Dear @asimpleman.

Softfork222 was after deliberate discussions implemented amongst a supermajority because:

1. The status quo about the Steemit stake had become more of a risk, since no contact was returned and answers were given.
2. Mixed PR publication from new Steemit Inc owners did not indicate they were going to honour the liabilities coming with the Steemit stake in question.

Softfork222 had always been earmarked as a temporarily measurement. It was a though decision to make.

In a softfork one cannot freeze accounts. The keys to the accounts are still valid and the account could certainly perform many of the operations of the steem blockchain software. For example the creation of new accounts was still possible. The operations blocked were carefully chosen to just maintain the status quo of the special stake and it's usage.

Then the majority of witnesses ran software which prevented certain operations for the given accounts to be executed. Mind you... anyone could unvote those witnesses at any given time and have other witnesses voted in who didn't run that specific version 22.2. But no, many more votes poured in on the witnesses running 22.2.

Then the 22.5 take over with customer funds via exchanges happened and 22.2 was undone.