Justin Sun: "We simply can’t freeze people’s assets."
Published on March 7 on Medium:
https://medium.com/@TronFoundation/the-truth-behind-steem-takeover-38179feba963
Well, those words didn't age well.
Copy paste of the article:
Our intention is never to take over any blockchain. We respect decentralization and community governance. But community governance can’t override the sanctity of private property, which is the foundation of blockchain and crypto. When Steemit was acquired, we were looking forward to working w/ & exchanging ideas w/ the community to make STEEM greater, but unfortunately, on Feb. 22nd, some of the witnesses froze the 65 million STEEM legally owned by Steemit.
https://github.com/steemit/steem/pull/3615/files
https://github.com/SteemDevs/steem/commit/990aaa9b60fbe039030b9bb229c7bdc808c76c30
There you can see that withdraw_vesting_operation and transfer_operation are blocked for certain accounts (this list updated on March 3, 2020, for 22.6 hard fork), including all Binance, Huobi, Poloniex exchange accounts, our accounts and developers accounts support us:
“ben”,
“binance-hot”,
“bitdev100”,
“geos”,
“goku1”,
“huobi-withdrawal”,
“imadev”,
“joe767676”,
“misterdelegation”,
“pacemaker”,
“poloniex”,
“steem”,
“steemit”,
“timothy2020”,
“steem”,
“steemit”,
“steemit2”,
“steemitadmin”
Not only did they not have the right to do so, but they also broke the rule of the sanctity of private property which is the core value of the blockchain spirit. We simply can’t freeze people’s assets. If we don’t agree with each other for whatever reason, we should discuss & exchange our ideas or even compete by votes but we simply cannot just freeze people’s assets.
The only thing we do when we take control of the network is to take back our funds. We are willing to give all the witnesses and control back to the community once we are 100% sure that our fund and exchanges assets are safe.
On March 3rd, we found out that the witnesses who froze our 65 million STEEM are writing codes to also freeze the assets of Binance, Huobi, Poloniex and all the people who voted for the new witnesses.
https://github.com/SteemDevs/steem/blob/0.22.6/libraries/protocol/hardfork.d/0_22.hf
This is an outrage and simply wrong. Just because they have conflicts w/ us, the exchanges & customers are innocent. The people that voted for us are innocent & you can’t call this kind of action democratic. This is not considered community consensus, this behavior is not righteous, it’s simply wrong.
We’re nervous that after such a difficult start to this experience that Steem witnesses will freeze these accounts including exchanges account and our accounts again the second we’re no longer occupying witness positions.
I hereby call for peace, please retract these codes immediately & promise not to freeze anybody’s assets anymore. We’re requesting that Steem power holders tell us “We won’t support witnesses that freeze funds now that more understanding has been reached.” If we freeze people’s assets, outsiders will be afraid to get into STEEM blockchain because the possibility of their assets being frozen is possible.
No one will want to be a part of STEEM, this is a loss to all members. We’d like to focus on de-escalating the current situation, respect each other’s needs, and reach an actionable plan. As long as the assets of all the exchanges and people related to this matter are safe, we’ll agree to give back the witnesses & nodes to the community. I’m happy to say we had some very productive meetings and think we will come to a solution very soon.
If we can make peace & put this obstacle behind us, we can together make Steemit & the STEEM community stronger than ever! Jointly we can achieve so much & have such an exciting road ahead of us. Let’s put this behind us & focus on a positive and bright future!