Open Letter to Steem Korean Community and Proxy.Token

Throughout my Steem journey, I got to know the Korean Community to be one of the most vibrant, building, and engaging communities on Steem. I got to interact, work alongside with, become friends with many of you. In most instances probably not even knowing you belong to the Korean community. Steem is one big community, and we are all on the same boat. I got to know and worked with on a daily basis with amazing community members like @jayplayco, @project7, @tabris when I was actively involved Steemhunt as a moderator and hunters. Steemhunt, for me still remains to be one of the best projects on Steem. Steemhunt team is hard-working, super-intelligent has great vision, and is of high integrity. This I have always admired and shared in conversation with many other friends. I have interacted with many more awesome members of the Korean community and it has always been a pleasant experience.

I am writing you this open letter because I noticed your stance and role in the current political struggle on Steem. I think @proxy.token move is brilliant, politically speaking. Keeping the stalemate until things are resolved, and at the same time drawing attention to the grievances of the Korean community and Steem users in general. Your ability to mobilize members, consolidate stakes, and playing a deciding vote role, but at the same time not fully taking any sides demonstrated decentralized elements of Steem. While the needs and concerns of individual regional and interest-based communities important, we are all one global community.

I believe you are wrong when you are equating the Soft Fork 0.2.22 of consensus witnesses and the hostile take over by Justin Sun with 0.2.25 Fork who controls 20 sock puppet witnesses. Let me explain.

When I first saw the announcement of the Soft Fork my reaction was similar to yours:

After reading comments, talking to people and learning more my understanding of actions have changed for the following reasons:

1. Justin and Tron's team were spreading a message of Token Swaps and moving Steem (not just Steemit) to Tron blockchain immediately after they announced the acquisition of Steemit Inc. They didn't ask any communities, witnesses, or individual stakeholders if it was ok. They didn't buy any of our stakes. So, they had no right to make unanimous decisions on our behalf. That propaganda put all members' stakes at risk. News outlets picked up the announcements and messages and were saying Justin bought the blockchain when he only purchased a company.

2. Justin or Tron didn't clarify their intentions after all that propaganda. He had an opportunity to address it in his AMA. He tried to answer to the question of Token Swaps and Steem migration to Tron. But the answer was not clear. He said - "No toke swaps for now". Because he said "for now", many interpreted it yes he wants to pursue that idea at some point.

3. Many tried to reach out to him and his team for clarification and what his intentions were. There was no response or engagement from their side at all. This posed a threat of potential hostile takeover because their stakes could easily change the governance, and they could easily put their witnesses to the top 20 and execute any hard fork without consulting with the Steem community.

4. Witnesses were right to implement the temporary soft fork because there was a real threat of the hostile takeover. It didn't take long for Justin to prove them right. Justin's hard fork 0.2.25 was exactly what witnesses were trying to prevent.

5. Soft Fork was never a hostile action. It was a protective measure, a negotiation tactic to bring Justin to the table, so he can tell us all what his plans are. Is he a friend, or is he a threat? Because he kept sending mixed and conflicting messages via social media. In fact, if witnesses didn't act the way they did, it would be highly negligent of them.

6. All comes down to one feature - Power Down. You may say, "well witnesses could have announced first and seen the public reaction before implementing the soft fork". They couldn't. If they announced, Justin would be able to initiate power downs. Once power down is started, the soft fork wouldn't be able to stop it.

7. It was just a temporary and reversible soft fork. The community and takeholders could easily reverse the course by voting in/out witnesses based on who is running which version of the code.

8. The intent of the soft fork actually worked. Justin immediately posted a positive post announcing the Town Hall. That is what everybody wanted, for him to engage and tell us the truth about what his plans are and hear out the concerns of the community.

9. His announcement of the Town Hall meeting was proven to be done in bad faith. Because he initiated a hostile takeover soon after that announcement without conducting his Town Hall first. And he did that in the worst way possible, colluding with exchanges, and locking up peoples' deposits.

10. Now Justin is asking witnesses/community to do a favor for exchanges that he colluded with to let them power down their stakes fast. The exchanges took part in the governance of our blockchain, which they should be completely neutral about. Moreover, exchanges risked their customers' funds to do so. It is completely unethical.

11. Even if there were accommodations done for exchanges and quick power down was agreed upon it would require hardforks that take a long time to develop, test, and deploy properly. Any hardfork done in rush will put all of our funds at risk, and potentially break the chain.

12. As I am writing this, Justin is spreading another set of lies again on Twitter telling CZ Binance that witnesses/community are trying to freeze accounts that belong to exchanges. These are complete lies. None of the witnesses and nobody in the community would go for freezing exchange funds. Even thinking about it is absurd.

13. Lastly, because the community mobilized to protect Steem against the hostile takeover, we were able to keep Justin and his team from executing a hardfork that may have potentially ended Steem as we know it. In my opinion, this is a real threat to our blockchain. He has resources. Even without your help, he can get more stakes given enough time and put back all of his fake witnesses in charge. We were lucky he didn't have a hardfork ready. But when he does, he may go for it and cause permanent damage to Steem, risking everything we have built in the last several years.

Because of all the reasons stated above, I urge you to stand with the entire community to protect our chain. We can sort out disagreements once Steem is saved. You have a great role to play. When Justin sees we are all united to protect Steem, he may come to his senses and start treating us all with respect and talk about the mutually beneficial path forward.