Thoughts on Fork 22.5 - The Empire Strikes Back
Alright, so anyone who has been following my blog will not be surprised. I have mentioned multiple times that Steem is going to see a fork unless Justin Sun wills it another way. Last week, Steem witnesses made an aggressive maneuver in blocking Steemit Inc's accounts. I warned then that,
Make no mistake, however, Justin Sun likely wields far more influence and wealth than the entire Steem network combined, the ball's absolutely in his court.
I and others have also repeatedly mentioned the close ties between Justin Sun / Tron and CZ / Binance, him having controlling interest over Poloniex, and if he really wanted to, he could easily takeover Steem in multiple different ways. It's obviously not just Justin, he's working with others, but for fun, I'm going to just call the operation Justin.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that Justin responded amicably, and was looking to come to a truce with Steem witnesses.
Don't know what has changed, but obviously, that's no longer on the table. (On second thoughts, his first response was probably just a deliberate attempt at bait-and-switch. Well played, Justin.)
I have been highly critical of DPoS for years now, and this is why. Let's get this out of the way - Steem was always effectively centralized, and now we have absolute evidence of that fact.
It's easy to play the blame game, but in this case, the blame squarely lies on a totally garbage consensus mechanism that'll fail in many situations - Steem being one of them. Blame the game, not the players.
The witnesses fired the shots first by censoring Justin Sun's assets. (Just to be clear, this is a technical statement, not a matter of right or wrong.) Justin Sun fired back by taking over the entire bloody chain to restore his assets. You will probably be biased one way or the other, but the cold hard truth is that both of these are valid measures that are possible under the very flawed code.
My issue here is what Binance and Huobi have done. As it's forever been said - not your keys, not your coins. (PS: Actually, I may be mistaken here. Maybe they did approach a few whales and get their consent for powering up. In that case, it's fine. Would like to see a statement from the exchanges.)
As for current witnesses, they have two options - agree to being Justin Sun's slaves, or fork to a new chain that is a bit less centralized. The new chain, let's call it Steem Classic, will probably only be worth a fraction of the defacto STEEM that Justin currently controls, but at least they'll have something to work with.
I've forever been advocating for 3 day power down times, so there's that. I'm assuming that'll mean they'll also reduce the payout period to 3 days.
I have many other thoughts, but I'll conclude this one, for now.
I think ditching the word Steem altogether would be nice in any fork. I further think that 'TEEM' would be a lot nicer name and only requires the deletion of the letter 's' in all the code.
Maybe, but I'm skeptical that the current witnesses have the resources, influence or experience to launch a new brand, except maybe blocktrades.
By the way, did you know that Steem comes from "esteem"?
Good point. I did not know that.
Yeah... I always suspected exchanges might side with Justin but them using customer funds to take over the chain for him, i didnt expect.
What was it... like 100 million Steem they vote with now.
Yeah, that was unexpected, especially because they only needed 50 million SP to take over the chain. But yeah, with 100 million, the case is firmly closed.
My first reaction was very negative, but there's a small possibility that they got consent from whales to power up. Who knows...
He will prolly move the powerdown to 1 day and they will easily exit with Justin firmly in control.
Its beyond disgusting and unethical.
I always knew exchanges are the most corrupt factors in crypto and a massive danger for decentralization. Investor wealth goes up and down with the market while they win either way.
Exchanges are centralized, they can do whatever they want. I'd recommend decentralized exchanges and hardware wallets if you wish to maintain control. Loopring went online a couple of days ago, using Layer 2 rollups on Ethereum, it now has the scaling required to achieve a CEX-like experience. I hope to see some of these new breed of Layer 2 exchanges start gaining traction.
I think the exchanges voting with customer funds and Justin Sun misusing his power is the problem not the DPOS system in general. Or in other words also democracy has the same problem. If almost nobody goes to vote, then a few votes are enough to change the entire system. We and the whole crypto community can learn a lot from this case. Hope we can somehow deescalate the situation, save Steem and make it more decentralized in the future.
I disagree, in fact, you have pretty much pointed out why DPoS is the problem. No PoS or PoW chain, even if they are flawed, can be controlled so easily. Democracy is flawed, but it works in most of the modern world because there are laws and constitutions to mitigate its flaws as much as possible. With DPoS, the constitution is so bad that it can't prevent a simple exploit to complete control.
That is not to say that Justin Sun and exchanges haven't done something terrible - of course they have - but this simply wouldn't have been possible on a PoW or PoS chain. (Yes, again, I know, they can be attacked too, but nothing quite so simple and permanent)
A similar attack is also possible on PoW chains (51% attack and/or controlling the big mining pools, but it is more difficult because the chain is secured not just with money but also real hardware), similar attacks exists obviously on all Proof of Stake chains, when exchanges and/or one single investor controls the majority of stake they control the chain. Similar problem in democracy. Hence it is so important to go voting, both in RL and also on DPOS systems to mitigate the attack. There were also other mitigation mechanisms discussed by the Steem witnesses, like reducing the number of Witness votes, having a power down-period of several weeks or months, and removing voting rights for the ninja-mined stake (SF 22.2).
Like I said, PoW and PoS can be attacked too, but it's very, very difficult, and even if they do, it's very temporary. There's no comparison, it's a totally different thing. Also, with measures like the slashing mechanism in Ethereum's upcoming 2.0 PoS system, it's actually impossible.
In short, what just happened with Steem will be impossible outside of DPoS, at least a chain of Steem's size. Other consensus mechanisms have flaws, but nothing anywhere near as dire as this.
Agree, a big chain like Ethereum with PoS and Slashing is much more secure than a small chain with DPoS like Steem, but there are still take over risks with PoS systems too if an attacker has the majority of stake and nodes. The current attack on DPoS can also be temporary, if the community can find a solution and fork or negotiate out of the situation.
Our communications are dependent on centralized mechanisms at multiple layers. From ISPs to the physical network, we speak at the pleasure of overlords. The Steem blockchain itself is but a tertiary expression of this vulnerability.
In fact, this notification of our vulnerability to censorship is an extremely valuable warning.
Our ability to know facts enables us to act to secure our lives and property from danger. Today across all enemedia, we are being misled regarding a pandemic that may threaten all our lives, and society itself. Steem is inconsequential in comparison, as I'm sure everyone values their lives and families more than their wallets.
I sincerely and even desperately hope that devs, network engineers, and coders immediately undertake to create a mesh network through which we can reach each other as long as the physical network is powered up, to run blockchains, troll each other, or let us know about outbreaks of plague in our cities.
This is not a drill. This is life or death. We need not to exist at the pleasure of overlords.
Let's live at our sole option.