A message for both sides of this fractured community.

The community here is completely enveloped in arguing their for their side, and I can definitely understand why. But there seems to be a lot of opinion shouting rather then debate. I don't have any stake in this game, but still want to share some thoughts from the perspective of someone with little emotional or financial ties to this community.

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My message to Sun and his supporters

I do understand where you guys are coming from. And I am definitely not saying the other side is right. Freezing someones account is a major precident, which I will be talking about later. But keep in mind that like steem inc made a promise to use those funds for development, the witnesses made a promise to process their transactions.

Just like there is nothing illegal happening if they go back on their word, there is no laws broken if the witnesses go back on theirs. Nothing is being stolen from Sun, and he could even go on to create his own chain and use the funds however he wishes. If the community is behind him it could go great, if not then absolutely horribly.

But that is the agreement that everybody signed onto when they invested here. All the witnesses are doing is threatening to not do their jobs. If the sanctity of a promise is reversible then so be it, but don't expect the other side to continue keeping theirs.

If Justin didn't know about the situation then I truly feel bad for him. But he needs to be going after Ned for this. He is incharge of steem inc right now so their promises are his promises. He can break them, but I don't see why it should be treated any kinder then if Ned broke them.

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To the 22.2 witnesses and their supporters

Do you understand the kind of precedent you were/are planning to set? Because it is gigantic. I understand this is a weird situation, and I'm not saying you guys are in the wrong here either. But your messing with Pandoras box on this one, and once its out its out.

I highly doubt once the power is established it would only be used this one time. The entire platform might erupt into people shouting about who to freeze out next.

If this is something that needs to happen, even through a chain split, the line needs to be clearly defined. And honestly I'm not sure if it is on this one. The key factor is that Steem inc does not own steem. They are just a large holder and founder of steem.

So there is no investor protection here. Nobody invested into steem inc, they invested in steem. Which is doing exactly what steem promised it would do, and I'm not sure how you would sue a block chain anyway.

So as steem holders are they really that obligated to fullfil their promise? If I promise to donate X steem to Y cause, are you going to freeze my account if I don't comply?

The strongest line here would probably be the fact that the steem was mined instead of paid for, but are we willing to pull the plug on all the miners out there?

After @steemit, @freedom has the next highest SP, was a miner, and they are currently voting for all of the community witnesses. Do we fork them out as well?

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Ending thoughts

I can't tell you who is in the wrong or right. Nor do I want to. As I said I've got no stake in this game, I'm just your friendly neighborhood lurker. The one thing that can be said is that everybody but Ned got screwed in this deal. And the fall out from this event will either make or break steem.

I truly hope Sun recovers from this, and I hope steemit flourishes as a decentralized platform. Some pretty rough times at the moment, but if the community sticks together then even the worst case senarios can be handled.