEM listed on all major exchanges to help the community?

Are you the Justin that wants to de-escalate, get along with everyone, and have a good relationship with the community? Or are you the Justin that writes profanity-laden vote bribery posts and calls elected community witnesses “malicious hackers?”

Are you the Justin that likes the Steem blockchain and ecosystem? Or are you the Justin that just wants to f$!@ Steem?

I don’t know which Justin this is. I don’t know if I can believe or trust this Justin. I don’t know if I’m going to wake up tomorrow and see the Steem blockchain taken over by your 20 sock puppet witnesses again with the help of colluding exchanges.

Your credibility is shot. It’s going to take a lot more than a blog post to change that. If you want to take the first step...

Unapprove your witness accounts, take them offline, and allow our community witnesses to do what they were elected to do.

If you’re not willing to do that, then your words are meaningless and we have no reason to believe that this Justin Sun cares about Steem and its community.

Good answer and I agree with you. I would just add that our side should also show some more respect and pick some suitable people for negotiations.

His behavior has done absolutely nothing to command respect, which must always be earned. If he were to start now, it would still be long path to earning any but perhaps it could be done.

You need some time off, the show your rage, hunt him down part is behind us. More and more people will disconnect with it.

I've been taking most of the last week off. I come by occasionally to see how this shitshow is going, and I see it is not going very well.

Until his sock puppets witnesses are taken offline, @dev365 stops voting and our community witnesses can do what we elected them to do there can be no respect.

Respect is earned by action, not bought by words or funds.

As far as I can tell, based on what has been released publicly, those working to deescalate this situation on the STEEM side have been doing a fine job. They have not been disrespectful. A few tense moments, sure, but that's to be expected. This hasn't been easy for anyone and then the exact moment things start to look promising, Justin morphs into Bustin and starts going on a rampage. There's never been a man in history handed more opportunities to redeem himself. After everything that has been said and done, and even though some are quite frustrated, this community is still willing to give him every opportunity to help sort things out.

But you see the disconnect between what he says in witness meetings, blog posts and on twitter?
The 3 have zero overlappings. He constantly disproves his own statements. It's ridiculous and seems unstable. Or he is that smart and does it on purpose to hide his true intentions.

Are you paying attention to both sides? It hasn't been pretty, he doesn't know who is who.

Don't worry. I don't need your help to be able to see things for how they are. I've been watching everything. I see everyone. I doubt I'll ever know everything.

Open you eyes and read, he is still being bullied, when does this stop?

LOL that's absurd. The witnesses are mostly a bunch of low-paid volunteer community members (though a few are successful business people or investors) and Justin is supposedly a billionaire with a vast empire who thought he could make a deal with Ned and then command Steem to his will and all would obey. The witnesses are the courageous ones to try to stand up to this guy and his underhanded scheming.

If there is any bullying going on here, you must have been looking at it through a mirror.

Low-paid is a relative statement, care to back that up with actual USD numbers? The SPS is currently funding over $250,000 USD per year.

SPS pay may be more, for specific non-witnessing tasks, split up between multiple people. Also, almost half of total SPS funding is for @sbdpotato, which is to be given back, so not really "pay".

But that's largely irrelevant anyway as most witnesses aren't receiving anything from SPS.

Top witness at $0.20 STEEM makes about $19000 per year gross (before expenses, taxes, etc.) and backup witneses (including some involved with and contributing their time to this whole 'takeover' issue) make 1/4 of that or less, in some cases much less.

The ones acting petty in comment sections are not the ones sitting through meetings trying to sort these things out.

I hope this man is smart enough to sift through the nonsense. Not all voices here represent all minds. Some of these voices just want to speak for attention. Others want to speak the truth. The majority wants this situation resolved, like now.

There have been plenty of moments of unnecessary bs on both sides and overtures on both sides.

Maybe at some point they will line up at the same time.

I am fine with the current stand off, good for a cool down period.

Too man aggressive people.

I agree. It would be a lie to say only one party made mistakes.

The solution is always easy when you're not the one making the decisions.

Isn't patience fun?

To be fair, I've lost my patience several times.

I also agree about the stand off allowing for a cool down, Justin could remove some of his witnesses to show some action. Only time will tell.

The majority wants this situation resolved, like now.

While I agree with the need to show respect ! We need to collect our shit like grownups and talk and convey an unified message.

Correct. Repeating the same story what's happened is pointless. The whole crypto community knows the facts. We should make a step forward.

Absolutely agreed @oldtimer ...

"I would just add that our side should also show some more respect and pick some suitable people for negotiations."

... as indicated in my own comment. I have "named names" of suitable people, although I am sure there are other "adults in the room" who might also be on the list of suggestions.

The book title "Bonfire of the Vanities" comes to my mind in watching the unfolding drama, although I left it to the young Mr. Sun to classify it in whatever manner he may wish ...

Very well said!

Actions speaks more than words ...

This guy @ats-david seems pretty smart and speaks eloquently. I elect him as our new leader or CEO or something! Hip hop hooray!

I hear that he's good-looking as well.

Very well said. Trust can be a delicate thing, and takes a long time to rebuild. No doubt there has been miscommunication on both sides, but that's no excuse for blatant dishonesty.

Word!
He sounds like a politician... sounfs better than the "f... talk", though :)
I mean it sounds good, if it would be true... :p

Agree wrt the trust issue. Not so much agree wrt the process proposed. In current situation with both sides not having enough witnesses to make chances to the blockchain, its time to come to agreements. Some high(er) SP holders are stating they plan to keep the equilibrium anyway, so listen to these users who - like witnesses - also represent a voice from the community ar large.

IMHO, we shall not lock the funds of Steemit Inc and we need to re-assure Justin/TRON we will not do.

We shall come to some agreement with TRON and Justin that TRON/Justin will invest in building out Steem. In my honest opinion, this doesn't have to be financed directly from the Steemit Inc Steem stake/wallet. The money may come from anywhere; Costs to develop the Steem eco system is mostly in FIAT currency anyway and just having the Steem Wallet of Steemit Inc as the source of income to fund all expenses seems a risk to me; What if Steem value goes down in dollar value as it is been doing the last few years?

Somehow we need to make sure, in writing, in contracts, in mutual agreed lockup funds (this can be in a trust fund for instance) the intentions of TRON and Justin wrt Steem and Steemit.com are verifiable, legal and eventually will be honoured.

We don't need contracts that may or may not be binding in insertrandomcountry
We have our blockchain with its own governance, and we decide together what the law it.

All fine, but will the witnesses also raise money for development of the ecosystem? At some point the Steem stake of Steemit INC is finished, and then? Bringing a chain into a bright future costs a lot of resources, and resources are being paid in the normal fiat world. Enough fiat shall be available to give Steem a future without becoming irrelevant at some point in time. I didn't see ANY proof so far the 'community' can handle the tasks required. We definitely need some form of organisation for that, wether that be one or more groups of people, project teams, or even better, companies, like Steemit Inc is a company. Decentralisation sounds great, but I don't know of any decentralised product that made it to the top without using (more or less) centralised planning and execution.

Whether contracts will be used, or some form of trust fund, or whatever other form to safeguard investments into the development of the Steem eco-system, it all ok for me.

We have the SPS for future funding. And of course there need to be businesses involved in the ecosystem, profitable ones at best ;)

When SPS is the way to go, fine by me.

BUT, we need to start talking with Justin/Roy/TRON to come to solutions which are good for Steem and at the same time good for TRON Foundation (the owners of Steemit Inc). So far, we (our witnesses) didn't really talk, we made demands while we dont have the control over the chain. Some of our spokespeople seem to be ok, but the rest sounds like children in these meetings. Also, am very unhappy with the fact many witnesses dont come forward in the TRON meetings (as well as our Town Halls) to add to the conversation, they keep quite and bitch in the chat channels. Very un-constructive.

I understand that a lot of people want a compromise to be found asap. I respectfully disagree, for my part I'm happy that our representatives don't give in with promises they are not authorized to give.

For me personally, the only way forward is giving control of the chain back and acknowledging that the funds are not his personal property. And a lot of the other big stakeholders see it the same way.

I belong to the group of people who first like to explore if a win/win is possible by means of acting professional, approach TRON with a business mind, stop bitching and hate speak. If we can't come to an agreement, we can always take more drastic steps.

Bit off topic but still: Interestingly, the large stakeholder will only have real value in hand, as long as many small stakeholders are part of the community. For small stakeholders it is much easier to step away from whatever service on the Steem blockchain, and start spending their time somewhere else. Every large stakeholder shall keep that in mind. The community is build by the small stakeholders, while the large stakeholders benefit from what the small stakeholders are building. Surely I paint it all a bit black/white while the world is always grey, but I simply like to point out the other problems we have, and the only way to survive and grow is for all community members to be involved together in one or the other way and everybody is willing to support decisions that is good for all of us and stay away from personal reasons.

This also applies to what deal we shall make with TRON! The small stakeholders opinions shall be taken into account as well, even when they may be different to the views of the large stakeholders.

this doesn't have to be financed directly from the Steemit Inc Steem stake/wallet

Correct, it could come from SPS or some other on-chain governance system.

There is no other practical way for the Steem community to hold someone to their obligations, even if it were someone who, unlike Justin, had any reputation for or track record of honest and reliable dealings.

verifiable, legal and eventually will be honoured.

We have that, using on-chain governance. I would invite Justin to embrace it instead of working to undermine it.

BTW, a blockchain can not sign a contract. There are good reasons why blockchains create their own governance and enforcement mechanisms.

Justin came to us (us meaning the blockchain, not Steemit Inc) uninvited. It is up to him to respect and embrace the values and institutions of the community that he is seeking to join. As long as he refuses to do so and, instead, acts like he bought a blockchain or community (which he can not and did not) and makes demands, while working to undermine those values and institutions through manipulation, cheating, trickery, and deceit, the community will continue to reject him.

Justin came to us (us meaning the blockchain, not Steemit Inc) uninvited. It is up to him to respect and embrace the values and institutions of the community that he is seeking to join. As long as he refuses to do so and instead acts like he bought a blockchain or community (which he can not and did not) and makes demands while working undermine those values and institutions through manipulation, cheating, trickery, and deceit, the community will continue to reject him.

Let the above statement etch itself into every fiber of your being!

Agree that the chain itself shall be decentralised as much as possible. I also understand all laws if the blockchain is to be implemented at the blockchain, as much as possible. However, outside the blockchain world, instruments exist that can be looked at as well to safeguard future investments into the blockchain itself. I'm simply stating that we shall have a very open mind and work to a mutual acceptable solution, even if this means to use instruments outside the blockchain. Keep in mind: the 'community' trusted Steemit Inc with their stake, without any enforcement in the chain itself. I would never have done that; But the 'community' did... Note the way I write community. Imho the top 20 witnesses are not speaking on behalf of the community at large. The system we have is skewed to a few high value SP holders. Somehow we need to tackle that problem as well. Although that problem may seem to be not relevant for this post, I personally want to see all the issues we have on our chain to be addressed and resolved in any roadmap plan for the Steem Ecosystem.

Keep in mind: the 'community' trusted Steemit Inc with their stake, without any enforcement in the chain itself

No this is false. There very much was enforcement, although I can understand how it might not be so apparent to newer or smaller stakeholders who were not a part of or well informed about Steem's history.

The stake remained transparent in the steemit account (and associated accounts) for the specific reason that it would then be subject to community oversight. Around a year or two ago when there was some consideration (albeit embryonic) about forking to exert more direct control over that stake due to lack of confidence in Steemit and Ned, Ned starting hiding it. This, in fact, made it more likely for a fork to occur, because failing to fork would eliminate on-chain governance over the ninja-mined stake. For that reason, Ned was convinced to stop hiding it and to leave it in a transparent powered-up stake, and at the same time stakeholders considering a fork backed away since the transparency and oversight could be retained without one. In some cases this was even a specific quid-pro-quo offered by some of the stakeholders and witnesses, though I personally never did such a thing.

In fact there has always been a degree of stakeholder control over that stake, and Justin will have to understand and respect this if he wants to gain support from Steem and its stakeholders.

I would imagine that this history and specific events (some of which documented on the blockchain and elsewhere) regarding the designated purpose, practices, and encumbrances of the ninja-mined stake should have been disclosed to Justin when negotiation for the purchase of Steemit Inc, since it certainly is relevant information about the company he was buying. If it was not that would be an issue for Ned and Justin to work out.

All that being said, I'm not 100% opposed to creating some sort of foundation or trust that could handle custody of the stake and enforce rules over its use, but frankly that seems a lot more complicated and time consuming to me than on-chain governance, to ultimately accomplish much the same thing (the stake used for the development of the ecosystem).

Thanks for the explanation of the Steemit Inc Steem stake and the history; Greatly appreciated. I do wonder if Justin and Roy knows this.

I think it'll be time to start preparing session with TRON, with documents and all.

I do wonder why we don't have a service (eg Website) where we store all this important type of information in a more centralised fashion. That would've helped so much in making things transparent, not only to the Steem community, but also to outsiders, like TRON, exchanges and even investors in Steem and Steem content creators.

I do wonder if Justin and Roy knows this.

I do not know. However, I do have it on good authority they got an enormous discount relative to the value of the stake, not to mention the other company assets.

So either they knew some reasons for that enormous discount (most likely the history and community encumbrances on the stake), or if they thought they were buying simple stake free and clear (again, plus all the other assets), they were getting a deal that was "too good to be true" and still should have been very suspicious IMO.

VERY TRUE. :)

blablabla

Unapprove your witness accounts, take them offline, and allow our community witnesses to do what they were elected to do.

wtf whats your statement about this

We won't support witnesses that freeze funds now that more understanding has been reached.

Everyone can make witnesses and by the way, i prefer to vote for his.
Are you a Witness? What did you and other "community" witnesses do? (except some great guys, most of you do nothing productive).

Your communication is destructive, credibility of steem "community" witnesses is shot.

I agree 100% with what you write. These are exactly the questions the community is asking. I wish for a with each other and a look ahead.
Yours Querdenker

I'm pretty sure at this point that his idea of progress would be having STEEM as a token on Tron blockchain. He still doesn't care about actual rule by the community and having to convince others to support his changes rather than ruling unilaterly. The only way I can see us assuring him of ongoing support is if he puts in writing that he will only migrate STEEM to Tron blockchain if the community votes in the majority for that change. Otherwise, he is right to fear our continuing resistance.

I am the fake Justin and believe me you can trust me more than the real Justin.

It is clear you still don't understand anything at all about Steem, its community or history, and are just trying to sweet talk your way into grabbing the ninja-mine stake and cashing it out.

Maybe you can trick some exchanges into helping you centralize the network and override community governance, but you can't trick us.

If you want to demonstrate some good faith, stop repeating the bullheaded and self-serving claims about "your funds", and recognize and acknowledge the well-documented history and context of the ninja-mined stake as a form of dev fund, which many here sincerely, resolutely, and justifiably see you (with Ned's traitorous assistance, we are well aware) as attempting to steal, leaving in its place no real, credible, and enforceable commitment to Steem and/or its community.

When you are prepared to at least start with that acknowledgement, perhaps there is a way that a path forward can be forged, in which the dev fund is used as intended to develop the ecosystem, and you are simultaneously able to guide your business forward and achieve great success and profits with the enthusiastic support of the incredible Steem community. Though, frankly, given your demonstrated erratic, immature and unprofessional behavior, lack of credibility, despicable underhandedness and personal dishonesty, I still see huge obstacles. Maybe you can start, with a little humility and candor, to rebuild your stature here. Maybe.

Signed,

SP holder who isn't going to promise a damn thing to you and even if you promised me something, I wouldn't believe it.

Nice read, but I can read it replacing Justin with our witnesses and that makes sense too.

That's delusional. If I used the block feature I might consider it. But I probably wouldn't anyway, because you often have some interesting comments to make, just not about this.

I love you too. :)

SP holder who isn't going to promise a damn thing to you and even if you promised me something, I wouldn't believe it.

YUP!

Day and night. On twitter our witnesses are bashed as malicious hackers, on Steem you promise us grand plans if we won't support witnesses that freeze funds.

Some people will call this post progress, but we have had this dance already like 3 times and every time after Sunshine rain of lies and false narrative comes down elsewhere.

You will have a lot of work and mending of trust to do if you wish that this community accepts you.

Removing your sock puppet witnesses would be a start and a public apology for the lies both here on Steem and on twitter.

Hello Justin

I can only represent the ~1m SP worth of stake I hold

I believe you committed to this venture in good faith and saw the potential in our platform. I was one of the few who did not support the initial softfork that froze your account. To the defense of those involved, there were certainly a number of somewhat alarming signs at the time that made them nervous.

If nothing else, this misunderstanding has made me fully appreciate the resources you wield and influence you exert, for example with exchanges, which is surely useful to us. Conversely, I hope you now truly realize the value of the impact an active and passionate community can have, even if we're a smaller crypto project. Imagine the things that can be achieved if we worked together rather than against each other.

This was a shaky start but working with each other has immense potential. I believe your sincerity in wanting to create value for both Steem and Tron, and have no intention of interfering with governance but only resorted to such actions to protect your own stake. I hope other Steem community members can agree with me here.

Either way I have always been against the freezing of funds regardless of your intentions, and hereby attest to the extent my stake allows (~1m), my witness votes will be allocated in a way that provides your funds safe passage out.

As far as I'm concerned, your keys, your funds. I find the effort of trying to seize them under the pretense of a series of vague representations made by Ned or Dan or whatever to be far too weak to consider breaking consensus rules for.

It's pathetic to watch.
I've tried engaging a few people on there.
They keep talking about how he tried to takeover the chain, totally neglecting the basic human instinct to protect one's property, and the basic fact that he only did that after we froze his stake.

We got people screaming like 12 year olds on Twitter. I'd like to imagine if Justin didn't have these powerful friends, he'd have been quite a story:

"The Steem community bullied an investor to give up his stake by freezing them, and then forcing him to negotiate under their own terms"

Sounds like its not a negotiation.
It's blackmail.

Rest assured, I do not support Justin's idea of bringing in the exchanges, but I am smart enough to understand that this is a pure case of causes and effects. We froze his accounts first, he went to the extremes by calling in favours to help him undo it. Why is this hard to understand?

I'd never support freezing a person's stake under false pretenses and then playing the victim afterwards.

Exactly how I've been seeing this whole mess @pangoli.

thank you for voicing it out on behalf of many of us who prefer to remain silent in disbelief of the behaviors and maybe hints of embarrassment too..world made of many kind..

Hear Hear.. Also I dislike the behaviour of quite a few people in our town halls; TRON sessions; Steem posts and comments making demands to Justin while some of our high SP holders are giving their support in a way no side will get the upper hand to our chain. I certainly hope these kind of comments and statements made by Trafalgar will knock some sense into out witnesses for them to start thinking in human and business terms and start a series of talks with all stakeholders to find and eventually agree solutions.

The truth. I hope more people start thinking about solutions rather than proving one party is evil.

So far, the Tron team has been clear about one thing; They don't want the witnesses freezing their stake again, and they're willing to back down from governance if an agreement can be reached. Only a few of our witnesses agree to anything at all.

You nailed it! Exactly what I see happening. A huge problem to come to some agreement. I still hope, but I start doubting more and more.

I personally can't agree with your statement, because all I see Justin wanting to do at the moment is lower the Power Down time to 3 Days, which would break the post rewards system, and removing down-votes, which I know you (and myself) are very fond of. I think down-votes have really cleaned this place up.

Of course, I am just a small fish, but I will not be committing to any witness voting that benefits or doesn't benefit Justin. I will vote for what I feel is right from my gut.

Thanks for sharing your opinion though.
~ @CADawg

I personally also don't support those changes either, especially as a strong proponent of the EIP which I had tried to push for almost 2 years, not constantly of course.

I took him asking for safe passage out to mean under the current rules as the post itself made no mention of changing rules, although they were brought up before.

Notwithstanding, I believe upholding property rights and defending our already besmirched DPOS consensus system is more important than trying to prevent a dysfunctional set of post voting and rewarding rules.

In other words, the reputation that you can freely access and participate with your stake as long as you control the private keys on our chain (which we already compromised with the SF), is worth defending even if I think the threat is malicious, overwhelming and imminent, and I don't in this case.

Fair enough.

With regards to the safe passage for his assets, I have personal concerns. I do believe the stake was bought at a discount (probably because of the connotations), and since he's not buying from exchanges (like the rest of us), I feel StInc should still be held to their obligations, whether through code or contract (although I'm more of a one for code to be fair). If he had have bought it off exchanges and used it to vote, I would have no objection to it whatsoever. I will disregard the exchanges for the moment, because we can guess if 22.2 was never enacted, he wouldn't have needed to do that. Personally, I'd like to see a bit of goodwill from custom_JSun (mind the pun) in the form of actions, because his words don't mean all that much now. I also believe he is trying to sell it as we speak, because Dan has already revealed that he has been approached.

Maybe his stake should be treated as equal, but I still believe it is special. Even if it were put through the exchanges books at a fair price, that would have been fair, but the "deal" comes with the company.

Really, Ned is probably to blame for a lot of this mess. He doesn't want to talk to the community anymore, and when he did, he was definitely talking at us rather than to us.

At this point, I don't know if I just wrote a crappy wall of text, let's find out 😛.

Kind regards,
CA

As to the Inc stake, I agree that obligations are assumed by the company irrespective of a change in board or shareholder composition.

So the issue is whether the stake was bound by promises to be 1. non voting in perpetuity, and 2. to be used for the sole purpose of Steem blockchain development for perpetuity, or until depletion; and if so was it right for witnesses to break ordinary DPOS rules to freeze them.

I have no doubt some general representations were made at least in the early years regarding certain restrictions to the use of that stake. I also have no doubt that some community members may not have built value and/or invested but for those representation. I'd even go so far as to say there was at least some level of deliberate misleading conduct on the part of Ned, of whom I'm not a fan.

However, overall I feel those representations were too vague, inconsistent and dynamic to form a binding agreement over obligations of such magnitude. I also don't believe the reliances made on them were sufficient, and there exists a strong argument that the community members and ex Inc employees acquiesced when Inc's attitude shifted to clearly state they were the sole proprietors of that stake. Either way, this case is far too murky for me to feel comfortable enough to support witnesses undermining DPOS consensus rules and directly intervening to freeze that stake. In crypto, general consensus rules (those that don't require manual intervention) are almost sacrosanct and operations should not be suspended for contentious cases.

Put another way: In terms of property rights, do I feel on the weight of the evidence there is such an overwhelming case for anyone else having a clear and direct superior claim over the actual private key owner of the stake that I'm willing to suspend the operation of ordinary DPOS consensus rules to directly have witnesses freeze/seize those assets without the private key owner's knowledge and/or consent? The answer here for me is a clear no, and my witness votes will reflect that. I'm specifically talking about this particular case, rather than a general rule.

Do I believe there's at least a weak but realistic case? Yes. But not one that's anywhere near worth directly intervening and undermining ordinary DPOS operations. I'm not a 'code is law' maximalist. But In a trustless system, you need to trust the system more. The witnesses flinched way too early on this one.

It may feel satisfying or even cathartic in certain ways and I can understand that sentiment, but this was not the right move and I fear it has done our chain considerable damage in reputation loss.

Your point of view is interesting, and you make some very valid points. Although, I'm still going to stick with my views.

@CADawg Out. 😄✋
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It feels really good that the big stakeholders make such statements. Kinda shows that not everybody follows the big shouters who scream for war and terror. Good to see you pushing your values in this direction. Respect, again.

Agree fully, we shall not lock the funds of Steemit Inc; Although we shall come to some agreement with TRON and Justin that TRON/Justin will invest in building out Steem. In my honest opinion, this doesn't have to be financed directly from the Steemit Inc Steem stake/wallet. The money may come from anywhere; Costs to develop the Steem eco system is mostly in FIAT currency anyway and just having the Steem Wallet of Steemit Inc as the source of income to fund all expenses seems a risk to me; What is Steem values goes down in dollar value as it is been doing the last few years? Somehow we need to make sure, in writing, in contracts, in mutual agreed lockup funds (this can be in a trust fund for instance) the intentions of TRON and Justin wrt Steem and Steemit.com are verifiable, legal and eventually will be honoured.

I'm also for deescalation and I would recommend everyone to show some more respect and behave like adults. If I didn't know it better I would think that a good part of the Twitter community is not older than 12 years old regarding from their posts and behavior. Treating people and creating memes doesn't bring us anywhere.

Exactly... spam this to the chain...

The community has already proven it can mobilize and productively oust any witness it decides is acting against the best interests of STEEM, and the community can do that in a very short period of time. After what we've seen here lately, I don't think anyone of sound mind would support a witness who is willing to freeze funds.

This has been quite the learning experience for a lot of people.

I don't think anyone of sound mind would support a witness who is willing to freeze funds.

I do hope many of the high SP holders have that sound mind; I do fear this may not be the case. Funds shall for sure not be lockedup by others than the owners. When we want to make changes to the chain itself including rights of funds, then this cannot be just a decision of our witnesses, this shall include the entire community. Note that at the moment we have 10 or 11 of our community witnesses in the top 20 that actually supported freezing funds. I also gave my vote to these witnesses, but not for their actions with SF22.2, but solely to make sure TRON is not able to change anything without some none-TRON owned witnesses agree with those changes.

Things will get sorted once we're given the opportunity to sort them out.

I can understand your point, but I am quite sure that this would result in a HF that will make this chain quite a bit worse (e.g., no more downvotes and 3-7 days power down period etc.) I just can't support that. If, on the other hand, we would get assurances that this wouldn't happen, I am open for it

Ofcourse not our witnesses can only run a one push button witness server. They can't and will not run a blockchain... with no devs... no funding... the only thing they are good at, is rage, and hunt a fellow human being into the ground, out of fear, for their position, power and money.

Ah yes, because Justins witnesses are doing much better atm. And we all know he isnt craving money and power.

Seems like we then need a third party here

"I believe you have no intention of interfering with the governance of this blockchain..."

He's interfering NOW you obsequious worm. Go fork yourself. Do it hard.

Happy to see voices of reason and I hope this letter from Justin is opening enough doors to be building towards a better future of steem. All the bantering has to stop and the building has to continue.

If one wants to see how communism fails in practice, they should come to steemit:

  • private property rights, what is that
  • policing around
  • corruption, bid bots
  • creating fear of external/internal enemies

The main reason I quit was that crazy, crazy extremist ideology

How the hell do you get communism out of steemit?

Communityyyyyyy :D

Decentralized.....

But the power will be distributed to Curie, Utopian, steemSTEM to redistribute...

Communism 101

None of those things make it communism you wanker.I mean wtf your basing it on being communism because they like community, and decentralization?

Hell I could just as easily use your logic to show how steem is proof that capitalism and democracy dont work.

After all the lies and misdirection of Tron and SteemIt and with the promise of Swapping the STEEM token for a TRON token, plus changing the Power Down period to 24h... there's no way in hell the majority of the community will be onboard with Justin Sun's plans.

I say we make a Fork already.

Just let Tron and Justin create their TronIt Network, replace STEEM for TRONIT on the Exchanges and we, as STEEM, start a new Chain without that problematic Ninja Stake that equals to more Steem Power than all of us combined.

The truth.

Awesome answer to all of us.

Everyone thought about their big investments. No one thought of content creators.
Behind the machines are human beings. Behind the money there are human beings.
Behind Steem/Steemit are human beings.
How long will this tirade continue?
Decentralization is good and healthy for everyone, so I think that agreements must be reached.

Agree, exactly.

AROUND THE WORLD COMMUNITY is willing to hire you as a moderator. I would like to contact you with AROUND THE WORLD COMMUNITY. Looking forward to your feedback. Thanks

(TLDR at the bottom)

I have no idea if any of this is genuine or if you really even care what we have to say on this matter, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and give you some honest feedback on this situation and where we go from here.

Anything you ask for or want to see happen at the moment feels like you are doing so from a place of holding our chain hostage. Anything the witnesses or community ask for likely feels like we're trying to hold your funds hostage. We need to find a way to prevent this from being a zero-sum game.

Let's say we give you the benefit of the doubt, we accept that you were misled on this investment and we can all accept and understand that you reacted defensively to protect what in your mind is "your stake." Let's also assume that no one here wants to rob you or hurt you and many of us would have been completely fine without any of this ever happening.

My strong suggestion to see deescalation is to remove these witness accounts that you made and remove the Poloniex votes and power down that account. We want to deescalate this situation and have a conversation, but I think you need to understand our perspective to why that hardfork 22.2 was put into place.

Our understanding and expectations of the Steemit Inc stake was obviously very different from yours. We all want to see this chain develop and grow. Immediately after the deal became public we were seeing Tweets about token swaps and merging our chain into Tron. That is an unacceptable outcome for most people in the STEEM community.

We gave no consent for Ned or Steemit Inc to make this deal. Purchasing a company that has repeatedly said the stake they hold was not to be used for blockchain governance and was mined exclusively for developing the platform means that our expectations of that company and stake transferred to you.

We all want a win-win situation here. If you want to win any kind of trust from this community you need to stand down on influencing our governance and do the thing that Ned and Steemit Inc never did and actually communicate with us and start SHOWING us that you want to be here and make things happen instead of just TALKING about it like many people felt they always did.

I think you should also understand that at this point, fighting over the fork like this, the best case scenario I see for you winning is you end up with a shell of chain that has no value. The community will fork and carry on without you if you can't SHOW us some kind of reason to get behind you and have faith that you want to do good things here and not just make some quick money.

To recap and sum things up:

  • The only path forward where there's any chance of a win-win situation requires you to get rid of those witnesses that you created and stop the exchanges from influencing our governance.
  • From there it's on you to communicate with us and show us that you mean what you say and are willing to listen to what we have to say and not just force your ideas on us.
  • I can assure you that no matter how heated things got and how bad all of this may have looked, having passionate people that care about this blockchain and are willing to fight for it is a good thing and many of them will be willing to work towards making this place better with you if you can show us that you are willing to work together and have some faith in us.

Great response! Can we - our witnesses - take the worry of Justin / TRON away we lockup the Steemit Inc stake again? My honest opinion is that we need some kind of (legal) contract in which its states Justin / TRON will develop the Steem blockchain (and if we want, also the Steemit.com website), but this doesn't have to be funded with the Steemit Inc owned Steem. When Justin / TRON uses their fiat money, or their TRX to pay all the bills and salaries to evolve the Steem Ecosystem, that is totally fine by me. We simply shall make some legal documents, or setup some trust fund, or think of a different solution how we can convert the promises of Steem roadmap development and business execution into something more substantiated (and legal) form in order for us - the entire Steem community - to be able to start trusting again.

honest opinion is that we need some kind of (legal) contract

A blockchain or decentralized community can not sign a legal contract.

That is a very big part of the reason for on-chain governance systems.

We did not invite Justin here, he came via a side deal between him and Ned. In doing so, he must recognize that a truly decentralized blockchain and community can not be owned and can not be forced to submit to his will by destroying it through centralization.

The path forward is for Justin to embrace the values of the Steem blockchain and community and for the ongoing ecosystem funding to be secured through on-chain governance which Justin ceases to attempt to manipulate through shady underhanded deals with and/or deceit of exchanges.

Once that happens, maybe a positive working relationship can be built or rebuilt between Steem (the blockchain and community) and Steemit (the company which Justin owns and which operates the steemit.com web site and formerly developed the blockchain, but no longer has any developers because Justin's abhorrent and irresponsible behavior drove them all away).

We're requesting that Steem power holders tell us "We won't support witnesses that freeze funds now that more understanding has been reached."

This statement is against the basic tenets of decentralization and freedom of individual decision and is both highly unethical and dangerous for the secure and balanced operation of the Steem blockchain.

Messages like these show that you distrust the community as a whole, irrespective of whether they are from Germany, Australia, Korea, Poland, US, etc. You require their written statements to trust them. And even then you are jeopardizing their investment by running fake witness servers. Understanding can't be reached if you can't respect stakeholders by showing that you trust them and restoring the decentralized governance they have selected.

The stakeholders have also seen similar messages before, approximately a year ago.

How can we ever work in good faith with someone who thinks a Sybil attack against our blockchain is an acceptable strategy? It makes us feel “you’re just a businessman” with no understanding for blockchain technology and why decentralized consensus is so important to its security.

I opened lines of communication with you via email, but Roy did not reply until after the softfork. You posted positively on chain about working together, but in secret you were planning an attack. Instead of a discussion, you broke trust while misleading exchanges either through deceit or incompetence understanding some basic code and how Steem patches are evaluated and deployed. You overreacted and attacked the very thing you’re claiming you want to support.

Actions > Words

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