My understanding and thoughts regarding this ongoing witness battle
Since the recent top 20 witness battle has started, I have received many messages asking my actions and rationales behind them. Some also asked what Korean community thinks.
While I cannot say anything on behalf of the Korean community (people have different opinions), I believe that if I write up my understanding and thoughts it would be helpful for non-Korean Steemians so that they may find it easier to understand how many Korean steem users view these events.
- This is the point of writing this long article in English (which I seldom do).
Let me clarify the terms first, as it seems that the same word is being used in many different ways across different articles.
"22.2 community": witnesses who has agreed to soft fork 22.2 and users who support 22.2
"Justin": Justin Sun, tron, Steem INC.
"sct community": Steemcoinpan (steem engine tribe) users, in particular users who proxied to @proxy.token.
I want to make it very clear before I start: I simply wanted to balance between 22.2 community and Justin so that neither side could fork (if they have super majority of top 20) before I hear from both sides regarding future roadmap - how to improve STEEM. My witness voting for tron puppets does NOT mean that I support them. Proxy.token's intention is the same and lots of other Korean users share similar opinion.
Several days after Justin bought Steem INC from Ned, I learned that there was a soft fork 22.2 that freezes Steem INC's accounts.
It was shocking that witnesses (and select few - according to the screenshot below, total 65) made the decision and executed with without any public discussion, and still claims that "this statement has been co-authored by the Steem community..."
Thoughts 1: So "Steem community" is 65 users who were invited to the private channel.
Thoughts 2: Wow, so it means that witnesses may freeze anyone's account, potentially including mine, without any notice? If they can do this to the biggest investor, they can simply ignore non-whale like me fairly easily. And who would like to invest large sum of money to Steem if his account may get frozen anytime?
Later, 22.2 community explained that it was a "preventive" measure because they have not heard from Justin ("there have been a lot of uncertainties around the company and its continued use of the assets it controls, ...") and it is a soft fork that is reversible.
Thoughts 3: so this action was based on mere assumptions, or "IF"s. Basically, witnesses took Justin's accounts in custody and saying that they may give back his accounts.
I read the replies, and most of them were supportive. And for non-supportive ones, I saw lots of hostility and ridicule towards them.
Thoughts 4: It seems that users like @tcpolymath and @rentmoney (who I "met" at Splinterlands games) already expressed similar concerns, so no need for me to repeat. And I may get attacked like below (see below for a sample - I do not know who they are but it seems pretty aggressive) , so why take risk.
I also learned that the reasons cited were (1) these stakes were ninja-mined and (2) there was an "agreement" or "promise" that Steem INC steem power (and steem) should be used in a specific way.
Later I asked @aggroed, one of the 22.2 witnesses that I still vote for, regarding this. His explanation was the following:
- There are other ninja-mined stakes, including freedom, blocktrades, etc.
- But Steem INC accounts were the only ones with "social contract" that Steem INC funds should be used in a certain way.
Thoughts 5: wait, "social contract" is not a legal term (see wikipedia) that can be used for a corporation. And are there any legal documents stating above?
So I asked aggroed about official, preferably legal document that shows such alleged obligations (he said he would come back to me). In the meanwhile, I consulted a US lawyer (NY state) and she was skeptical that "evidences" suggested in postings like Evidence of Steemit Inc making representations about use of ninja-mined stake and https://steem.com/2017roadmap.pdf could be used as legally binding evidence.
And Justin fired back with the same "sneak" attack and got his accounts back and set 20 puppet witnesses.
Thoughts 6: wait, can you use exchange fund to power up and cast witness votes? I haven't read all details when I make an account at Binance, but it is likely that they should not use the customer funds without explicit(written) consent.
- I still do not know the legal details regarding this, but this issue is not primary unless these exchanges vote again.
And 22.2 community led a campaign asking for votes. These was even a case where they were clearly buying votes:
Thoughts 7: If I remember correctly, buying votes was blamed/condemned so far. Maybe from now on, selling/buying witness votes would be okay. It seems like a bad precedent.
When 5 of the 22.2 community witnesses made to top 20 again, @proxy.token (managed by SCT community) asked witnesses' opinions on Steem issues such as power-down period ([공지] @proxy.token 증인 투표 운영 방침(@proxy.token witness voting policy) before making votes.
No witness replied.
Not very surprising, as sct community used to be ignored and sometimes even faced hostile attacks, including downvotes and ridicules (Several members were even getting auto-downvoted no matter what just because "it was not written in English" or "no thumbnail" or "too much rewards").
I used to proxy to @proxy.token, but when I read this I cleared proxy and voted for 20 tron puppets and some witnesses that I support.
Thoughts 8: I expected that no attention will be given unless proxy.token actually shows that they may change the main witnesses. They would like to make decisions based on answers from witnesses, but if they do not vote first they won't get answers.
After 6 hours, proxy.token has learned and fired witness votes. Now 17 tron witnesses are top 20.
And suddenly SCT discord channel and the previous posting got popular.
SCT community (including myself) enjoyed talking to witnesses and other Steemians and I believe that it was very productive. In short,
22.2 witnesses asked to put enough non-tron top 20 witnesses (5 or more) to prevent hard-fork from Justin. SCT community agreed and made 7 non-tron witnesses top 20. [공지] @proxy.token 증인투표 추가.
SCT community asked Steem Foundation to present future roadmap/plan for Steem in 3 days, and aggroed and shadowspub(current chair of the Foundation) said they would.
5 hours ago, Justin showed up at SCT discord channel. He confirmed "real Justin" by tweeting:
While we wanted to have constructive discussion, it did not go well. Justin repeated the same thing (I bought steem with my hard earned money, I do not like to see someone's assets get frozen, I agree with what proxy.token suggested) but didn't have a chance to say something about his future plans, as some users from 22.2 community were too emotional and overly aggressive.
Thoughts 9: Calling the other party "liar" after each dialogue didn't help the conversation get going. Maybe we should get one representative from each side and let them debate how they will improve STEEM.
Almost there. It went a lot longer than I had thought.
So ... My final thoughts:
It seems that it would be quite difficult to reach an agreement. Both sides (22.2 community and Justin) got emotional and cannot trust each other at this point.
Justin cannot dump STEEM and take profit: even if he could power down all of his steem power, there's no way that he could sell them without destroying STEEM price and sell STEEM at a very low price since he got too many.
I do not see clear path for the future - so what if Justin leaves or forfeits? STEEM was slowly dying before Justin, and I expected this STEEM INC deal would be a positive catalyst - but it seems that this is not going well, and I don't know what or how we may change the situation. I will wait for the STEEM foundation to present its roadmap.
For now, I am leaning towards 22.2 community after reading @Justinsunsteemit witness voting policy - Justin, you don't use "fuck" multiple times if you want serious answers. While some of 22.2 community also lack manners, I believe that I can find people who are ready to work out a solution in a civil way.
I am now worried about potential repercussion: obviously I was not an ardent supporter of the 22.2, and I belong to a minority group (Korean). Isn't it possible that some people from 22.2 community attack me (downvoting, etc) or even freeze my account?
I would like to thank @proxy.token, @aggroed, @kopasi, @jayplayco, @stoodkev, @thecryptodrive, @dakeshi, @roelandp, @therealwolf, @dalz, @themarkymark, @steempress, and SCT community members for joining the SCT discord conversation, providing information, and sharing your opinions.
I think that the witnesses involved at least represent many more than the 65, as they are voted upon by the community.
The SCT community is very small (300 posters?), but I think it is the third highest by payout due to the amount of stake held in that small group. Yes, stake is your voice and the proxy token is using the stake available. However, that 65 witnesses and select few also are generally highly staked users also and have been involved with the Steem community for a very long time - which is why they have the community support of many thousands of votes.
This is a complex issue of course, but I think that Steem has to be decentralized at the governance level, and Tron do not seem to actually want that, they want either their puppet witnesses or - puppet witnesses that they will use the Steemit Inc stake to control. Either way, it is a risk.
I really hope that at least some good can come of this, but I fear that it is going to come down to a small group of people trying to make as much money as they can, at the future cost to many thousands of users.
Anyway, at least people are actually talking and getting interested in what is important on Steem, rather than focusing on the rewards like normal.
I think you raised valid points. Thank you for sharing your opinion and providing relative information.
and cannot agree more on the last part - now we are really talking about how to improve steem, instead of how to divide limited/fixed reward pool.
It has been a long time coming, but I think we as a community are actually seeing that there is a lot more value in this place than what comes out of the Steem reward pool. I am looking forward to SMTs - they were so close... :D
we could argue about that stake, and maybe he did not know what Ned and steemit were saying for 4 years, but if there was a reason for soft fork i would say it is Tron foundation public posts about steem swapping for tron smart token and steem blockchain migrating to tron blockchain. that looks like imminent threat to the blockchain. this was their weekly report just few hours before the Soft fork
I know downvotes were abused sometimes, and i really don't know what was downvoted in your community (not because i don't like you, it is just because i don't understand) but i would like to know how you look at for example i post a blurry mobile phone photo and write "this is great" and get 100 steem for that, you see that as milking the system or is it ok to you?
you probably heard by now that 3 days powerdown would not work on steem because how RC, Steem Power, reward sistem works, and as we seen it would give exchanges an easy way to manipulate witnesses. Power up, do a Hard Fork, Power down and play stupid because they would have its stake in 3 days.
"And suddenly SCT discord channel and the previous posting got popular." justin also did not contact or answered anyones call until his stake was Soft forked :D
i really don't think so, as i see no one downvoted this post, also you need 17 people to be ok with freezing someone's account, and i am sure it would never happen. there were some "epic" whale wars, with a lot of downvoting, spam, hate words and no one even suggested it.
Also you know that witnesses can run in the code whatever they want if 17 of them agree on it. that is why is kinda important to vote on people you trust, especially if you have a chunk of steem. And from what i know, this 20 that were in top 20 are not all really getting along in normal situations (i could be wrong, it's not some inside info, just what i gathered)
Thank you for your input.
Justin made many confusing and sometimes conflictng comments, which shows that he does not know much of steem blockchain. And your blue screenshot is certainly one of them.
I think the part you quoted were not consistently argued from Justin, and I did not put much weight on such comment unless something concrete happens.
And I also think that it is okay to miss technical details - there are engineers for that. For example, it was not only Justin who did not know the detail. Lots of 22.2 community argued that powerdown period cannot be reduced below 7 days due to the reward system, but steemit engineer said that technically it is 5 days due to RC system. I don't think such details matter as long as we can reach an agreement to shorten powerdown period, for example.
And for the last part... of course this post is not likely be downvoted at this time when lots of 22.2 community want support from me and korean community. But I am not sure about what would happen when 22.2 community takes control and freeze Justin's accounts and get full power to do whatever they want. I would not be surprised to see lots of attacks against non 22.2 supporters, when I see such aggressive and sometime hostile/rude attitude already.
As someone that has endured a significant barrage of flags, while I don't recommend it, the fact is that when we stand for something, sometimes we get in the way of others and are abused for it.
I hope you don't get flagged, particularly not as was I, but reckon you'll survive it if you are, as I did. Nothing worth doing is ever easy.
i seen at least 4-5 posts by official tron foundation sources in 10 days. we can say that it was a marketing plan, so they had no idea what they bought and that what they were saying was the initial plan, but they could have inform the marketing people and say, we are not doing this stop posting that. that for me looks like a threat to the steem blockchain.
And if something concrete happens it is to late. because more concrete would be a token swap. from the talks that i heard i am 100% sure that if they thought that they have hard fork for 1-3 day powerdown ready they would implement it the first day when they used exchanges to take over steem. and i think that was the plan but they did not plan that steemit inc developers would quit and left them with no devs to code it that quick.
a lot of the witnesses are not running the code with soft fork.
i can't guarantee you that no one will downvote you but i am 100% sure that there are no 17 people that would agree to lock your coin.
Perfect point. 👌
Just as this post by @glory7 makes me more hopeful that the Korean community is acting in good faith to bring all parties to the table, that's the same motivation I believe our witnesses had when utilizing the soft fork.
Thanks for going into detail, mate. Some of the rhetoric on both sides has been unnecessarily inflammatory.
I'd like to see us pull together, with or without Justin; roll out SMTs; and run all sorts of experiments with upvotes/downvotes and staking periods.
haven't talked you for a while - glad to see your comment.
I agree with you that this is a nice time to run experiments and test policies recommended by various communities.
I think especially new accounts should have less Influence on Witnesses if they recently powered up big amounts of SP. Also there should be a hardcap that only allows to have a maximum of 10% of influence in the community no matter how much SP one has.
I support this. but it is a bit tricky. This will ensure even more decentralization but opens room for a large stakeholder to split stake between accounts to achieve the same thing we're trying to prevent. Would be interesting to give this more thought though.
I recently wrote a post about a formula im developing. Its far from finished and just a rough idea (dont even know if it works that way with Steem), but i think this could be interesting:
https://steempeak.com/steem/@remotehorst23/steem-blockchain-has-a-major-problem-and-maybe-the-solution-is-pretty-easy
i will take a look at it in the morning. Thank you
What about a timed/delayed power up time (2-14 days)? So if something happens like this again, we can reach out to those users (exchanges) before they vote in the sock puppets/take over the chain.
Thanks for your Question!
I think, delayed power uptime would only solve this problem for exchanges, but we need to expect that this can also happen from individuals and also if they split the votepower on many accounts this probably would be under the radar.
Voters either need to be identified or trusted. I would prefer the latter.
Ya, it seems once it gets down into many smaller accounts this would definitely be harder to track unless the voting behavior was identical/unanimous and same times etc.
Thank you for sharing this opinion.
Many people were nervous that the Korean community is confused. Some of them were saying ignorant things. This post demonstrates a clear understanding of the situation as I see it.
I was excited when I found Steem was bought out but I wish it was anyone besides Justin Sun (you mentioned his rude attitude behaviour), he is infamous for this crude attitude (Actually, the blockchain is like the wild west and Justin is a wild cowboy). I didn't know about 22.2 until after they did it, but I realized after it was done, they needed support. I was very upset the exchanges got involved (that is definitely a legal issue, those exchanges are registered in a country with the law).
I see the issue with the Steemit Steem as whether it is custodial trust (Steemit is the manager) or private property (their decision). I tend to think investing in the blockchain is dangerous because of poor regulation (there is no global authority). Possession is the most important. The reputation of Steem was irreversibly harmed by the actions of the witnesses and then harmed again by Justin.
I am also nervous about the potential of being attacked again and again. However, this threat is the nature of the Steem blockchain. We are all nervous about it moving forward. I will change a lot of my witness votes after this is done.
Actually this really shocked me. Your perspective on this issue is really interesting for me. I thought of it as an event or mission. I never thought to buy witness votes was an issue.
It is ironic, I read the 4 SCT points. The only one I am strongly against is the removal of downvoting. I downvote all the time when posts are flagged for breaking rules such as the purchase of votes or really rude or stealing and lying (Don't worry I do not downvote the Korean community). It's sad I don't realize buying witness votes is a much more serious threat than buying upvotes.
I will forward your opinion on that to my friends in the SFR downvote community and ask them to condemn it as an extremely serious action.
I hope there is a good solution, too.
thank you very much for the reply. I am actually neutral about buying votes, but I found it uncomfortable when someone blames others for vote selling and he himself does it "when necessary".
I agree on the neutrality of buying votes. One should definitely not be compelled to upvote or downvote. Also exchanging a post-vote (inflation reward) for Steem is a financial transaction for the people doing it. It only becomes moral when thinking about the reward pool as some kind of altruistic thing (belief more than ethic).
"When necessary" is really interesting. It is a political propaganda tool. Need or panic can lead to irrational and morally compromising decisions. For example in Korea, there is a serious Corona Virus outbreak. Businesses can choose to remain open because the economy is really important. Churches are asked to close (modern society turns away from God in times of need). Outdoor political protest can get a special fine (yikes!), outdoor community and sports events are cancelled. However, amusement parks are open to visitors.
Compromising and deciding on morals and ethics is part of being in a community. Very few humans are consistant and logical.
곰돌이가 @glory7님의 소중한 댓글에 $0.029을 보팅해서 $0.013을 살려드리고 가요. 곰돌이가 지금까지 총 7552번 $99.991을 보팅해서 $102.102을 구했습니다. @gomdory 곰도뤼~
I don't think the voting for witnesses was buying votes, as they were not told who to vote on specifically, just to vote. Obviously, who they "should" vote on was implied - but not an explicit mandatory condition. Jerry Banfield sold votes for witness votes, so did frystikken i think back in the day.
I see these types of posts as a call to action, in the same way that Dan has done it to get support for exchange listings and blockchain competitions many times earlier.
Phew! I thought I had lost my moral compass (honestly). Thanks for helping me to find it.
You are right on a closer look, this is more like a 'rock the vote' campaign. It does need to be kept in check. And yeah, it was implied.
However I do wonder, would you get an upvote if you voted Tron Sock Puppet 1~20 and screen shoot that (balls of steel :)
In many countries, people are paid to donate blood or given free stuff and volunteer hours. Is this unethical to sell your body elementals? In the case of upvotes for steem that is like a financial exchange and the downvote is only annoying because it reduces the value of the exchange.
EDIT:
yeah strongly implied is mildly putting it.
It was very clear and explicit that the author told who to vote and who not to vote. Either proxy him or vote the list he wrote. Let me quote:
Well... technically it doesn't say who to vote on. it says to maximize the votes, we need to vote for the same, but not who the same were and the 22-42 would have been changing. The proxy is a choice to make. Either way, I think the person would have got votes.
Are they not sockpuppets that threaten the decentralization of the chain, something that nearly every user on the platform disagrees with?
And speaking of the disagreement. If you and others did disagree with this particular call to action and the votes that were handed out, you would have been able to null the votes through downvoting for disagreement of rewards. That is what they are for.
I do not see this is votebuying as it was completely opt-in - it is definitely a call to action though and like I said, @theycallmedan and others have used this many times before to gather support for community benefits. No one complains if it is to get a listing on an exchange, but it is a problem to defend a dPOS chain from centralization?
It seems that you view this in a very different way. If you think that asking for proxy in exchange of vote ( "Prove your votes below to earn a nice sized upvote from me! Either PROXY ME ..." ) is okay ("choice to make"?), well, I guess we don't need to talk about this anymore.
Thank you @glory7 ...
... for this, as it is likely the reason I am not familiar with your account. Reading through various posts today on the "war" we find our Steem blockchain in, I found a link to this post.
Glad I did!
I appreciate your "middle of the road" presentation here. Similar to mine, although I am on the other side of the world from you. I have created a link to it, in my post. I hope you will not mind. Who knows, perhaps it will bring you some additional "eyes" to your very sensible and well thought out positions.
Thank you for writing this! For the sake of us all, I hope wiser heads and calmer tones prevail over the coming days, in the attempt to reach a mutually beneficial conclusion to the hostilities.
well decentralization is the key needed for success on the steem blockchain,and i also advice that all the witnesses must come together and unite with each other to keep the steem blockchain growing....@glory7
Posted via Steemleo
At this point, I am not sure whether steem was decentralized before. Almost all top 20 witnesses were determined by freedom and blocktrades' votes, and most of them stayed as top 20 no matter what they have done.
This recent controversy at least allow users like me to figure out who are the witnesses with the ability and power to move forward.
One correction here: @blocktrades has not voted any witnesses for a long time and only voted less than 10 (4 or 5 only if I remember well, but could also have been 7).
Blocktrades voted now on several more witnesses to help take back the top20.
Thanks for clarifying that.
thank you for the clarification.
Thank you for the rational, succinct and very level headed perspective of what's really going on. I to need to hear what everyone(campaigning for leadership positions) is for rather than what they are against before I decide how to use my votes.
I'm realistic like you and do not expect to get everything I want, but need to see some compromise from all sides. Steemit has many issue's that need fixing and it's time those fixes happen. Not campaign promises either. Cold hard ideas that can happen soon, with a clear plan to institute them.
I hope to see a change in tone as well. Some of the language and attitude is uncalled for and is creating more harm than good to put it nicely.
Thank you for your input. I hope we may use this opportunity to move steem in a better way. Previously it was slowly dying with no changes.
Please keep supporting decentralize steem blockchain and steemit users building investing from 4 years and think about why you supporting a person who even not respect steem community
Did you even read what we wrote?
Yes
곰돌이가 @menerva님의 소중한 댓글에 $0.029을 보팅해서 $0.013을 살려드리고 가요. 곰돌이가 지금까지 총 7544번 $99.722을 보팅해서 $102.035을 구했습니다. @gomdory 곰도뤼~
You seem to be trying to stay objective about the situation. It’s understandable to want to hear from both sides.
Posted using Partiko iOS
Yes, I do. I think this is a rare opportunity to discuss how to make STEEM better.