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Hive Governance

Steemit Inc Stake-Freezing Softfork Thoughts

@eonwarped@eonwarped (70)2372d

I've been quietly listening to a variety of thoughts about the recent Soft Fork 0.22.2, and just wanted to put out there what I think about it, mainly because I seem to be in the minority.

The Ninja Mine

My position on the initial "unfairly" acquired stake ultimately boils down to being fine with it. I don't care so much about the governance by the community (although having a fully democratic 1 person, 1 vote would be interesting, but seems out of reach). I do care that there is a governance structure in place. Is it so bad that the founder has a significant portion of it? That's exactly how corporate structures are, and power can shift over time depending on ownership of company shares. I wouldn't even have cared if they decided to vote with it, especially now that the collective assets are not actually overwhelmingly dominant (I've heard the figure 20% thrown around, and with all the fuss you'd think it was >50%). The stake right now has a bit of spread now, and the distribution is improving over time, at least with respect to this Ninja mined portion.

Soft Fork

Since I'm starting from the premise that the stake in question is okay, then it's clear that I do not approve of the soft fork. But let's say I was against it. I still wouldn't approve of the soft fork.

The assets belong to Steemit Inc, and it should be theirs to power down and sell as they see fit. If we've established that voting with it isn't going to give them a mandate on all future changes, what are we doing?

Then let's go a step further, say they do have full control of the chain (are we even sure we got all of them, by the way?). Would I be okay with this hard fork, then? Say also that Steemit Inc's vision is totally unacceptable to me, and I do not want what they have the ability to force feed through. Surely that possibility warrants this move?

I still don't think it matters. If they wanted their way, they can do the clean fork themselves too. Sure, the soft fork adds more steps but it doesn't make the possibility any less real. They would have the support of the exchanges as well, being the side with more resources to boot. Either way, it would make it difficult for those that side against.

So really, what's the point? I applaud that the current consensus witnesses were able to have such a conversation and come to their own consensus to deploy this soft fork, but to me it just seems like an empty exercise.

And where was I, you ask? Too busy with real life and the occasional Steem-related maintenance to deal with the current drama. But had I been part of this discussion I would have argued similarly anyway. So I just watched from the sides. But yeah, this is how I feel at the current time.

Witness Votes

For the time being, I have adjusted my witness votes to reflect my disapproval of the soft fork. Right now it's proxied, but will probably soon set them myself as there are still those that approved the soft fork I still want as witness.

Comments · 19

  • @steevc(80)· 2365d

    Given that the old witnesses are no longer blocking the Steemit stake will you consider voting for more of them? I see you also voted for some of the Steemit puppet witness accounts. Is that to balance out things? My preference would be for a negotiated plan rather than one side or the other forcing things, but Justin's wishes to remove downvotes and reduce power down to 3 days would be bad for Steem.

  • @arcange(79)· 2370d

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  • @gadrian(76)· 2370d

    Here's one more minority comment for moral support. :) I also share your opinion, but I moved to a position of "what's done is done" and see how on earth we find our way out of the mess (both sides, not just one of them).

  • @blocktrades(80)· 2371d

    I appreciate you honestly expressing your opinion, but so much of it is wrong that I wonder where to begin.

    Let's start with the moral argument, then move on to the tightly related economic ones:

    Steemit made a clear and unambiguous promise that the stake they mined would be used for onboarding and development of the blockchain, not for personal enrichment. Now, you probably are going to say, then how would they make any money from doing the development. Well, there's actually two ways in this case: 1) they are going to charge some overhead (e.g. salaries) for the work they do and 2) all the major devs and the larger shareholders were also "awarded" personal accounts from the ninja-mine. THIS was the stake that was supposed to represent their own interest in developing the blockchain and devoting the rest of the stake to development work.

    Why did Steemit make this promise? Because they knew all the other stakeholders would have bailed out of the currency, driving the value of that huge stake to pretty much nothing. This almost happened anyways, because Ned and Dan were selling their personal stakes very rapidly at the beginning (such a sign of confidence in their coin) and the price was dropping fast until I convinced them to stop that practice for a while.

    But from my point of view, even if they made the promise from the goodness of their hearts, I expect Steemit to live up to it's promise on this issue. If simple fundamental promises like this aren't going to be kept, then myself and like-minded people will stay on a chain where promises to the community matter. Other people who don't care about promises, and expect their interests are served better by baseless promotion and no integrity can leave for a fork where promise don't matter. This is OK, each group gets to operate under the rules they like best.

    Ok, that pretty much summarizes the moral argument for me, let's move on to the economic one. Here I'm talking about what will be best for the price of the coin.

    By voting stake, it's clear that the large investors in Steem support the Soft Fork. I've spoken to several of the largest Steem investors, who've told me they will leave the chain if it becomes a chain dominated by the stake of someone whose primary interest is Tron and not Steem. One thing you seem to be ignoring is that it is investors that support the price of a cryptocurrency and if many of the large investors leave, the price of the coin will tank.

    So when you suggest that Tron can just do a clean fork and just ignore the community, I think you're ignoring key issues.

    First, even if we assume Tron can get that fork listed on exchanges without any problem, something I'm not convinced of except for the special case of Poloniex, there's still the strong likelihood that the price of the coins on that fork will tank when investors leave. This will translate to a large initial trading volume, followed by a huge drop in trading volume once these investors leave (several operate as market makers as well as investors). At this point, the listing for the fork could come under pressure, because exchanges generally only want to list a coin if there's enough volume to cover the cost. And trading volume comes from investors, not from Steemit (unless it just decides to do wash trading and treat the resulting fees as an expense). You could argue that Tron will buy up a large amount of Steem to support the price, but this seems unlikely on a fork where they already have the entire Steemit ninja-mine stake.

    The next question is where all the non-investors go (e.g. people who use the blockchain but don't actively buy Steem for money). What they will do is hard to predict, but if they don't go to the Tron fork, it's begins to be difficult to see what the purchase of Steemit was even for, except to get developers experienced in the Steem code base.

    The Steemit stake has been a huge weight holding back the value of Steem for ages. If it had operated as promised and been devoted to development, it would have done great things for the coin.

    But instead, it actually worked against the price of the coin, because it was hard for other investors to be motivated to invest in base-level Steem technology when a single stakeholder was deriving much of the benefit, but not really pulling their own weight.

    It has effectively stifled third party development of the common infrastructure like API servers and the blockchain code itself. Instead, you'll see that most Steem-related development has been on dapps and other tokens (i.e. SteemEngine tokens) which allowed those developers away to profit from their work. The SPS has improved this situation somewhat, but the funds available are still small relative to the Steemit stake.

    I'm finding I don't really have the time right now to see if I've rebutted all your points, but maybe someone else can take a look and address them.

    I guess my final point is this: I found your attitude surprisingly defeatist for someone I took to be a cryptocurrency enthusiast. If you think one rich guy can come along and just get his way in the cryptocurrency world, it feels like you should be searching for a new area to devote your efforts if you still think there are ideals worth fighting for.

  • @freebornangel(72)· 2371d

    Meh, what next?

  • @transisto(75)· 2371d

    Everyone who didn't invest anything seems to have the same opinion.

  • @ats-david(75)· 2371d

    Funny to me that you “don’t care” and were “too busy with real life” ... but a week after the fact, you felt the need to share some kind of moral stance.

    So really, what’s the point? To me, it just seems like an empty exercise. :)

  • @steem-ua(64)· 2371d

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  • @friendlystranger(56)· 2371d

    I don't think you are in the minority. Witnesses are too loud now because they are protecting their business. They should fork-off with their ideas of ownership. Everything is written on the blockchain, not some random Discord group.

  • @leprechaun(66)· 2371d

    You can own a gun in a free society but that means you can literally shoot yourself in the foot with it.

    If I bought a bunch of Euros and found the next day I couldn't spend them. I would feel there was something fundamentally wrong with the system of this money. Now how should this be different if it is Steem and @justinsuntron instead?

    By undermining the social contract of your keys your coins, it casts doubt on the currency in general.

    But it also has its strengths. Did you know that it is possible on the blockchain level of Steem to have accounts with multiple owner key pairs, active key pairs, and posting key pairs? I have done these things. I have done multi-signature transactions on one of the test nets.

  • @marki99(62)· 2371d

    100%.

  • @lordbutterfly(80)· 2371d

    If they wanted their way, they can do the clean fork themselves too.

    Its far more complex then that. Its important who does the fork, who is it that keeps the original chain. Whos is it that keeps the exchanges. The devs.

    They would have the support of the exchanges as well, being the side with more resources to boot.

    Thats not how it would work. Exchanges wouldnt go with it if 1 stake holder forked the chain nothing would happen. If we on the other hand hard forked we would most likely lose in that case.

    Thats why a soft fork is so brilliant.

    I don't care so much about the governance by the community..

    Its really pointless to argue if you dont care what the stake holders have to say. Our values differ. If i wanted "corporate control" i would have stayed away from crypto. Also youre dismissing the fact of what Steemit.inc said, what was agreed upon etc.

    If this soft fork didnt happen Steem would probably be dead in a short amount of time. His intentions were openly hostile.

  • @remlaps(66)· 2371d

    I agree with this:

    My position on the initial "unfairly" acquired stake ultimately boils down to being fine with it.

    Especially since, as you say, their percentage seems to be around just 20 or 30% at this point.

    Steemit got the biggest stake because Steemit took the biggest risk. That's how entrepreneurship is supposed to work. When they ran the so-called "ninja mine", whatever they were bringing in was basically worth zero, but they had already expended substantial cost and effort on development.

    Frankly, with Steemit abstaining from voting, the blockchain has fallen from #3 in market cap to as low as #90 and the price fell to less than 5% of the price in July/2016. Far worse than the other top coins in existence at the time. Maybe that would all reverse direction if they were to start exercising their voice in governance and curation. Maybe not, too, but it's hard to imagine that they could cause the value to do much worse.

    Anyway, like you, I've mostly stayed out of these conversations because it's clearly a minority position, but I am glad you posted this.

  • @skepticology(58)· 2371d

    reversablesoftfork.jpg Reversible soft fork.

  • @abitcoinskeptic(75)· 2371d

    I like it mostly because it brings drama and excitement to my life. It challenges Mr. Sun in a way I think is interesting. I wonder how he will react? I'm not gonna fully formulate an opinion until after March 6th as I think now it is too early to determine who was right or wrong.

  • @chireerocks(75)· 2371d

    @eonwarped, Thank you for sharing your View Points and standing with your beliefs. I am not an expert but in my opinion Witnesses tried to take the precaution regarding Potential Concerns. Stay blessed.

    Posted using Partiko Android

  • @whatsup(76)· 2372d

    Agree, tired of discussing it, but it's their stake and a DPOS system, the voting agreement was weak at best.

    A sixty person meeting and surprise sf doesn't feel good.

    Only commented, because I know what you mean about unpopular opinion.

  • @hightouch(67)· 2372d

    Even if I was the first to criticize Tron and many of their moves, I share the same vision as you @eonwarped.

    I'm also thinking that witnesses and some big stakeholders made this only for their own defense/benefit and not for the whole ecosystem/community. As one of the first and determined dapp developper on Steem I asked to people to join our forces all together, the result was unfortunately a discussion and a soft fork made behind closed doors without any talk with the rest of the community and the devs. I'm working for the success of Steem since 3 years now and maybe more (@hightouch67 is my first account), and I learned what happened after reading some witnesses post. Funny... Does running the chain means that you have all the rights to do what you want and take some big decision that will impact all people there, behind closed doors?

    "If they wanted their way, they can do the clean fork themselves too."

    That was an option that our witnesses could have chosen to, (let call it SteemClassic) and I would have followed it without any doubt if things were going wrong with Justin, as some people and myself expected. Now I can say that I will never follow a bunch of people who are acting only for their own benefits while adding censorship to our ecosystem when it was no required at all! I have also no doubt that Justin will coax them and fire them as fast as they made this soft fork.

    We, are a minority for sure, but we are not the smallest one too, and I'm not the only one to share your point of view I can guarantee that. But for many reason's, it's not so easy to be against that decision (because of politics and/or monetary issues) ;)

  • @reseller(75)· 2372d

    Nice read! It’s always interesting to hear both sides of the coin