RE: Statement on Steem Soft Fork 0.22.2
The issue, if it were thought to be able to fix the existential risk, would have required a hard fork...and that hard fork could have been easily blocked by the entity posing the existential risk. So it's a tricky situation to be in - and it's a situation that we did not put ourselves in.
By deploying a soft fork, we can temporarily mitigate the risk while working on a potential long-term solution. If that can be done, we can then remove the code that allows witnesses to ignore the transactions from the accounts in question, and then those accounts may continue to transact.
It's a temporary fix. It's certainly not an ideal way to address this but it's really a unique circumstance that was brought about by the original launch and the decisions made by Steemit Inc. leadership over the past four years.
It sounds like the "problem" (ninjamine) was well-known for a long time, but people generally "trusted" the majority-stake-holders (and did nothing at all to fix the "problem").
If the majority-stake-holders were so "trusted" then perhaps they would have co-operated with the implementation of a true systemic fix at some point before the current "crisis".
Changing the rules to target specific accounts is BAD POLICY, and shatters my faith that steem is anything even remotely resembling a "reliable decentralized system".
Yes, the problem/security risk existed and was well-known. Trust was misplaced in the previous owners. There was an attempt to discuss this openly last year and as soon as it was mentioned, the Steemit owner began powering down and moving the stake to exchanges in order to “hide” it so that they could continue circumventing previous self-imposed obligations to the community and continue being an actual threat to decentralization.
The fact that a large consensus of independent witnesses came together to finally address this security risk from a centralized entity shatters your faith in decentralization? That doesn’t make much logical sense to me, seeing as how the actions taken were taken in order to ensure that decentralization of Steem would remain possible.
Maybe your definition of decentralization differs from mine? I’d appreciate if you could expand on that.
20 law-makers that can change the rules on a whim to protect THEMSELVES from a specific individual or group of specific individuals who are merely playing the game according to the existing rules, is NOT what I would call a "decentralized system".
It's more like the old Roman republic, where the rich could simply purchase their seats in the Senate.
Which is fine in principle, until a major player like mi.crosoft or am.azon or CHINA decides to get involved (and they decide to either purchase and or sabotage the top 20).
Ok, cool. That’s not what happened here though.
If your system of control is based on the PRIMARY AXIOM of "the more you invest, the more control you have over the system because those who invest the most have the most to lose and will naturally want to protect their investment by making decisions that are good for the community" IS PROVEN FALSE (the rich often invest in things in order to kill them either because they don't like the organization (pure spite) or because they want to eliminate competition) THEN YOU MUST RE-EVALUATE THE ENTIRE SYSTEM, AND FORMULATE NEW PRIMARY AXIOMS.
Imagine giving all active accounts (with at least one (non-spam) post or comment every 33 days over the past 52 weeks) with a rep of (70) or more, 20 witness votes each.
That way you know they're (probably) not sock-puppets and everyone gets exactly the same voting power (regardless of ninjamine or rich friends).