(PART 2 )Justin Sun, This is how you win our support...

After the Tron announcement was made, I wrote this post aimed at @justinsunsteemit, hoping to convince him to trust the community and earn our support. I suggested he:

• Give the community a balance of power
• Get to know us
• Leave as much in place as possible
• Focus his efforts on marketing
• Throw some tokens our way as a sign of good will.

That post was meant for Justin, this one is more for the community.

Obviously things have taken a kind of ugly turn, with the witnesses agreeing to softfork a lock on steemitincs stake and Justin overriding it by voting out our witnesses with some help from the exchanges. Oh boy. Then he called our witnesses hackers. I laughed when I heard that because I thought he was claiming the whole thing was an accident and a hacker came in and voted out the witnesses. I didn't realize he was calling our community members hackers. Ouch.

So for the last 24 hours, while the community was getting up in arms, I was sulking because I honestly don't see how a fork would allow us to continue to grow. If one of the communities wants to fork and make a community without much intention of raising the value of a currency, that could work, but to fork and expect steem to ever reach all time highs just sounds completely unlikely and while I am here for the community, the money makes it easy to justify putting so much time and energy into when we have to pay bills. I also know how hard it is to rally everyone together, how easily factions form and how much we would end up disagreeing on.

I do not want to fight. We can draw a line but if the other party is willing to step back we should do the same.

After listening to the meeting with witnesses and Justin, I see a new way forward. Our best chances at remaining a strong community is one where we move forward together with Tron but where we insist on them proving to us that they will leave the main decisions to the community. We don't have to be hard handed and drastic about this, we just need to reach an agreement through conversation. Despite the drama that played out these two days, this still seems very possible.

I don't know if I like Justin. I don't know if I trust Justin. From everything I've seen in my life, I have a hard time trusting or liking people in positions of power and so I'm extra wary, especially because of some former issues Tron had with their whitepaper, and the level of ambition that Justin has. I just can't trust someone who seems to want to buy everything he can, and I generally don't trust businessmen. That being said, I think Justin's position is relatively easy to understand now that we have heard a bit more from him.

I don't know if Justin is trustworthy, but I think we can conclude that he is reasonable. For now that is all we need from him.

According to Justin, he sees his stake as his property, and he wants to make a return on his investment. He is a businessman and making money is his primary goal. He says he wants to stay away from the politics, and while I'd argue that everything is political and it's impossible to stay out of politics, I think what he means to say is that he is OK letting the community decide how to run steem. While I don't know if we can trust that he won't see a reason to get involved in governance if he sees it as a way to add value to his investment, I do think we can trust him when he says his primary goal with Steem is to make money.

We locked up his stake (and this part is in my own words) made him feel that we were stealing his fancy new car and holding it hostage with a set of conditions that we wanted him to fulfill. Realistically, this is not really how it is at all, but it's easy to understand why he would feel that way. The way he went about dealing with it with the exchanges was....questionable to say the least. Still, I think it's easy to understand the position Justin is in, he does not want to feel like we are blackmailing him and keeping his investment away from him, and if possible, he wants to protect himself against being blackmailed. Once again, that's not a perspective we need to agree with it, but understanding it may allow us to find a win-win situation.

So here is a set of terms which I hope could influence a proposal to Justin that leads to a truce and an agreement to work together and build this community and avoid turning this into a fork war.

Here is what I suggest:

Get a legal document stating that Justin, steemitinc, and anyone tied to tron or Justin (including exchanges) will not use their stake for voting (directly or indirectly)

We may not all value legality, but I do believe steemit is registered as a company and has to follow the laws if we want to avoid being attacked by regulatory institutions. A legal document would help give us leverage and it will be necessary to guarantee that Justin follows his word. We may see a promise on the blockchain as enough, but this is probably not how he sees it.

We can set into the terms that by signing this agreement and upholding it, the witnesses will not do anything to Justin's stake again. We just want a guarantee that it won't be used against us.

Let Justin decide what he wants to do with his stake so long as we can get a guarantee that it won't be used for voting or swaying the ecosystem away from community consensus.

Look, I don't like that anyone has such a big stake. I think that's what is wrong with the world economy and I can't see crypto going much better if we don't learn from our mistakes. But we also have to realize that Justin made a purchase, and as a businessman, I don't think he is going to be willing to give it up. As far as it being used for development...I think this is something the community is going to have to concede on. We can try to convince him to use it for things we see as beneficial for the community, but in order to avoid future drama, we should be willing to make concessions on this.

I do think we should agree to get a written commitment to reducing his stake within a set period of time for the sake of decentralization. Perhaps that agreement can allow him to be the largest shareholder but set some limitations or regulations that will allow him to make a return on his investment and also leave more power in the hands of the community.

"We need a guy"

No, we don't need a guy. They need a guy. They need a person we can talk to. Justin is obviously busy being a millionaire and buying things he doesn't really understand (I'm being a bit mean here, Justin, but you called our witnesses hackers) and so we need someone we have easy access to, someone we like and someone who wants to get to know us as a community. We have Elizabeth to work with this person from Tron whenever the community becomes too polarized on a given issue, but this person should be tasked full time with keeping an open line of contact between Justin and the steem community. Roy or whoever else Justin sees fit. We should be able to request a replacement if we don't get along with this person. This person should address us directly in a way that doesn't contradict what we hear from steemitinc and keeps us informed. They should get involved in discussions the way some of steemitinc does.

Speaking of which.

A bunch of people from steemitinc left and we need to do something about that

We need some transparency about what happened to the members of steemitinc who quit. They need to be let back on if they are willing to continue working following whatever agreement we come to, and if they don't want to come back on, most or all replacements should come from the community.

Overall transparency and an end to conflicting statements on twitter

duh and duh

An apology for calling our witnesses hackers and for utilizing the exchanges in such a way

We need Justin to give his following a more accurate view of what actually happened and we need to know it won't happen again. We will agree to leave his stake alone if he agrees to the community terms.

---

Justin seems willing to do all of these things. While I think it's undeniable that the way things happened with the exchanges was underhanded, I think we should also try to see where he was coming from. He seems like a reasonable guy when you work with him. He has emotional intelligence and he really can offer us what we've been lacking this whole time. It also seems clear that if we don't work together we both lose.

The important thing here is to align our interests. We don't even have to like or trust each other right now. We just have to make sure we can find some common ground and I think this is a good foundation for that. What do you think?

And one more note to Justin: A meeting like that one BEFORE retaliating would have been enough to create a positive relationship with the community. You were almost there. I really appreciate the way you talk to us, it's a lot more respectful than Ned. You don't treat us like idiots and you are much more aware of what we want. This whole drama is a result of you not being fully aware of what you bought and us being a bit more complicated than a simple investment. I hope you can see that despite the headaches we are giving you, this passion is what makes us more valuable than you even thought we were.

2 weeks will not be enough to understand steem and the steem community. 2 years is just barely enough. So please apologize and let's put this past us. I hope we can call this a misunderstanding and move forward. If you can keep working with us here and give us some guarantees mentioned above, we will make sure you get a return on your investment. No 指鹿为马 please :-D

If I can be of any help to either side, please let me know. I just want a win-win