Town Hall Meeting With Justin Sun: Why the Top 20 Witnesses Should Be Cautious
Image credit: @majes.tytyty
Following the staggering implications of Soft Fork 0.22.2 which was executed on February 23rd 2020, @Justinsunsteemit will be hosting a town hall meeting with the top 50 witnesses of the Steem blockchain on March 6th 2020.
However, you'll notice that this article is addressed to the top 20 witnesses. It's no mistake. This is because the rest of the witnesses outside of the top 20 are back up witnesses who do not have enough stake to compete for the top spot.
Perhaps you don't need me to tell you that the Town Hall meeting is coming on the heels of the recent soft fork that saw the stake of Steemit Inc, now owned by @Justinsunsteemit, frozen over fears that Sun could vote and hijack the blockchain by displacing the top 20 witnesses through his hefty stake, which is estimated at 70 million Steem power.
One of the top witnesses whom I respect a lot, @therealwolf summarized his reason for supporting the soft fork in a post. He wrote:
The goal is to find a mutual compatible solution with Steemit Inc on how the stake can be used to benefit Steem, without explicitely having to trust "words". Because, as we've seen now, words can easily be broken, code can not.
While I do not agree with those criticizing the move of the witnesses for daring to protect the Steem blockchain, I believe that the witnesses, especially the top 20 witnesses, need to be cautious during the forthcoming town hall meeting with Sun. I say this for two major reasons. First, Sun is bruised already and could become ruthless. Second, the back up witnesses could be a willing tool in the hands of Sun.
Now to the first point. Sun is going into that town hall meeting as an aggrieved man, even though his open letter and body language suggested otherwise. Here is a man who was rumoured to have purchased Steemit Inc for a whopping $10 million. If you were Sun, would you be smiling now that your investment is at risk, locked up? Certainly not.
So I am suspecting, on reasonable grounds, that Sun will be going into that meeting to negotiate with the witnesses to immediately reverse the soft fork, unfreeze his stake (Ninja-mined or not) with some assurances that he would not use the stake in a way that will 'harm' the community, including voting for witnesses.
Also, Sun will use the meeting as an opportunity for him to discuss the roadmap for Steemit and Steem under his watch. Hopefully, the highly controversial token swap will be discussed and he would provide answers on whether or not those moves are to be taken seriously or not.
Here is where the top 20 witnesses have to be very careful and that takes me to the second point. If the top 20 witnesses (18/20 of them supporting the recent soft fork) decide to play hard to get, insist on not unfreezing the stake of Steemit Inc and consequently endangering the investment of @Justinsunsteemit, the other back up witnesses who were also invited to the town hall meeting could turn their loyalty to Sun, knowing that by so doing they clearly improve their chances of coming into the top 20 spot if they are in the good books of Sun.
Also, in the event that the top 20 witnesses blatantly refuse to unfreeze the stake of Sun, instead of losing his stake completely, Sun has all it takes to lobby and probably even buy more Steem in order to take over the governance of Steem and install witnesses that will key into his new vision. By then, negotiations will be too late and what the witnesses have always feared, the destabilization of the Steem blockchain, would have happen eventually.
Yesterday, I read a post from @blocktrades wherein he advanced his views on the legality of hard forks. In that post, he indirectly suggested that hard forks are legal since most codes are not copyrighted. He goes further to suggest that anyone who is outforked from a chain, is legally free to start a new chain. And he is right.
However, if Sun is pushed out of the Steem blockchain in a fashion that smacks of a palace coup, I bet that Sun will fight back with the entire influence he has within the crypto community. A parallel Steem chain could even lead to the delisting of the original Steem across many prominent exchanges, making Sun's version of Steem the legitimate coin.
Therefore, I am appealing to the top 20 witnesses that even though I acknowledge that they are fighting to defend the integrity of the Steem blockchain, they must not be guilty of wrongful deeds, must not be guilty of rigidities that will result to the splitting of the Steem blockchain.
Until I come your way again, I wish you a full Steem ahead.
you can't have a palace coup unless the person being ousted actually has ownership. Sun owns Steemit Inc and Steemit.com ... he doesn't own Steem which is why the witnesses moved to protect the chain until such time as they have some level of confidence in Justin's intentions. We, the community own the blockchain and that needs to be clearly understood.
Of course, Sun does not own Steem but you'll agree that he owns Steemit and a stake of 70million whether we call it Naija-mined or not. Right? Imagine what happens if those 70m steem hit the exchanges. If the witness insists on freezing all his stake, putting his entire investment at risk, then there will be dire consequences. That's the summary of this post. Thanks for stopping by.
It can have consequences on the price that is true. However, once he gets it through his head that he doesn't own Steem he will realize that in order to get a return on that investment, he will need to work for the good of the chain. The temporary freeze provided time for all parties to actually communicate which is something he had not been responding to attempts to establish.
Great points. Certainly, Justin now has a major stake, but he's not the owner of "Steem" or the blockchain, nor can he ever have control of the decentralized blockchain. We can rest assured that most things will work themselves out as Steemit moves forward.
it's really hard to tell if Justin didn't pay attention to what he was getting or was mislead on how much control he could have. This pause should provide the time needed to fix the problem. It's the first time that those charged with protecting a blockchain have actually taken action to do so. Not surprising that it's creating shock for some.
@gandhibaba you have spoken wisdom. The politics of divide and rule will suffice if the first twenty witnesses play the rigidity and sophistry of protection. What other protection and improvement would one want in a chain as this other than this merger. I see nothing wrong in this. It is simply expansion and this will bring further acceptance to the world.
Thanks for this excellent points here. Glad you're back again. Cheers!
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 10/20 - need recharge?)
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I don't understand what is the problem with J. Sun. Whether what he is planning. But in the last 2 years, things were going in the wrong direction in Steem world, please give a chance to the new boss to make it better.
I think Steem realm was never really decentralized, by the way. Don't try to make believe it is about principles.
(To whom it belongs...)
That's exactly the point of this article, as long as Sun does not have shady intentions he should be given a chance. As much as possible, I don't want the Steem blockchain to split. Cheers!
As always - interesting choice of topic.
Resteemed and upvoted already.
Thanks.
I think it is a softfork.
I've corrected that. Thanks for drawing my attention to it.
I believe that Sun is an entrepreneur and as such he will not actively seek to do something that hurts his investment, but neither will he accept that a group of people will harm his plans and the control he has over his interests.
In the steem blockchain, voting power is the strength of your muscle and the one with the most muscle can hit others and dominate the network, establish witnesses at your convenience and give a negative vote until you take 0 indefinitely to all To oppose him. The "Steem power" is the "Real Power" and with the purchase of Stemit the people of TRON have enough power to do whatever they want.
I understand that making the separation that the witnesses made was consistent with an agreement with the people of old Steemit that they would not use their power to intervene in the blockchain government, but with the change of owners the policy changes and everything agreement that is not in writing and registered can simply be ignored or denied compliance, a word agreement is only something useless and more typical of idealists than entrepreneurs.
Now, I think Sun goes to the meeting with all his cannons, I suppose he will offer "Honey", but if the witnesses show their teeth and the negotiation turns sour, then Sun will move whatever it takes for new witnesses to take the first 20 places and can resume the path of your interests.
Actually, I can't criticize that attitude, after all it's the attitude of the big businessmen and big capitalists, you can't get big in the jungle of business by lowering your head and giving in, you're going to have to be ruthless, cruel, merciless and bold. That's why I doubt that things are in favor of witnesses, we'll see if I'm being too pessimistic or just being realistic.
Hi @pedrobrito2004, thanks for making this sound commentary on this article. Sincerely, you made some valuable points that even I omitted. Particularly, I love this:
Thanks!
You're Welcome!
HIGHLY rEsteemed!
2.22 has potential to speed things up. I'd like to Think that Justin can make several things happen at STINC but the The STEEM Blockchain belongs to the witnesses; so I for one hope they invalidate the Ninja stake as soon as possible and force Justin to sue Ned for the criminal exploitation he has gotten away with for years.
SteemON Bruv!
Thanks for stopping by and for resteeming this post. I think Ned has the legal rights to sell Steemit Inc including its stake because there was no contractual agreement between him and the community. Common, we can't realistically assume that 70m Steem will sleep and wake up in Ned's wallet for life. At best, the witnesses can reach a deal with Justin on the best action going forward. I wish you a full Steem ahead.