Why I am still skeptical about Hive: Response to "How Steem Became Hive" by lukestokes

This post is my response to the recent article How Steem Became Hive by @lukestokes, to show that where we do not agree and to find out how to facilitate potential discussion to go forward.

It will be posted both in Steem and Hive.

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Before I begin, let me emphasized the following points first:

1. I respect lukestokes a lot.
   While the only interaction with him is exchanging replies several times and reading his articles recently (so I won't be surprised that he does not really know me), I believe that he is one of the, if not most, considerate and reasonable witnesses and I would love to discuss and share views with him any time. In fact, even after him shutting down his steem witness node, I still vote for him as a sign of respect.

2. I am writing this to fill the gap and move forward, if possible.
   That being said, I am not writing this to argue that one side is perfect and the other side is evil - it is more like a situation both sides did something wrong and two wrongs don't make it right. Since it seems that users with different opinions are scared of saying so, I decide to write a dark side of Hive. I do know that there also is a dark side of Steem Inc (or Justin), but I am pretty sure you have read thousands of them so I would skip here.

3. I will focus on the core understanding differences on two main issues,
   as most of the topics are discussed in many ways already.

For the rest of the article, I will mainly use quotes from the luke's article (quoted and used the numbers from the original article, like ". 14. ") to start and put my views below.

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1. It is 22.2 witnesses who initiated the attack (and changed their words)

Many users, including myself, became skeptical in supporting most 22.2 witnesses (most of them are the current Hive top witnesses) because

1. They changed their words.

2. They took someone's money first.

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In January 2019, lots of witnesses publicly wrote that they will not touch Steem Inc. accounts.

. 2. The community is constantly frustrated with Steemit over the use of this stake with some even threatening to null out the keys for it last year. I and other witnesses stated plainly we will not do that. Example: https://steempeak.com/stopthepowerdown/@lukestokes/is-steem-centrally-controlled

I was not familiar with this matter, so I read the article and related links. In short, Ned was powering down steemit account as he feared that witnesses would fork his account out, and witnesses wanted to persuade him that they will not do such action.

For example, luke wrote

"I will not implement, support, or condone any hard fork that effects the balances, keys, or security of any accounts on the current chain," and

@therealwolf wrote (https://steempeak.com/statement/@therealwolf/public-witness-statement-therealwolf)

"I will not support any fork that is trying to alter/remove the balance/keys/stake of Steemit Inc. on the main-chain STEEM!"

It seems that other witnesses wrote something similar.

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And this event, soft fork 22.2, comes, and everything changed.

. 8. Soft fork 22.2 freezes the ninja mined stake, prevents it from being powered down or participating in governance. It's an easily reversible code change and not a theft or ransom. All token balances are intact.

Let alone that there was not a single word of public "community discussion" before the actual fork.

• If you were one of these "normal" users(like me) who did not know about this, make sure to check whether you really think people who made such decision would treat you as a community member.

Focusing on what happened: I still do not understand how one can think of this as "not a theft or ransom". This is clearly taking someone's asset as a hostage and asking for a random, at best.

Let me use an analogy of a reply to the 22.2 fork (I forgot who wrote this).

Andy took Bob's wallet with lots of money in it, without any notice.

Andy says it is "easily reversible", and "temporary", and Andy says that he may return it to Bob only if Bob agrees that he would use the money in the wallet in a way that Andy thinks correct.

Again, my understanding is that it's ransom at best, and probably theft.

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And lastly, it is not "the" ninja-mined stake - it is one of the ninja-mined stakes.

At this point, we all know that there are lots of other ninja-miners and lots of 22.2 witnesses (and Hive witnesses) are ninja-miners themselves or getting witness votes from ninja-mined stakes (blocktrades, freedom, berniesanders, etc.)

When I point this out, some people argued that Steem Inc. stakes are different as there is a "promise" that these stakes should be used in a certain way.

Okay, I think now we are ready to move to the next core issue.

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2. If you think "public interview" is a "promise", you should blame blocktrades (or Hive) for breaking "promise" and lying first.

. 1. in 2016, Steemit, inc launched a PoW blockchain and ninja-mines 80% of the tokens telling the community they will be used for the community and not for Steemit, inc's own profit. There is no contract between them and the community, but see interviews, 2017 roadmap, etc

There are some users who kept saying that there was a "promise" or "social contract" of Steem Inc. As he notes, the only "evidence" is indirect anecdotal pieces from like 3 years ago.

. 14. Within less than a day of launching Hive, the list of accounts that will not be included in the airdrop is released. CoinDesk interview of Blocktrades says it will be ninjamined stake. Hive announcement says it will include those who support centralization.

This. If anyone thinks that "promise" regarding Steem Inc. is broken, he or she should attack Blocktrades(or Hive) too. He backtracked on what he publicly interviewed, in a couple of days.

and it seems that luke did not want to discuss more of "lies", but let me present them here again.

so this is the CoinDesk interview luke mentioned: Steem Community Plans Hostile Hard Fork to Flee Justin Sun’s Steemit

• By the way, this CoinDesk article has been updated a bit from the initial one - but it still contains these "lies".

For this initial hard fork, one key thing will change: The tokens from the original development fund controlled by Steemit will not be carried over to the new chain. Everyone else's will be ported over.

Everyone with tokens on Steem will also have tokens on the new chain; that is, except for the Steemit wallets controlled by Sun’s Tron Foundation.

As we all know by now, the day after this interview Hive changed words: not going to airdrop to a select group of users by a random, subjective criteria which was not disclosed to most users, even including many Hive witnesses in advance.

Furthermore, they lied about the tokens from the "Steemit wallets". It clearly states even twice that Steemit tokens will "not be carried over". And what actually happened?

They took it to @steem.dao, along with the stakes from the 326 airdrop excluded users' stake, which is under control of the "community", or in fact basically the top Hive witnesses and whales.

This reply from Chanse Bradell summarizes what actually happened:

So you guys are taking the ninja-mined stake and using it? LOL.

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Just to add, in Why I won’t be compromising with Justin Sun blocktrades wrote that the financial resource will come from "several prominent stakeholders."

No mention of using "confiscated" Steem Inc.'s tokens (and potentailly airdrop excluded tokens) in steem.dao account to "fund" Hive.

Does the community have the resources to launch a blockchain?

Yes, we do. It’s actually much easier for us to launch a chain, because of the many lessons we’ve had operating the Steem blockchain. And as far as financial resources go, several prominent Steem stakeholders have privately offered both computing resources and significant financial support, including my own company, BlockTrades. Even at this early stage, I’m utterly convinced we have sufficient support to launch and develop this new blockchain.

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This article went much longer than I had initially guessed.

Let me wrap up quickly.

While I understand that Steem Inc (and/or Justin) has made lots of mistakes, I also believe that the 22.2 witnesses (or Hive witnesses) have done many wrongdoing (or mistakes), and it seems that they are the ones who attacked first.

When both sides change words(and make mistakes), I believe that the initiator is more responsible. That's why I am still skeptical about supporting Hive.

That being said, I also believe that unnecessary aggressive attitude and actions from both sides would not make things any better. I hope that there could be a positive development and we may find a nice solution.

To do that, I think understanding each other is the necessary first step - and luke's article would show how Hive users think and hopefully mine would show why Steem users are hesitant to support Hive.