Tron and Steemit Join Forces
Hello Steemians, as many of you know, last Friday TRON Foundation announced that it had completed a strategic partnership with Steemit Inc. We are super excited about the partnership and we would like to respond to some of the concerns of the community.
Since the announcement of the partnership, these two teams have been working hard to connect with one another and sync up about our respective roadmaps.
Developing a Joint Roadmap
The TRON and Steemit Teams are planning to work together to develop an engineering roadmap that ultimately enables the TRON and Steem ecosystems to form a mutually beneficial connection. There are many ways of accomplishing this which deliver incredible value to both the TRON and Steem stakeholders, and we look forward to exploring these possibilities with TRON’s engineering team.
The Steemit Team is Safe
As some of you may know, it wasn’t that long ago (just over a year) that Steemit Inc. faced an existential threat. Since that time we have been able to tighten our belts while shipping products like MIRA and Hivemind, however, we are still a long way off from using ad revenue to fund operations. Now that TRON has partnered with Steemit Inc., our future is more secure than ever.
Delivering on Our Promises
@justinsunsteemit and his team have made it clear that the most important thing to them is that we deliver on our previous promises. Shipping communities, improving the user experience on steemit.com, and streamlining the sign up process are our top priorities as we work with the TRON Team to develop a longer term roadmap. Once the two teams are able to come to a consensus on the roadmap, that information will be shared with the community.
Win-Win
We believe that this partnership represents a massive opportunity for the Steem community and we are committed to working with the TRON Team to maximize that opportunity. If we can combine TRON’s resources, engineering talent, and industry-leading platform, with our amazing community, 3rd party applications, and unrivaled technology, we are confident that we can dramatically accelerate the adoption of decentralized systems.
We look forward to continuing our work with you, the Steem community, to accomplish our mission of onboarding the masses to the blockchain.
The Steemit Team
SteemIt Inc has controlled a very large portion of the STEEM tokens since its inception. At one point over 50%. Now, SteemIt, Inc retains ownership of about 20% of the entire STEEM token economy.
SteemIt, Inc made various promises and verbal (typed) contracts to the community. SteemIt, Inc even created a hardfork that added the ability for a user to decline the ability to vote for posts or witnesses, or set a witness proxy.
My question is, what is going to happen with these arrangements. What is going to happen with the SteemIt, Inc stake and the millions of tokens that are hiding on various exchanges? Binance has showed that they will use their (purchased?) stake to vote for SRs on Tron.
Will SteemIt/Tron be participating in voting for witnesses via the consensus protocol of Steem? Will SteemIt/Tron be using the company stake to vote for posts? Will SteemIt/Tron use the millions of liquid STEEM tokens to participate in the internal market or the various exchange markets?
I raise these questions in particular due to the fact that @justinsunsteemit has used premined company stake on Tron recently to participate in the consensus protocol by voting for SRs. @justinsunsteemit also uses language like this when discussing his plans for Tron: https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1230224864725700608
As you can tell, @justinsunsteemit idea for how to manage Tron does not really fit with the community and ideals of Steem. Will SteemIt, Inc finally utilize the
decline_voting_rightsoperation?Thanks for your information and I eagerly await your response!
I think doing this would be vital not only for the sake of the Steem community, stakeholders and witnesses, but also for Tron to successfully gain the community and dApp ecosystem that they clearly have hoped for (judging by the communications). Many want to believe that this can indeed be a win-win as stated in the article, and removing any doubt that another important promise by Steemit Inc on its use of stake will also be delivered on would do wonders to cement this belief.
This is the sort of signal I would want to see to halt my power downs, and possibly buy more. Right now the pragmatic thing for me is to get as liquid as possible, as quickly as possible, and wait for clarity.
The wider the scope the better, but I was just thinking of it in terms of witness voting as the context of the quote would indicate.
It prevents both.
Good! Prevents another attack vector albeit one that would likely be more conspicuous. Btw respect your stance.
I'm concerning that it will take is one Judas witness and others will be tempted. If that is something that we could expect, hope we nip the problem in the bud somehow.
It does indeed. It will remove proxies and witness votes.
Fall in line or you will be punished.
May be a bit much but...
That's the best I've seen yet kudos sir
Exactly this. He needs to be aware that he won't be met with optimism and a warm welcome if he suddenly appears and announces plans that go against the core values of Steem. His lack of understanding of Steem's foundations and lack of interest to communicate with the community should be considered hostility.
Amen
would be really nice to know
Ninjamine. Not even once.
Yeah I know that hindsights 20/20. Wish everybody the best. Prepare your keisters and don't forget!
for those who do not know what the Ninja Mine is , our Blockchain has a shady past
https://steemit.com/steemit/@aggroed/a-brief-history-of-the-ninja-mine
Nice good job informing people. This illegitimate stake is precisely what needs to be properly controlled and prevented from being used to destroy Steem.
We can thank @ned's ineptitude for the ninja mined tokens to no longer being 40+%. Decentralization takes time. 😎
I kept hearing about this. Thank you for posting. I just joined the community and really love the concepts, I wish I got in on it earlier after being a member for such a short time and then seeing all this Justin Sun commotion. #scaredtobuybagsnow
Well put and I am wondering as well on all these points. Justin is not the most trustworthy.
decline_voting_rights doesnt really change anything as they can delegate or move to exchanges and back (you know how mrdelegate and other odd accounts came to life). so in the end its at - do they fullfill promises or not.
It isnt meant to destroy their tokens or value. If thats what you think is "doing something" then that's fair; but I disagree.
They own their tokens. We just want them to show a good faith "contract" to not purposefully use the stake to undermine the consensus layer or the rewards system.
They could always transfer tokens, power down to a new account, etc. But it would be an obvious violation of promises and an indicator of hostility towards the Steem blockchain and its community.
What do you think of 1sp 1witness vote?
I am not against it. Someone smarter than me would have to think about the possible pitfalls, but I personally think it makes sense.
At the very least, a user should not be able to vote for more witnesses than is required for majority consensus. Aka, less than 15 votes preferably. 1 vote is definitely less than 15 :)
Time to distribute the power held by the creators, they've sold us down the river.
Just when I was having hope again, too.
FML.
Is your hope slightly renewed? :)
Much better now, but that is what I was saying just before stinc became stunc, too.
At least we are acting as a collective, now.
For better, or worse.
It weakens the security of the chain generally (lower stake threshold to vote in malicious witnesses) but that may be a reasonable tradeoff to reduce the control of the largest stakeholder(s).
If the largest continues to persist in its vision of kneecapping us so we don't change the world, we can just pack it in.
We've gone from stinc to stunc, in that case.
JS bought his stake, let's hope he is onboard with the rest of us, and not here to string us further along.
Won't this change slow any one account from voting in 17 witnesses?
Thereby increasing the stake needed to rule the chain?
How complicated is the coding change?
If trivial, any hope of getting it in the next fork?
It doesn't literally do that. Given the numbers, if you assume (probably incorrectly) that a Tron/Steemit bloc would have no other support, then it probably couldn't vote in 17 witnesses, and certainly would have a harder time doing so. But with even some additional support (which IMO is likely given marketing/campaigning/etc.), they could probably still do it. Pretty damn hard to come up with voting rules that block stake that is 50% larger than entire rest of the voting population. This isn't just trying to block a tiny majority (say 51%), it is trying to block a very significant supermajority.
In doing so you inevitably weaken the chain against smaller-stake attackers. Still, the compromise may be worth it.
I doubt it is that complicated, and it could be possibly be done.
Hmm,...I agree that stake will find friends willing to sell out.
We are playing crapitalism, after all, and easy money is the sweetest.
Am I wrong thinking that voting full sp on 30 witnesses is alot more than voting full sp divided by up to 30 witnesses?
Rather than voting 1m sp 30x, each vote is reduced by concurrent votes on more than one, 1m sp on one, 500k on two, 333k on three, etc.
I fail to see how this would empower small accounts in any attacks.
Good questions and I encourage them towards transparency so that Steem users can be aware of what is happening. I'm going to try to remain open minded between the pros and cons concerning many things. I'm not totally sure what to think at the moment. That's why I'm here.
Presently witness votes multiply the advantage of large stake holders 30x. @edicted seriously proposes changing witness votes to 1Steem=1vote, which is how DPoS should work to effect governance.
While this change would impact @justinsunsteemit's ability to exercise arbitrary governance of Steem, it would not eliminate his ability to exercise the stake he controls to effect governance of Steem rationally. I strongly support this proposed change to how governance of Steem is effected.
Thanks!
whats going on. I want to see my following user's post.
if you are on mobile, you may have to manually enter steemit.com/@supergiant/feed
on desktop “my friends” looks like is the new feed.
thanks for your help
Thanks, Geek Girl.
Have there been any discussions with the Tron team about the will of the witnesses and the token holders they represent? There have been many concerning posts from the Tron marketing team (including Poloniex) describing a token swap of “old Steem” tokens to Tron based tokens. I hope it has been made very clear to the Tron team that the witnesses are ready to support the chain as it is now because that is the job we are elected to do. If the token holders want a change, we’ll listen, state our positions, and they will vote accordingly.
That said, I think the potential for new marketing, promotion, resources, and development could be fantastic for both communities. I hope they join together for mutual benefit while respecting the many years of work and commitment that got us here.
As a witness, I look forward to connecting with the Tron team and discussing the history of this community and what expectations we are facilitating.
The token swap spells is a hint of the death of the steem chain. A bigger blow to the steem community could be the air drop as well as the minting process. We don't even know how many new Steem tokens will be in circulation, and of the new tokens how much the Steem community will own as a percent vs what is gifted to the tron holders who will probably dump them.
As far as witnesses, every 3 seconds or whatever Justin Sun can replace one top witness after another when he is ready. If you want to save Steem, vote to destroy his ninja mined coins or freeze them and remove his voting rights if at all possible. If it important to act quickly and before takes control of the top witness nodes.
Justin Sun doesn't appear to be a fan of decentralized chains. His cofounder quit tron over the issue of not being decentralized. https://cointelegraph.com/news/tron-co-founder-and-cto-leaves-project-alleging-excessive-centralization .
As far as Justin Sun and Marketing. This is how he markets his own coin (language is NSFW).
https://twitter.com/ze_rusty/status/1226511162684010496
Seems quite a few Chinese projects let a single person own a bulk of the coins and distributes a smaller percentage for the rest of the market to fight over, including ribble*...I mean ripple. While Justin Sun peddles his crap coins, he is able to devour valid decentralized systems and other emerging technology literally for what he admits is crypto crap. Steem Coin used to be pretty popular in China, I wonder how much power China will have to delete content when the top witnesses are owned by Sun.
-winnie the pooh aka the Chinese President, owned by Disney or vice versa depending on context.
Are there other good posts out there talking about the potential dangers of Tron, assuming there are some? I should write some articles about these things. I want Tron to prove me wrong and show me that they're not trying to obtain too much power over the Steem blockchain and everything. I don't want to say Tron is doing that but I cannot currently say they aren't. So, I will try to keep my eyes open to everything that is happening.
Some of the arguments I have heard on msp waves. The names of whom, many I do not recall. Aggroed would be a good voice of reason to listen to since he not only is a top 20 witness, but he is also behind very popular dapps on Steem. Pay attention to what other top 20 witnesses are saying too.
Are the top 20 Steem witnesses Pro-Tron, completely, partly, to an extent? Are they fighting this Steemit Inc Tron merger thing?
A few things I forgot to mention in my original post about the minting process, is we also don't know how many new steem Sun will claim for himself/any foundation/strategic partners. The mintage and ultimately the distribution is of the great concern .
here is an article from coin telegraph
https://cointelegraph.com/news/tron-community-in-uproar-as-genesis-coins-used-in-super-reps-vote
I found it on this steemituser's post (link included)
https://www.palnet.io/tron/@anthonyadavisii/that-s-not-a-good-look-justin-word-2-my-naysayer-s
I don't really pay much attn to who the top 20 witnesses are. I think I can name maybe 6, some of whom are posting/reading here or at least mentioned here. Here are a few of them and what they either post or resteem about steem-tron. In some cases i'll just name them as posting/resteeming quite a bit, but otherwise there is still a chance I accidently missed a witness or post.
here is a posy by markymark prior to the AMA
https://steemit.com/hive-111111/@themarkymark/my-opinions-on-the-tron-news . He also resteemed the real wolf (top 20 witness) https://steemit.com/hive-111111/@therealwolf/govern-and-protect-steem-vote-for-witnesses-now
someguy123 resteemed https://steemit.com/steemit/@jackmiller/you-can-buy-a-company-but-you-can-t-buy-the-people and aggroed's (top 20 witness) https://steemit.com/steem/@aggroed/justin-says-steemit-is-migrating-to-tron-time-to-panic-or-things-will-be-ok-for-now
Drakos merely resteemed justinsun's first post to steem.
therealwolf posted a thread that as mentioned marky resteemed. the wolf also resteemed an interview with andrarchy (steemit developer) (https://steemit.com/hive-100421/@blockbrothers/jevdpbnn).
aggroed has posted quite a bit for/against. Ausbitbank, lukestokes, and good-karma have resteemed quite a few articles on the topic.
thecryptodrive posted https://steemit.com/steem/@thecryptodrive/a-witness-prayer-for-steem-and-tron prior to the AMA
clayop resteemed pharesim's (Whale?) post https://steemit.com/openletter/@pharesim/open-letter-to-justin-sun , some steemitdev posts on the topic, and one or more post in korean
Bitcoin Steem Similarities?
I don't know if I asked you, but does Steem allow for anybody who runs Steem on their computers, servers, etc, to be a witness, technically speaking, similar to how anybody who is mining Bitcoin is technically a miner?
Witnesses vs Miners
I know Steem has the top 20 witnesses, but is the 21st witness still a witness? Are there limits to how many witnesses there can be? Does a witness have to be voted for in order to be a witness?
Peer to Peer (P2P)
I would prefer that Steem allows people to mine Steem like people mine Bitcoin or to be Steem witnesses similar to how IPFS and Bit Torrent works. I don't know if Steem allows for this already or not but that is what I would prefer, that anybody can run Steem to help decentralize Steem, to help backup the data running on Steem as the more the computers the better.
Steem used to be mined long before I joined. There are witness "producer" rewards, but I am not sure how they function or. see for example https://steemd.com/@yabapmatt
It also appears that witnesses not in the top 20 can still get producer rewards. see https://steemd.com/@klye
I've never set up a witness node. I hear they are hungry for RAM-and ideally you need hardware that is probably better than what is in your typical budget home pc [not that I shopped in years]. But I would suppose that anyone who has the money for such a system, a good enough internet speed, and knows how to use or is able to learn how to use unix/linux could run a witness node. There are cost associated with running a witness node. Ignoring any labor costs they include: the financing of the machine; the electricity to run it or for cooling, and; maybe a higher monthly bill for internet. This may not be profitable nor possible for everyone.
People get to vote for witnesses, and the rank is based upon the sp of those votes. The old saying, "building a better mouse trap isn't enough" is true. Steem is a better platform than tron, but tron won in the marketing department. To be a top 20 witness doesn't mean going out and making a custom made system by itself, but marketing why you should be voted on as a witness....particularly to the major stake holders.
Thanks for giving me another reasonable witness to vote for. This is how change should be addressed.
They could be thinking of some kind of Pegged-Steem on Tron.
Luke, you are thinking win-win, AKA mutual benefit, and I agree, and I hope they don't try to do what Facebook does. I'm not saying they can. I'm just speaking theoretically to an extent, meaning they could try. I don't know one way or another. I'm just thinking hypothetically, long-term speaking, as I'm concerned with slippery slopes, AKA the ability for good things to declines towards potential risks, problems, relating to censorship. The only thing more critical than censorship might be in regards to the mechanism behind voting for witnesses, who gets to vote, the weight of the votes, the whole system, which could be dangerous if Tron were to have too much power over voting for witnesses. Well, I'm not sure how it works. So, I can't say Tron has too much power. I'm just saying that if they do, then that can be dangerous. But then again, maybe not dangerous. But the possibility is still there.
I personally see absolutely nothing beneficial TRON may offer me except money to fund you guys..
I find TRON to be a centralized piece of shit blockchain that is almost completely controlled by Justin and Binance. (Kinda kills the point of a blockchain, doesnt it.)
If you get funded to continue working on STEEM, im happy with that.
My biggest fears of Justin attempting a powerplay to become a "De facto" owner of the chain still remains and i think that should be addressed before anything else.
We need to put in safeguards in place.
We need to keep Steem decentralized and this purchase by Justin clearly shows how vulnerable we really are.
It's baked in the cake.
Proof of stake bites us in the ass.
Well, not really. The last 2-3 years of inflation really pulled us out of being just like TRON and as time goes on we will become more and more decentralized due to distribution.
Right now Dolphins+Orcas outweigh Justins stake here. That wasnt the case few years ago. Stinc used to have 50%+ stake in Steem.
I know what you mean an I'm well aware of this. But now when we're kind of in the spotlight the things can change overnight. A couple of big investors can clean out the exchanges and our distribution is skewed again.
Considering your concerns, I hope you will advocate for changing witness votes to reflect how DPoS should actually work. Presently 1 Steem = 30 witness votes, which multiplies the advantage large stakeholders have 30x.
It is proposed that 1 Steem = 1 witness vote. This is how the community of stakeholders should effect governance via DPoS.
Thanks!
Id like to see multiple options be presented and scenarios played out to see which option is the best.
I resort to sound principle when considering things, and I think you tend to as well, which is why we agree so often. DPoS is based on stake creating and resulting from greater skin in the game, and stake should therefore be an accurate representation of governance, which 1 Steem = 1 vote is.
It isn't a matter of how it 'should' work. The current system is an approximation of approval voting (in fact, under true approval voting the number of votes would be unlimited, but this was changed not for any governance reason but due to an exploit concerning backup witnesses).
Approval voting has the property of electing the witnesses which are approved by the broadest and maximum amount of voting stake. Under most conditions this would be good, as it sets the maximum threshold for an attacker to come in with a narrow amount of stake and elect witnesses contrary to the broader consensus.
In this case, what people are trying to accomplish is not to represent the broadest and maximum amount of stake, but in fact handicap the largest stakeholder (who in fact has an absolute majority relative to actively voting stake). In a sense, this is exactly the opposite of what good, secure, governance would do.
That being said, it may be a reasonable tradeoff (lower security for less majority control) to limit the influence of the largest stakeholder in this specific situation.
Presently the witness voting system multiplies the advantage of substantial stakeholders 30x over lesser staked voters.
Given Steem's situation has evolved from when the founders held the stake they mined, and now that stake is no longer in the hands of the founders, it's best to remove the mechanism that allowed them to exercise instant governance of Steem at their sole option, which is what the 30x votepower did.
Theoretically the community could band together and prevent that stake from completely effecting control of consensus witnesses, sooner or later. In reality one stakeholder will be focused on a purpose, while hundreds or thousands will be diverse instead, and will be very unlikely to focus enough to successfully oppose that stake if it is deployed malevolently.
Tron could sell to Goolag, and then we'd end.
Representing stake 30x does not increase the range of stake represented. It simply increases the advantage large stakeholders have over lesser stakeholders by 30x.
It's a vast increase in security - not a decrease - to change witness voting to 1 Steem = 1 vote.
No it doesn't. Everyone has the same 30 votes, both big and small alike. Both stakes are multiplied to the extent that all 30 votes are used.
1 SP = 30 SP worth of votes
1 million SP = 30 million SP worth of votes.
There is no systematic multiplication of larger stake over smaller here.
What multiple votes (approaching the original full approval voting with unlimited votes) does do, among other things, mostly good, is a better job of translating the choices of the majority of stake into a full set of witnesses acceptable to the largest share of stake, and protected against smaller share attackers.
I don't necessarily disagree with your point here, but realize that what you are proposing is enabling a sort of "attack" where the minority stake (about 40%) is given increased power, because in this case we've decided that the majority (about 60%) happens to no longer be owned by founders, and that is "no good".
That certainly 'feels' like a good thing in this particular situation, but it wouldn't feel like a good thing if the 40% were in the hands of someone trying to cause damage and the 60% were in "good" hands. The existing system is more secure because it would keeps that from happening; the proposed one would not.
Again, this could be an acceptable, even perhaps desirable, tradeoff, but don't fail to recognize it for what it is.
You can say what you want to, but the example you pose proves my point. The holder of 1 Million SP gained 29 Million, while the holder of 1 SP gained 29, a difference of 28,999,971 in favor of the larger stakeholder. The 30x increase in SP of larger stakeholders dramatically increases their influence over the witnesses, and I reckon the founders did this in order to be able to attain instant total control of Steem governance at their sole option, which the founder's stake enabled.
It enables that control still, but the founders no longer possess it.
If removing the back door to total control over Steem, and the massive grant of power to larger stakeholders over lesser, is considered an 'attack' then so is surgery for cancer.
There is no reason to continue practices that benefited the founders when those founders are no longer here.
Honestly that is a silly argument. In any system of votes if you multiply everyone's votes by 2 or 10 or 1/2 or a million, everyone still has the same share of the votes.
The multiplication does not do what you claim.
There are good reasons for approval-type voting in this context which have nothing to do with the founders wanting to have had complete control. In fact, originally the founders had a much larger share than Tron has now, and probably would have had complete control even under the system you propose.
What you are trying to do is give more influence to a distinct minority stake. That's laudable in some sense, but you can't avoid recognizing that weakens the security of the chain, which relies on: a) the majority being honest, and b) maximizing the threshold that a dishonest minority much reach in order to gain influence.
I disagree that this is equitable, because witness votes are measured in Steem voted them. While proportions may remain relatively the same, in real terms the larger stakes effect greater influence over the witnesses. 30M votes greatly outweighs 3M votes in an election, and it doesn't matter at all that they are proportionately the same to the actual stake of the voters. In real votes they are dramatically divergent, and that's how witness votes are counted.
But you know that.
Well, what I am seeking to do is to eliminate the massive over representation of substantial stakeholders to influence the witnesses by multiplying their VP 30 fold. They already have most of the stake. Letting them vote it 30 times increases their influence, which is already greater than all the redfish and minnows together, 30 fold more. Doing that does increase the influence of the majority of voters, so despite phrasing it pejoratively as if it were undue granting of privilege, it is technically increasing the influence of the majority of voters, by reducing the undue influence that has previously been granted whales, so that the founder's stake could exercise instant at will control of the governance of the chain. While the founder's stake was not deployed, the whales enjoyed 30x the influence on the witnesses their stakes merited over redfish, minnows, and dolphins.
What is necessary to improve security of the witnesses with the founders stake in the wild now, is to eliminate that disproportionate influence allowing that massive stake to vote 30 times. The witnesses aren't voted proportionately, but actually. The Steem backing them is what counts. Larger stakes voting once wield 30x less Steem in real terms than they do voting 30x.
But you know that.
This is no justification for granting large stakeholders 30x more votes. That's a ludicrous argument, because whales and orcas alone wield more stake than all redfish, minnows, and dolphins combined. Those lesser stakeholders, the majority of the voters, aren't the threat to the security of the chain.
It's the whales that are the minority with a majority stake that is a threat to the security of the chain, and particularly the one stakeholder with ~1/3 of extant stake, because 30x over representation grants them inordinate power to influence the witnesses.
Do not misrepresent these facts any longer. It is facile to see through your mischaracterization.
And what about the community coming to a consensus regarding those potential changes?
Only the top 20 witnesses need to reach consensus, the communities' input is via stakebased voting for witnesses.
And if high ranking witnesses are taking actions you disagree with, I advise you to remove your vote for them or campaign for yourself or other witnesses.
Adding you back. Thanks for the reminder.
"And if high ranking witnesses are taking actions you disagree with, I advise you to remove your vote for them or campaign for yourself or other witnesses."
Does that include using their steem power and high reputations to downvote all the posts from members they do not agree with for any reason, like the scumball witness @themarkymark does. That is censorship at its worst, to say the least. And some will even call it fraud.
Yes, I literally said if you do not agree with a witness then do not vote for them. That is entirely the point of voting.
If you don't want anyone to vote for a witness, campaign against them or something.
If you think using downvotes is fraud, you need to get off a social platform of any sort quickly. I can only imagine how you must feel when someone doesn't agree with you.
"If you think using downvotes is fraud, you need to get off a social platform of any sort quickly. I can only imagine how you must feel when someone doesn't agree with you."
First of all, there is a vast difference in having a post downvoted by someone because they did not like it for some reason, and having a vindictive hateful witness who out of sheer spite and hate, retaliates by going through and downvoting all of a members 100s of posts so as to completely destroy that person's reputation. These scumbag witnesses, i.e. @themarkymark and his band of criminals, have not only done this to me, but have done it to 1000s of members, which is why Steemit was sold, and will likely be shut down sooner than later.
Secondly, no other forum on the Internet offers rewards for posts/comments or curation, and then allows its management and witnesses to downvote all of a user's posts in order to completely destroy that person's reputation and get paid nothing for all their efforts, yet at the same time, pay out 100s of thousands of dollars to those witnesses. If you think that is fair, then I really feel sorry for you, and people like you. Have a nice day!
You should follow #informationwar as you may find some people who might upvote you.
I understand that, it's more of a worry regarding the fact that those witnesses and that entire structure itself is merely ignored with changes being implemented without asking the community to discuss and vote first.
I try to vote for witnesses that are engaged with community for that reason, so they at least hear feedback from actual people who use the Dapps and site. They don't have to agree, but being willing to hear it matters.
"witnesses and that entire structure itself is merely ignored with changes being implemented"
Witnesses should have no say whatsoever in what rules are implemented. When they do, they do so only for their own personal advantage, and not at all for the community at large. Is it fair that scumballs like @themarkymark can earn over $135,000 while downvoting and cheating lower-reputation members out of all their rewards so that their reputations are ruined and they get nothing at all? I think not! I call that fraud, but what else can you expect from such a lousy scumbag?
Star World, do you prefer a democracy or a republic? My question is in reference to what you wrote: "Witnesses should have no say whatsoever in what rules are implemented." My second question is, do you like free markets? It is true that Steem has problems. One of them might be relating to witnesses. Another issue is the downvoting which can be problematic. Now, all of this can be pretty complex. I encourage Steemit, I mean Tron, to mirror free markets and a republic type system as opposed to the potential of mob-ruling democracy, etc.
"Star World, do you prefer a democracy or a republic?"
A combination of both! While I am certainly pro-democracy, there are instances where there must be a certain degree of control over those who are abnormal in some way and lack the ability to reason the difference between right and wrong.
Would you want to allow a mad man to buy a gun without question, knowing that he planned to use it for no good? Would you want your kids to fall victim to your corner drug pusher, or to some pervert, or perhaps even worse? Would you like to fall victim to a major scam or have your bank account cleaned our with no recourse to get your money back? Would you like to drive your car on a road where insurance was not mandatory, and there were no laws to protect the innocent from the villains? If you are normal, you would not be in favor of any of those scenarios.
Indeed! Without such control, clearly society as a whole would decent into total chaos. Power is not something that you are given, but rather it is something that you take if given the opportunity to do so. When there is no one to stop a power hungry person, they will more than likely turn corrupt and try to destroy the rest of society. History is filled with such people.
Are you against the second amendment? Who do you want to help keep your family safe, federal government or you? I prefer local communities over the tyranny and authoritarianism of global government. Do you want government to grow and grow, bigger and bigger? History shows patterns of how people try to take more an more power. But they generally try to do so by pretending to help keep us safe.
"Are you against the second amendment?"
No, I am not totally against the second amendment! What I am against however is the fact that there have been no changes to it since its original drafting, to actually define the term "arms".
When the second amendment was first drafted, firearms were no more than single shot pistols and rifles which had to be reloaded after every shot. That fact alone would have made mass shootings as we see so widely today, totally impossible.
The second amendment should be changed. Otherwise one day (perhaps not far off), some mad man is going to come up with a micro-nuclear firearm, and claim that under the constitution, it is his "right" to carry it. Really? If you truly want your family and kids to be safe, you will do all you can to make sure that day never happens. Changing the constitution now would be a great first step.
"And what about the community coming to a consensus regarding those potential changes?"
Don't count on it. What management does will be done solely to benefit those at the top, not the rest of us. History has proven that fact rather well. They get rich, and the rest of us get virtually nothing.
Thanks for the update, it was about time.
I will make a short recap of your post (reflecting, obviously, what I understood from it):
Not very reassuring, but at least not catastrophic.
Since I don't see any mentions of SMT, I take it that this is not a priority anymore. Probably a new path, involving TRON tokens, will be approached.
I also don't see, as @netuoso stated, nothing about a specific governance commitment, apart from written promises. These might be useful, to a certain extent - I don't dismiss them entirely, on the contrary, thank you for them - but, as both the Steemit Inc. team and the STEEM community know, blocks can't be signed with written promises. It takes a lot more than that, from cryptographic signatures embedded in a specific software, deployed on machines linked in a network, all this supported with time, money and skills. You can also read the last part simply by saying out loud "witnesses".
Without witnesses, there wouldn't have been any strategic partnership. Without content contributors and curators, there wouldn't have been any strategic partnership.
I'm not feeling taken out from the game, but I certainly, as witness, don't feel like I'm a part of it anymore. On the contrary, seems like the entire concept of STEEM witnesses is quite weakened by this "strategic move".
Would appreciate any answer you have to these concerns.
(upvoted for visibility)
I am still stuck on Suns choice of imagery on Twitter. When you play Jenga, the tower eventually falls down and scatters all the blocks. It may be nothing or it may be a warning to us that he has the power to knock down all the blocks if he doesn't get his way. Or maybe it's his way of showing dominance that he's already toppled us?
Also, many people have "promised" many things and have gone back on their words. So how can we even "trust" anything you write or say? And, what has been written or said so far about the acquisition is generic and clear as mud at best. You are simply placating Steemians to buy more time.
I think you should create a smart contract that pays all STEEM holders every time you lie, go back on a promise or misrepresent timelines. This way we don't have to trust you. So each time we get screwed we at least get paid!
I feel sorry for the Steemit Inc employees that were fired due to Ned's incompetence and ego. His ego made him deaf to all suggestions from the STEEM community. Hopefully this time around you will listen to the Witnesses, Developers and STEEM community at large. We have so much talent on this Blockchain but egos need to be put in check. Had he listened, maybe Steemit Inc would have been in a position to make Tron obsolete. But instead, you must Bend the Knee.
I agree. I am not sure if we can trust them.
only trust a Smart Contract
Yeah, I'm just gonna leave this here. I just hope that he won't be using his stake on Steem like he does with TRX. Call me Elmer FUD but this doesn't exaclty install with confidence.
https://steempeak.com/tron/@anthonyadavisii/that-s-not-a-good-look-justin-word-2-my-naysayer-s
I didn't know there was a Tron community. How is it doing? If it is not doing well, then we should be talking about that on the assumption that this boat could sink as well.
Thanks for selling out to the biggest clown in the crypto space
Is Steem going to be phased out?