Here Is Why I am Revoking All Of My Steem Witness Votes

Hive is about to go live in a few hours, ushering in a new era of the Steem blockchain under a new name, brand and better direction from the @blocktrades team who have proven themselves to be trusted and highly proficient developers and custodians of the Steem blockchain.

With the launch of Hive, I am removing all of my Steem witness votes. Not because I have anything against the witnesses I voted for, to the contrary, rather because I believe it is one chain or another. I don't think we should be supporting both Steem and Hive, it is all or nothing.

Furthermore, any witness who also sets up a node on Hive and continues to run their Steem witness will not get my vote. It's nothing personal, I just see no benefit to supporting Steem and Justin Sun in any way, shape or form. I will only be supporting Hive witnesses who are dedicated to Hive and not dual-blockchain nationals.

Allegedly I have heard a few witnesses are planning to stick around for 13 weeks or so, citing protection of the chain and allowing users funds to be safe. I don't think this is a valid excuse. The Hive team are snapshotting Steem balances and user accounts, giving out subsequent Hive equivalent tokens.

While I do not know the true motivations of some witnesses, they're doing nothing more than supporting Steemit. The only way Justin Sun will learn and feel the gravity of this hard fork is for the community to abandon Steem en mass. The content might substantially disappear as users flee, but if the original Steem witnesses stick around, it just gets quieter and nothing much changes for Justin.

I cannot and will not tell people what to do, particularly those choosing to run dual-witness servers. There is no reason to stick around on Steem any more, especially given the recent censorship by Steemit to block Hive posts from showing up. This is the final straw.

RIP Steem: 2016 - 2020.