I fully support this update. Here is my statement.

Witness @nextgencrypto is updated and running this version.

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First!

second :(

I fully support this update.

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Don't like themarkymark either? This bot downvotes everything themarkymark posts. Help by delegating:

5 | 10 | 20 | 50 | 100 | 500 | 1000

Unvote themarkymark for witness here

[IMAGE: https://d1vof77qrk4l5q.cloudfront.net/img/d09192bc0427478cd24dda7c92ee70ceb7282009.png]

"I've never seen anyone leave such a long trail of blazing dumpster fires. I now believe the wreckless downvoting and blacklisting of thousands of accounts by themarkymark et al is the SOLE reason the price of Steem continues to fall. I didn't even make the photo for this post. That's right, I found it online. Fucking amazing."

Look at all these complaints from people all over the Internet

Most of these are written OFF of Steemit so as to avoid being downvoted and hidden. Amazing. So much for this "censorship-free blockchain".

themarkymark Hey. Sorry about your shit coin...

Groups of people and a top witness (themarkymark) are trying to dive me off of steem/steemit by harassing me

Getting blacklisted (by themarkymark) becomes expensive on Steem

themarkymark & Berniesanders Responsible For Altcoin Collapse?

Is TheMarkyMark Abusing The Steemit Blockchain?

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3gnH8lxxFQM

Listen as themarkymark evades questions about his identity and gives up his real motives

The Arrogant "themarkymark"

Dedicated to that unknown mystery douche: themarkymark

@themarkymark Stole Thousands Of $$ From Me

My Letter to @themarkymark - in response to his continual flagging of my account

Harassment and Censorship by themarkymark continues. Now flagging everything I post for no reason

Crooket @themarkymark

@themarkymark, another fake account that flags without reason, like the berniesanders whales circle jerk

Another example of censorhsip on steemit. Witness (themarkymark) downvotes truth about his actions.

Big Thanks For ThemarkyMark, Anyx, Patrice and Others Who Helped Ruin Steemit

Open letter to those who provide Red Flag with downvotes

My Post About Asian Countries Being the Largest Ocean Polluters Was Downvoted By Badcontent. WHY?

I Got Downvoted!?! It's Not Fair! Can You Help Me???

More THIEVES (themarkymark) on Steem Blockchain? Be careful with bidbots...

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmSur5ac5SUHqTyKKe13L6ESebX3gcE5cxiNzyBsirPJuW/themarkymark_nzi.png]

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmTJZY7EoYXSDVn7VvckFSGeC1r99WDALv1M8WStrouHHJ/riffraff.png]

Clone this protest bot

As a STEEM witness, I've implemented the related soft fork, and support the statement in this post.

I support this! Edit: more details

This is an excellent representation of witnesses coming together to ensure the sanctity of the Steem blockchain. We are in full support from all aspects. Running on this version.

While I was hesitant at first to this idea, the signals that TRON has been sending about the future of Steem and Steemit say to me that the blockchain is under threat from their newly acquired stake and I must support this for the sake of Steem. My witness server is running the updated software from the SteemDevs repository.

I wish for the best outcome both for Steem and its stakeholders, incuding Justin Sun and the TRON Foundation. I look forward to the cooperation between us and hope for the best for TRON as well as the Steem blockchain.

Edit: I have done my best to fill in the context of this collective decision. Please see this post for more details:

The Case For the Temporary Soft Fork

We support this update
https://steemit.com/witness-update/@followbtcnews/code-update-witness-followbtcnews-is-running-soft-fork-0-22-2

All nodes updated also RPC at steemd.minnowsupportproject.org updated

Actifit supports this update, and our witness has been accordingly updated to run the soft fork.

Perfect timing and thumbs up to all witnesses who stepped up and acted fast.

Better be safe.

I fully support this update. Here is my statement: https://steempeak.com/hive-111111/@therealwolf/steem-protective-soft-fork-v0-22-2

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STEEM witness @liondani supports and runs softfork 0.22.2 ![IMAGE: https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/liondani/xgWuZE9p-Screenshot20from202020-02-242001-07-08.png]

@smooth shut down his witness today.. Got a free spot. ;)

I support and am running this update.

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Ha! This is much more concise and clear compared to your post yesterday "Thoughts".

We support this conditioned on it being a temporary limitation made until it has been made clear by the new ownership of Steemit Inc how the stake will be used, and where sufficient guarantees has been made to ensure that it will be used as promised.

this

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbdVjBFXJnEaHMGi3ogVDHi9phHKG2GrPkrAEWJ9xkXQJ/this,%20all%20of%20this.gif]

Well said.

And what if those guarantees are not made? We take this guy's stake away from him?

The damage done to steem from doing this will likely never be undone.

It would indeed make sense!

I support this change and support the witnesses in this update.

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How would you feel if it was your stake which was frozen?

I appreciate your feelings on this and have had many discussions regarding this subject over the last twenty four hours. I am really sad to loose your Witness vote, but I also appreciate why and everyone has to have their own perspective on what is happening. In fact I just had a very involved discord discussion with @freedompoint who has exactly your feelings in the @innerblocks discord.

If it is any consolation all witnesses which installed 22.2 have lost my support. It concerns only this issue and is not meant to demean your other great work as a witness.

Something had to be done, yet in my opinion it needed to be something generic and not targetting one account. For exanple requiring 51% of all registered witnesses install a new HF before it becomes the new law. That would make corrupting the top 20 not such an easy thing.

There must be better approaches, yet something that would affect all accounts while protecting the blockchain from STINC's stake would have been my suggestion if the community had been consulted.

Does your governor or congressman consult you before making a decision? No
Does your joint chief of staff consult you when there is an immediate threat to your country? No.
Why? because there is no time and because they are responsible, not you.
Then why are you expecting this from the steem witnesses, this is a representative system just like a parlamentary system, not a direct democracy, and you knew this when you got here.

https://steemit.com/hf222/@novacadian/for-the-record-in-regards-to-hf22-2

For sure! And it is ok that we all have different feelings and opinions ...that's how we find balance! I am glad that this whole thing is getting a rise out of people haha atleast we are all doing something haha

Are you concerned at all about the precedent this sets? The Top 20 Witnesses can take away your stake if they choose to. That is something that steem will carry with it forever gong forward. It looks a lot like a move by the top witnesses to ensure they remain as the top witnesses going forward. If this was truly a play to protect steem (and not to financially benefit themselves), all of the Top 20 Witnesses should step down indefinitely.

Steem has a lot of things that it will have to carry with it, like having a retard like Ned as CEO for 4 years and having him ninja sell the ninja mined stake.
We are not concerned about the witnesses having done what they should have done a long time ago, at all.

We fully support this update

I fully support this update and I'm already running it on all my servers. I'm proud we were able to organise this and come to consensus independently of Steemit INC . Historic days :)

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Wow i do not know, but i know that to me this looks like criminality.
Do we have any decent and how many?

No. Yes. Many

Two in the top 20. @timcliff and @anyx are presently not running 2.22.

Think @anyx may have made the switch to 22.2. Hang in there Tim!!! ✌️😎

I fully support and stand by the decision made collectively by the Steem witnesses. It has been a pleasure working together with you all to get this protective soft fork executed and I believe this is clearly in the best interest for all Steemians.

Looking forward to the next steps!

https://steemit.com/steem/@netuoso/steem-protection-soft-fork-0-22-2

Sun's response: https://steemit.com/steemit/@justinsunsteemit/open-letter-to-steem-community

Thank you for truly stepping up in this situation, you were vital and I hope people take notice.

Thanks Justine. I admit everyone did a lot of work and organized this as an entire team. It truly was a fun experience and one that I know was done with good intentions, thorough testing, and analysis of all possible eventualities.

Until next time!

Are you in the top twenty ?or still trying to get back in?

Epic Move ! Thanks for being there for us all

lol I Love your enthusiasm.
I am not sure it was such a smart move. Do you know exactly who went along with it and who did not?

You can find the version which each witness is running at:

https://steemian.info/witnesses

If they are showing to be running version 2.22 then it can be assumed they support it.

Thank you.

Thanks for the link!

It looks like for now in the top 20 only @timcliff hasn't upgraded yet.

Among the witnesses with a lower rank (from 21 to 40) the following ones are still running an old version (22.1 or even 22.0):
- @clayop
- @jesta
- @smooth.witness
- @pharesim
- @busy.witness
- @wise-team
- @blockbrothers
- @steemhunt
- @xeldal

Thanks for stepping up to protect the regular users. I am in the minority but I have a negative view of the situation.
https://steemit.com/steem/@ate-bit-dave/the-sacking-of-steem-the-rise-of-tron

I won't be watching the video but if you can summarize the points that would be cool.

As far as your negative view of the situation, you are most definitely entitled to that. However, it seems Justin Sun, the guy that actually bought SteemIt, Inc and the stake, does not have a negative view at this moment.

Why would you get more disturbed by what the witnesses did, when it was done to protect your "investment", than the guy that spent upwards of $10M buying SteemIt, Inc?

Well to summarize, I go over some of the history of Justin Sun. I explain why I am against ending the STEEM chain to migrate to TRON would be a bad Idea. It seems that over the past few days with all that has happened. It seems my concerns where warranted.

I had no problem with Justin Buying Steemit, I just didn't want to see the end of the Steem blockchain.

Does this open the door for lawsuits?

Maybe Justin Sun sueing Ned for misrepresentation of what Sun was purchasing. But not for witnesses, no.

And I would love that! 😅😅

While the hearts may have been in the right place, the precedent set by this (Top 20 Witnesses ability to take anyone's stake away from them) will probably keep anyone from investing in steem ever again. Why should they?

The ninja-mined stake was a problem, but taking it away after someone just paid $10m for it is not the solution, plus I am sure there are legal issues with what was done.

If this was truly about helping steem and not just preserving the current witnesses (which is what it looks like), All THE TOP 20 WITNESSES SHOULD STEP DOWN INDEFINITELY.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods

The ninja-mined stake might not fit accurately the "stolen goods" definition, but the point stands ... you can not transfer fraudulent items to another part and have the fraudulence magically disappear.

If the stake had a contractual obligation, that contract remains with the entity that was purchased, in this case SteemIt, Inc.

I am not a lawyer and I know you aren't a lawyer either so how about we leave the legal mumbo jumbo to the lawyers.

>All THE TOP 20 WITNESSES SHOULD STEP DOWN INDEFINITELY.

Then campaign to have them removed. Participate in the consensus protocol on Steem. Maybe you also failed to understand the network before you started using it. That is your fault, not the communities or the witnesses.

Also, come on @wattersblue, you have a 60 SP account (~$13). And you think your voice somehow should be able to influence those with hundreds of thousands invested in this blockchain?

Put your money where your mouth is. Get involved and make a project. UPDATE YOUR PROFILE PICTURE. Something, anything, before you try and act like you somehow speak for everyone.

> While the hearts may have been in the right place, the precedent set by this (Top 20 Witnesses ability to take anyone's stake away from them) will probably keep anyone from investing in steem ever again. Why should they?

I have spoken directly with investors that have purchased hundreds of thousands of dollars of STEEM and run their business on the blockchain. Have you? The ones I spoke to personally have said what the witnesses did is the reason why they are buying more STEEM. You don't have to take my word for it. You could get off your lazy ass and go find those "investors" that you are speaking for and get their actual opinions too.

Also, you are clearly a sock puppet account. If you can't even speak your opinions from your main account then your opinions clearly don't mean much to you. Why are you hiding?

Possession of stolen goods
Possession of stolen goods is a crime in which an individual has bought, been given, or acquired stolen goods.
In many jurisdictions, if an individual has accepted possession of goods or property and knew they were stolen, then the individual is typically charged with a misdemeanor or felony, depending on the value of the stolen goods. If the individual did not know the goods were stolen, then the goods are returned to the owner and the individual is not prosecuted. However, there are often exceptions, because of the difficulty of proving or disproving an individual's knowledge that the goods were stolen.

Ya I fully support it if all you top witnesses step down now. If you don't it just looks like you are protecting your paycheck, and the possibility of you getting voted out. If you truly believe it was the best move, and really care about the site and steem. You will put any doubt to rest by stepping down. Otherwise you will be just scaring off investors, and making people choose sides.....

The paycheck you refer to is less than minimum wage. Let's see if you can learn the technical details of running a witness server and executing necessary steps to protect the network on minimum wage. I will wait ...

Just kidding I won't wait because I know you are full of shit, you won't actually do anything, and you are just offended this happened without you being included. Despite the fact that it was done to protect your small investment.

You can ask witnesses to step down all you want. Not sure that's how a voting election works usually but go ahead and give it a shot.

I'd be shocked if Steem was to attain any big serious investors from this point on unless its sometime in the very very far future. Who wants to put their funds into a project in which can just fork out the power of that investment. Justin Sun purchased his stake fair and square, he deserves to have the power that comes with it.

My position on the soft fork:

I do support the overall mission that the top witnesses and community/stakeholders are trying to achieve: Finding a way for Steem to progress in a way where the security of our governance and blockchain is not under the constant threat of a single stakeholder.

I however am not running the changes on my witness node. My post along with my explanation can be found here.

but has steemit not been ruled by one small group for a long time?
I was seeing a possible future where we get rid of kowtowing witnesses and create a Steem that would change the world forever. You know.......... start distributing Steem and create some growth, get rid of flags and find another option for plagiarism sensible basic honest things - NO MORE FLAGS

I don’t foresee that in the future, although once/if SMTs launch you may be able to launch a new SMT token that doesn’t allow downvoting.

The precedent set by this will never be able to be overcome. Why would anyone invest in something that can be taken away from them by the Top 20 Witnesses?

Why would anyone invest in something that can be taken away from them by the witnesses Justin Sun could elect unilateraly?

In support and running it.

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So those accounts can’t even power down, transfer and sell the stakes? Is there anything they can do?

Yeah...they can stay frozen till the end of times

Frozen by definition can’t do anything.

Yes, for example, they can still delegate stake and create accounts.

Yes, for example,
They can still delegate stake
And create accounts.

                 - blocktrades

I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

What if they need to sell some stakes to cover operational and development expense?

This change is reversible, so we can always discuss from there on. The idea was that we wanted to protect ourselves from a hostile takeover threat that could happen at any moment.

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmbX1V5s6Hg1bJSQqSRNJ33cjrmvj2cKKqp5cWqChD3SZg/image.png]

Ideally the stake should be bound within certain rulesets, e.g. release X amount for just what you suggest. But as of now the stake was ready to be fully powered down or to be used for controlling large part of the Steem blockchain.

1 Steem = 1 witness vote is all the rules necessary. However that will reduce the undue influence substantial stakeholders have wielded over governance heretofore, and effect equitable distribution of influence to all stakeholders, regardless of the size of their stakes.

Either contemplate legal action for this tort, or end the threat 30x multiplication of stake represents to decentralization.

Clearly the intended/claimed purpose for the founder's stake is precluded by this soft fork, to fund development of Steem, and constitutes a tort. I strongly recommend the consensus eliminate the threat that the 30x multiplication of stake on witnesses by enacting 1 Steem = 1 witness vote. If decentralization is actually the purpose of this soft fork, that will equitably solve the problem permanently, and this tortuous impediment on @justinsunsteemit (or Tron, whoever the actual possessor of the stake is) can be ended as swiftly as possible.

I am confident this is an actionable cause, and commend you to seek legal counsel, and to rectify the fault at your earliest possible opportunity.

Perhaps you should read my recent post, which I hope may shed some light on why I disagree with your legal reasoning.

I am playing catch up, and will as soon as practicable. I have understood due to the kind explanations of dormant stake by both @smooth and @timcliff that my belief that 1 Steem = 1 witness vote would resolve the potential of the founder's stake to effect instant control over governance of the Steem blockchain is incorrect, and that stake represents ~70% of stake available to vote for witnesses.

I do apologize for my misunderstanding, but I remain convinced that change is necessary to make governance of Steem equitable. There are very good reasons no stock corporation elects directors in the way Steem elects witnesses.

Thanks!

Why wouldn't they delegate to sock puppets and end run the soft fork?

Delegated stake can only vote on posts and comments, it doesn't count for witness or SPS voting.

Oh yeah, thanks.

Nice to see this now, too bad we didn't do it before linear rewards.

I support the intent for sure. But we’re any of these operations being utilized by the accounts previously? The lock to some of the withdrawal & transfer operations may be defensive against stake being moved around to circumvent this soft fork, but seem like they could impede regular business operations as well.

Most likely this would be a temporary situation leveraging the community's shared vision of what these stakes would be used for. However, there would need to be a lot of trust involved there because despite convincing assurances, once unfrozen the stake could be used in any manner of destructive ways. In this situation, for now, the phrase "Defense is the best Offense" applies, I feel.

The accounts have new owners, so history of voting or not voting is largely irrelevant towards the intentions of the new owners. What is relevant is that under the old ownership, there weren't incentives to act against the blockchain whereas with the new owner, it is less clear. Transactions that allowed for the creation and delegation of new accounts have not been impeded.

But it does limit the stake to only creating and delegating to new accounts. Were these the accounts that were powering down and doing programmatic selling of Steem for instance? Do we know that Justin Sun is now paying Steemit Inc. employees and operations out of pocket or could this move essentially shut off Steemit Inc. funding otherwise? I understand this is intended as temporary, but it still cuts out alot of legitimate use cases of funds "earmarked solely for the development of the Steem ecosystem" so real negotiations and hardforked governance changes need to happen soon.

That is the idea. This has been done by a community of witnesses to assert the blockchain's continuance, primarily by temporarily removing the potential for a single-party decision to hard fork.

I am so glad to see this finally happening. I wish it would have been done about 8 months ago, but regardless this is an excellent move for the integrity of this blockchain.

To clarify, was this was approved by ALL consensus witnesses?

Super majority.

All except two.

Tim and who was the other?

clayop

Thanks.

I have to respect @timcliff and @clayop a bit more now.

I am currently supporting this temporary soft fork and have been working with an amazing group of Steem witnesses, community members, and stake holders to come to this point. You can read more about my perspective here: What is property? Is it defined by consensus?

I welcome questions about my perspective and look forward to useful conversations with the Tron Foundation.

Well, this is going to get interesting.
Never a dull moment.... :)

Lol, lots of unexpected developments recently!

With every blink :D

I mean, Steem has never exactly been a stranger to drama—to say the least— but recently it's been extra crazy!

We are looking forward to seeing the Steem blockchain become an even more decentralized place to develop our interface. We believe these moves can produce a step in the right direction ... the early mined stake of Steemit INC has not been used for 4 years to impact the governance of the chain and it was kept that way as trust based agreement with the community that luckily worked until now, we were always at risk but the risk never came to fruition.
NOW... We feel much more secure with it being a trustless system in the future.

https://steempeak.com
[IMAGE: https://files.steempeak.com/file/steempeak/liondani/55JlyYib-one-finger.jpg]

It's one thing to prevent the stake from witness voting it's another one to prevent transfers and selling. Even if they did do that, powering down takes 13 weeks which would have given the community 6 or 7 weeks to prepare a countermeasure should they power down, transfer and power back up.

Even 6 weeks worth of power down could have massive effects on Steem governance.

Yeah but that's 6 weeks of warning time to prepare for it. You just fired a warning shot and accidentally punctured a hole in their haul, I'm sure that's going to go well.

Why? This SF is really just temporary without bad intentions. It's a protective measure, nothing more.

What is the sunset clause on this? Temporary is just a word until you set an end-point. If you said: "For 3 months until we have time to negotiate terms with the Tron team." That would be one thing but as it stands it might as well be until the heat death of the universe.

Don't forget, witnesses can change their mind or get voted out. If the community doesn't want this protection in place, it won't have it.

That's exactly what I did. Obviously I'm just a grain of salt so ultimately it doesnt matter

It means "for now", just like Justin Sun said he wouldnt initiate a swap "for now"....

A "for now" for a "for now" appears reasonably balanced! ;)

Sure, but this looks a lot like stealing. The precedent set from this cannot be undone. If this was truly done to protect steem then the Top 20 Witnesses should all step down indefinitely. It would give this movement a lot more credence.

Even ONE week would have a massive effect. Not necessarily unilateral control but still enormous influence, by itself probably in the top 5 stakeholders on the entire platform. It isn't practical or meaningful to talk about non-voting without preventing power down in my opinion.

besides the giving reasoning: a started powerdown could only be stopped either by the keyholder, or a hardfork. A hardfork would be a way more drastic implementation which also requires exchanges to update the software.

Justin bought this stake, and if you want to counter it, buy more steem. Or, at least be consistent and include all ninjamined accounts.

To be clear, Justin's actions and FUD have made me greatly concerned about the future of Steem. But we all knew about the huge Steemit Inc stake and its potential for abuse. This is a stake-based platform, and in doing this, it will set a dangerous precedent in the future of the platform.

While everyone recognizes the fact that Justin made a purchase of a company and its holdings, with any merger/acquisition comes a process of due diligence. We are responsible for the sanctity of the Steem blockchain and its excellent community first and foremost.

>We are responsible for the sanctity of the Steem blockchain

I would argue this soft fork goes against that. This is a stake based platform, and what this essentially does is says "your stake matters, but don't have too much of it".

This stake is a piece of property that had specific terms of use on it. Take a look at the helpful roadmap link in the post. This mitigation is proposed, written and implemented by a group of people who believe in decentralization and the vision behind Steem building communities like nothing before it first and foremost.

So why didn't the fork happen when misterdelegation started delegating steem power, even though that stake was never to be using the reward pool?

Face it, there was no terms with this stake, there was only empty promises, which could have been handled in good faith by declining voting rights.

This is a good question. I guess its because we all knew Ned and people normally like to believe that others are honest and are good. Declining voting rights is absolutely something that's a desirable outcome.

Because some people foolishly believed in Ned's good faith as a founder, bought into his continuous stream of empty promises, and others frankly were benefiting from the delegations and preferred to take the route of self-enrichment. That's a pattern that has played out over and over, but it doesn't mean that taking firm action to stop the misuse of the stake and general screwing over of the stakeholders and community at various different junctures wouldn't have been the right decision then, nor that it isn't now.

Now the same people who didn't have the foresight to enforce this "social contract" regarding steemit inc stake are making a seemingly emotional decision based on what might happen. I for one hold the people who have allowed the situation to get here more culpable than something that may happen because a questionable character bought @ned's bags.

Fair

> This is a stake based platform, and what this essentially does is says "your stake matters, but don't have too much of it".

That's absolutely misleading. This isn't about an account having too much stake, but rather about the ninja mined stake from Steemit Inc., which was unfairly mined and is now threatening the governance of this system.

Nobody of these Witnesses would just censor an account, because of too much stake. That is absurd and misleading.

So why isn't freedom included in this?

He isn't part of Steemit Inc.

I could say he is, and we have no way of proving either way. That's beside the point though; if the problem is ninja-mined stake, selectively picking the biggest one absolutely shows that this is about the amount of stake.

To be clear, everyone here that did due diligence when investing knows about the ninjamine, and I'm not advocating removing any of the powers that comes along with that stake, just using it as a rhetorical device.

You do have a point.

It's more than selectively picking the biggest one. They've selectively chosen to ignore the ninja-mined stake that is already doing what they're afraid of in favor of blocking one that isn't, while doing things that way accrues financial benefit to themselves.

Freedom is not Steemit Inc, regardless how much you might despise his activities. Also, nobody is just censoring an account based on speculations. All the accounts that were part of SF 0.22.2, are 100% Steemit Inc accounts.

"As far as we know". If anyone can prove that freedom is in fact Steemit or Ned or Dan or such, then please bring it forward.

To be fair, their argument is (as I understand it) the steemit inc stake has been bound by a contract with the community, so this is to enforce that contract.

Its not only about the ninjamine, its about conflicting information, its about clear and open lies, its about broken promises.
If Ned makes a statement that he will not use the ninjamine stake to influence the community consensus, essentially entering into a social contract with us over that stake, then when that stake is sold, that social contract is passed on to Justin.

Why hasn't this been enforced before the stake changed hands? Why is this only coming to fruition now that Justin has bought the stake?

If you could prove that freedom was/is part of Steemit then I would argue for it to be included. But as you say, you can't prove this, so I doubt many/any witnesses are going to take action on the basis of nothing but speculation.

Yes, exactly. We can speculate all we want, but no actions were taken on accounts that were not proven to be Steemit Inc. accounts. Simply having large stake is not the issue here.

It can't be proven either way, but from the way the ninjamine occurred, I would lean towards freedom at least being an insider. That's just an opinion without proof though, and I'm not advocating any stake, ninjamined or not, get curbed or removed. This breaks the DPoS.

Because he's voted in all of the witnesses who made this decision. Isn't that obvious?

The conflict of interest here is ludicrous.

That has nothing to do with it. I would have at least expected for you to understand the difference between Steemit Inc and non Steemit Inc stakeholders.

They just think we're stupid.

Doesn't this look like the top witnesses just ensuring they will remain the top witnesses?

Then why didn't the witnesses ban the stake BEFORE? If it was illegal and mined improperly, then why wasn't it dealt with many years ago? Why do you not ban the ninja mined stake from others too, ones that support your projects @therealwolf?

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That view obviously has a very good point. And raises the question: is the motive for this action expediency motivated by fear? Does it violate basic principles of what the chain stands for in a "ends justifies the means" fallacy? Or it an example of the valid use of supermajority consensus to protect those very basic principles?

And this is the important question. Was this a blockchain protecting itself similar to a User Activated Soft Fork or something worse? Either way, the code is temporarily and can easily be changed.

It doesnt matter. The chain put itself over a disrupting and dangerous factor that threatened to dismantle the chain (be that only for PR purposes or not) on day 1...

After transcribing his stream I have no interest in giving him any trust.

I agree, Justin has shown to be less than trustworthy in similar situations. However, this goes against the principles of the platform, and will remove more integrity than this purports to retain.

What good are principles of a platform that no longer exists?

Not saying that those principles have actually been violated (I don’t believe they have), but if your principles guarantee your own death, maybe they aren’t very good?

Steem is open source, it's only dead when the community gives up on it.

I think this adds integrity.

Even if you disagree, if you compare TRON to Steem, TRON has 0 integrity as a chain being almost completely owned by Justin, Tron foundation and binance, and it doesnt matter. Take IOTA now, ETC months ago... even BTC years ago.

The elected witnesses made this decision together in the best interest of Steem, and if you want to counter it, remove your votes for those witnesses and take them out of the Top 20.

Witness @riverhead supports this update.

I followed you already my friend. Gracias 💯 💯.

@riverhead, thanks for those huge delegation to help the community growth at large.

As a stakeholder and activist, I am good with this. Thank you!

So instead of making a simple change like limiting the maximum number of witness votes an account can cast (which effectively would stop Justin from taking over) you lock his stake (that he bought!).
Sounds like commie bs to me.

Lots of solutions were thought of and none satisfied those requirements except this one:

• Quick to execute on
• Reversible
• Doesn't require big code changes

Changing the way witnesses are voted is a heavy code change that cannot be taken lightly. And one that wouldn't really prevent that stake from being used to vote top 20 witnesses anyways, he can power down and put his stake on various accounts and call it a day.

He bought stake that was earmarked for a specific purpose, if ned sold steemit and then bought it again could he use this stake in whatever fashion he wants even though there was a social contract regarding this stake aka it would exclusively be used for steem development.

I'm wondering whether parts of this are a bit drastic, as well.

That wouldn't have been a simple change and of course any application of mitigation strategies can change over time as reasonably plausible.

I have strongly advocated for the normalization of witness votes as you describe, by depleting the VP of witness votes 100%. I note that solution would not only eliminate the danger of the founder's stake executing instant governance of Steem, but would reduce the 30x multiplication of the influence of large stakeholders over witnesses as well.

Perhaps this route was taken because large stakeholders other than @justinsunsteemit were not impacted. While I understand the necessity of securing the decentralization of the blockchain, I note that the multiplication of the influence of large stakeholders 30x on witnesses is a dramatic reduction of decentralization.

In the near future, I suggest normalizing the influence of stake by effecting 1 Steem = 1 Witness vote, to end the dramatic inflation of influence presently granted substantial hodlings of stake, which is exactly why the founder's stake, now held by Tron, presents the centralizing potential noted.

"Bullshit" is how that stake came to be...
He bought "dirty" stake that came with strings attached. Its his problem Ned fucked him over. He should take that to Ned.

STINC's stake is not the only Ninja Mined stake. But you probably know that already.

It is the only stake that was mined with privileged information about the situation, and the only stake mined by people in a position to guarantee the outcome by, for example, doing restart when things didn't go their way and then lying about it later.

There are some other acounts that were rumored by mined by insiders with some extra knowledge, but there isn't any real proof of it, certainly not enough for witnesses to take action on the basis of mere suspicions. Moreover, unlike Steemit, the owners of those accounts did not literally go out and "sell" their project to the world on the basis of promises about the ninja-mined stake being earmarked to develop the ecosystem and distribute to new users.

https://steemit.com/hf222/@novacadian/for-the-record-in-regards-to-hf22-2

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. FWIW, I read every single one of those linked comments.

Without debating the merits of that 'solution' (I don't believe it would work, nor that it is necessarily good for Steem overall), as a practical matter, that could only be done with a hard fork (which requires all nodes, including those supporting apps and exchanges to update), as well as the significant and complicated code changes mentioned by @howo, so not even feasible.

Thanks for explaining (simply) why this would be impossible with a soft fork.

I fully support the actions of the Polit Bureau

What a joke.

One of the things we could always say about Steem is that it was censorship resistant. Even if you got a downvote, it's not censorship because what you said at least made it to the blockchain.

But now, we have witnesses actively engaging in censorship by intentionally and preemptively ignoring operations to head off what amounts to a "what if" scenario.

Got that? Witnesses are willing to abandon the principles of blockchain technology just because they're scared. Now it's up to us, the community, to demonstrate we still want to uphold the principles of the platform.

Your choice: a) preserving chain integrity or b) destroying chain integrity

If you would like to dump these witnesses, consider setting me as your witness proxy.

How to set me as your witness proxy.

Browse to https://steemitwallet.com/~witnesses and scroll to the very bottom. You can choose me as your proxy by typing inertia and clicking Set Proxy. Doing so authorizes that I may vote for witnesses on your behalf. Remember, this will reset your current witness selection.

Agreed, feels like ransom to me...

It is.

Set you as my proxy.

This is a temporary solution. I share many of your concerns about how someone else's property is being handled here. I put my thoughts here. A blockchain is permissionless and immutable. This is similar to a User Activated Soft Fork. We also need to evolve past nation states defining property and this might be an important step in that direction. Those who disagree should certainly vote. Thank you for providing a proxy to make this easy.

News in the press and consequences will not be temporary.

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Congratulations

I appreciate your position and initially I felt this way. However there are enough signals and inconsistencies from the TRON side of the equation that show there is an unignorable potential threat to the continued existence of the Steem blockchain. The participating witnesses came to decide that it would be better to proactively address this with a temporary and reversible soft fork rather than having to reactively address it with a hard fork which would be incredibly more difficult and divisive.

Here are some links that helped put me over the fence on this decision:
Tron Community in Uproar as Genesis Coins Used in Super Reps Vote - Feb 19th, 2020

February 17th, Justin Sun signaling the original plan was still in place, despite some talk to the contrary in the AMA on the 15th: https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1229304521123192832

>Justin Sun
>Steemit to Shift Its Proprietary Blockchain & Token to #TRON Network.

TRON has just partnered with @steemit

, a major blockchain-based blogging & social networking website to provide its network for #Steemit services.

February 18th Justin Sun tweets a link to a video which continues to indicate the intention to deprecate Steem: https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1229696090552717312

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmV8BDiYPhTduefrkpw79Pu2Ae39ayPD2c8gTUNDm2iLn6/image.png]

Edit: I expanded upon the background as much as I could in this post: The Case For the Temporary Soft Fork

I always appreciated your dev know-how, inerta, and even though we seemingly completely disagree on this subject, I still respect you.

> One of the things we could always say about Steem is that it was censorship resistant.

It was never truly censorship resistant, without excluding the Steemit Inc stake. Which was only being done based on good faith and at this point, good faith is sadly not good enough anymore.

There is no way for the community to counter potentially 80m SP in witness voting and that stake wasn't created or bought organically. Now, nobody is saying that Steemit Inc would do that, but simply trusting would be foolish.

> It was never truly censorship resistant, without excluding the Steemit Inc stake. Which was only being done based on good faith and at this point, good faith is sadly not good enough anymore.

QFT

> Now, nobody is saying that Steemit Inc would do that, but simply trusting would be foolish.

Steemit did do that. They went ahead and deployed its stake to vote in all of its own witnesses and force through a hard fork in order to reverse the incompetence of its founders who had their keys stolen (while most if not all of the other responsible large stakeholders were not idiots and did not get their keys stolen). This is documented on the chain. Centralized stake = not decentralized and not censorship-resistant.

Lol, bumbling idiots.

Now my question is who did the coding these two fronted for?

And, did i see a recent account recovery on a high profile account?

I saw that too. No idea why.

Dan can code, no one disputes that, and he had a few from the Bitshares team that he dragged over. Doesn't make him not an idiot who lost his keys and pulled out the steemit ~~magic wand~~ magic ninja sword for a "do over".

Ned can not code. Maybe a spreadsheet with columns. Maybe.

>Doesn't make him not an idiot,...

Lol, oopsie!

If creating bag holders wasn't the plan all along, why not use the decline voting rights op?

Smdh, crooks.

How long before trading volumes and inflation level the playing field significantly?

Are we really allowing precedence from HF4 to justify this softfork?

The context is that the historical record is perhaps interesting and relevant as a "by the way" but not all that important because:

> but simply trusting would be foolish

It seems that the stakeholders and witnesses are done being foolish. But mostly you would have to ask them. I can only speak to my little 1%-ish view.

> Even if you got a downvote, it's not censorship because what you said at least made it to the blockchain.

You couldn't say it better.
I wonder why they didn't freeze all ninja mined steem.

Can't justify setting you as my proxy since I am a witness, but I am fully against this tyrannical bs.

Proxy is never really needed, you can always look at his votes and make the same votes directly yourself.

@timcliff got one of the ones I removed :)

Also, will you remain active on chain even though you shut down your witness? I've met several people that spoke highly of you but the opportunity never really presented itself to bump into you.

I'm still here now. Obviously there are many important changes taking place now, more than ever in the history of Steem, so we will have to see how the situation develops over time.

I respect this stance @interia

Justin has no obligation not use the ill-gotten STEEM from the Ninja Mine for devious actions. The very beginnings of this Blockhain lacked integrity. As of today we finally have the integrity you speak of. This is in fact a one of a kind situation and must be dealt with as such. Maybe Justin will think before going on another shopping Spree. He saw us as some cute puppies in the window but now realizes we're a pack of Wolves with sharp teeth and a whole hell of a lot of wit, knowledge and sense of community. Now he's on OUR Blockchain and if he wants to walk on the grass he's gonna need to scoop up our poop. Ned did us a great disservice on many levels. He put us in this position. He could have made the sale of Steemit Inc contingent upon honoring the "Social Agreement" he made with the community. We need this defensive proactive measure in order to force some clarity and some FUCKING GODAMN COMMUNICATION from Steemit Inc. Their lack of communication simply forces our hand because we have to assume the worse. They basically set themselves up for this. Justin has also proven himself untrustworthy on numerous occasions so I am quite satisfied with this Softfork.

>Witnesses are willing to abandon the principles of blockchain technology

How did they abandon it? The beginning of this chain lacked integrity. The stake gained is tainted stake that came with strings attached.
We all knew that. Justin might have not but he should take that to Ned.

> How did they abandon it?

They (we) didn’t. It’s literally our most important job - to secure the blockchain against any potential threats/attacks. It doesn’t matter if Justin Sun is the most swell guy in the world, if there’s a chance that this stake can be used to take control of the entire chain (and that is in fact a possibility), we should do our best to mitigate that risk.

Other than signing blocks, it’s pretty much our only obligation.

The fact that this was not done before today is unfortunate. And this is only a temporary solution to what is a very specific issue. However, the potential threat has been mitigated for now and we look forward to any discussions that the community can now have with the new Steemit ownership.

I don't need to set a proxy. Just removed them all.

It was good to finally see some coordination to address blockchain security risks. I, @ats-witness, am in full support of the actions taken and have an official statement posted. I invite anyone to read it and leave me comments and I will answer them.

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Alright, onwards!

I fully support this update.

Therefore, i've just voted for you as a witness.

Thank you

!SHADE !DERANGED

Are you not in support of this move sgt-dan ?

I believe I have made it quite clear that I am in full support of this soft-fork. I do understand and respect the reasoning of those that are not in support.

Sometimes people will disagree on things. There are a number of people I respect greatly that are against the action taken. I understand their reasoning.

I am in full support of SOFT FORK 22.2...

...as a temporary solution to a very real possible threat to our blockchain. It was a wise defensive move taken by our witnesses. I am sure the decision was not made lightly.

I wish I shared your confidence.

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A good precautionary move that has already had a positive effect. Within hours a response by @justinsunsteemit wanting to meet with the top witnesses!
I look forward to positive results!

good moment to pick few witnesses to vote on :)

This is amazing. Real strength of this chain is shown right here. Gratitude for all the hard work of dedicated witnesses to make this happen and protect the Steem community.

Note—I also would like to see the views of those witnesses who have qualms with how things are being done to make sure there is not overreaction/overextension of limitation going on.

EDIT: Something that concerns me a bit is the "preparing for the worst scenario" mentality. It is possible that Sun and Tron intend to use some of those stakes benevolently in delegation or otherwise. (Actually, looks like they would still be able to delegate.) I know being optimistic is often seen as naivety, but by comparison it is equally imbalanced to expect a negative outcome.

The other quandary that comes up is whether or not this is setting a bad precedent for the future of this chain's politics. Especially in the scenario of substantial appreciation of the token value, I could see a devolution into petty squabbles among factions of witnesses ruining the integrity of the chain and undermining investor's trust in its viability as a store of value.

Self-upvoted for visibility.

Delegation takes steem out of your rewards.
It is not a benign act.
It is hostile to every other account.
When whales vote/delegate, we all get less.

Higher amount of STU rewards does not necessarily mean a greater value if no one uses the platform. Reducing rewards by re-allocating how and to whom they flow can potentially drive the token price upwards.

Higher payouts to authors brings authors.
We've been through this over the entire 4 years of chain history.
Unless those that can suck it all up let more escape, fewer will want to play.
Such is the nature of this crab bucket from the very beginning.

As long as sellers sell for what they can get, the price will only remain low.
It is up to us as a collective to stop voting rewards to those that sell for less than 4usd per steem.
When that happens, steem thrives.

Excellent approach, thanks to the witness community!

That's great news in times of total silence from Tron Foundation and Justin Sun. I hope that this update will ensure Steem's decentralisation further into the future and promise to readjust my witnesses votes as of tomorrow. Glad to see Consensus and community related actions.
Thank you all.

I fully support this update and will write my statement soon.

!SHADE !DERANGED

Hay que apoyar esta proyecto, asi es

I fully support this. Way to go!

Please investigate the Matrix-8 Platform as a possibility for future governance of Steem. Find out more here: https://steempeak.com/steemit/@matrix-8/a-newbie-s-combination-introduction-and-white-paper

Namaste
Atma

Been a long weekend and discussions before that, @ocd-witness is also fully supporting this update, hoping for the best outcome for both chains and communities.

Thank you @acidyo / @ocdwitness for supporting this update.

PLEASE investigate the Matrix-8 Multi-Level Governance Platform to be, as a potential system of governance for Steem. You can begin to find out about it here: https://steempeak.com/naturalmedicine/@atma.love/why

Namaste
Atma

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This is getting interesting. Waiting for some users' comments

💖

And here you have a user comment. I salute the consensus witnesses for making a hard choice to protect Our Blockchain.

I understand the reasoning of the dissenters, but this action was needed and prompted by the mixed messages coming from Justin Sun. I am sure that it was a very difficult decision to make, but a necessary temporary measure until we know what in the hell is going on!

As a user and small stakeholder in the STEEM ecosystem, I am in full support of this action as long as it is a temporary one. Ned is the villain here, no one else to include Justin Sun. Hopefully, this all gets sorted out.

At first look, my reaction is that witnesses have gone mad. While I understand the reasoning behind this, I think it is an extreme measure that undermines the blockchain integrity. Once acquisition happened those stakes were no longer ninja-minded.

If this is a negotiation tactic to bring the other side to table to work out a mutually beneficial and long term solution, I think it is smart.

I don’t think this is a good permanent solution. Sounds like “we were scared of a hostile take over, so let’s attack first”.

Let the power battles begin!

>"...those stakes were no longer ninja-minded."

This is true. The Steem community has been, as @starkerz noted recently, quite naive, lulled into trust by @ned's lack of pecuniary intent and avarice. This is a trustless platform, or should be. The founder's stake has continuously been claimed as solely intended for use by development initiatives, and this verbal (written) allegation has sufficed to preclude concerns of it being deployed to centralize governance of Steem.

However, that threat has always existed, mostly due to the 30x multiplication of the influence of substantial hodlings of stake over the witnesses. It is this mechanism that made of the founder's stake a centralizing threat. As long as the substantial stakeholders could trust @ned not to use that stake, their influence on governance was dramatically increased, and they clearly benefited from this.

This temporary solution but points to the need a decentralized trustless platform has to prevent concentration of influence on governance through code that enables some stake to wield more influence than other stake. Eliminating the 30x multiplication of the influence of substantial stake on governance eliminates any threat of @justinsunsteemit, or heirs, beneficiaries, or assigns to exercise instant governance of Steem. It also makes all Steem equally influential, from large or small stakeholders, in witness elections.

1 Steem = 1 witness vote is the fair and equitable way to solve the problem temporarily mitigated by this soft fork, as well as the undue influence that has heretofore inured to large stakeholders over the majority of the community.

I think other measures like significantly decreasing amount of witness votes an account can cast would produce better results and further decentralize the chain.

Some users have tens of thousands of accounts. How much does limiting the number of witness votes they can cast per account affect them? Sock puppets will get around any limitation on witness votes per account, to greater or lesser degree depending on how limited witness votes are.

If you reduce the number of witness votes an account can cast to one, @justinsunsteemit can spread his stake to 20 accounts and replace the consensus witnesses at will.

Frankly, equity really demands 1 steem = 1 witness vote, and you can see how the present system is inequitable and centralizes governance now if you read this.

It would still be based on SP you have. Instead of having an ability to vote for 30 witnesses it would be less, maybe like 10. So that one stakeholder can’t decide who all consensus witnesses are.

No matter what rules you come up with someone with 150% as much stake as all the other voting stake put together is going to be overwhelmingly dominant to the point of breaking all hope of decentralization.

There are some limited mitigations possible, which carry security tradeoffs (since you are, in effect, deliberately enabling a minority which you can't know is "good" or "bad" in any instance) but they're partial at best.

you are not listening, reducing the amount of witnesses an account can vote would have no effect in this situation, Justin could just spread the 80 million steem in several accounts, do you understand this or do you need a further explanation?

For example limit the votes amount to 7. Now show me how you can spread 80mil sp to take over the chain. Consensus is 17, you need to split 80 mil into 3, which is 26.6 mil each and not enough to vote in all 17 consensus witnesses.

Aha, ok, you vote in a fraction of the 17 witnesses that are needed for consensus, say 12? Then how is consensus achieved without the approval of those 12 witnesses? ;)

When you know you can’t take over, you will probably stay away from witness business completely.

anyway, here you go: https://steempeak.com/steemit/@justinsunsteemit/open-letter-to-steem-community

Yes, saw that. Thanks.

You spread your 7 votes from the 73 million SP across an overlapping mix of 17 witnesses, which is 30 million each. That's probably more than enough. Currently top witnesses get around 45 million but that is with everyone having 30 votes as well. If you drop the 30 to 7, then the other witnesses' vote totals will drop too. If we, probably conservatively, estimate that totals drop by half, then totals are down to 22 million, and 30 million is easily in control.

If somehow that isn't enough, which I doubt, then you buy a small amount of STEEM to net up the total, campaign and count on at least a few people always being easily swayed to anything or confused, and/or you offer a few people to pay for their votes. It won't be hard to get what you need, even if this means the rest of the stakeholders are voting, say, 90% against you.

No plausible voting rules are going to contain 71% of the active voting stake from taking control. It won't happen. (And if you could, it would greatly weaken the chain by allowing small minority, potentially attacker, stakes to exert greater influence).

Over the last 3 years, I have seen at least half of the top 10 witnesses staying well within top 10 and never dropping below. With lowering the vote amount, I think based on history, we can say most of the top 10 will remain to be the first preference for most voters.

While I agree that it is still possible for 73 mil stake to take over, it makes it more difficult, slow to execute without notice by others, and risky. Considering the risks 73 mil stake-holder would just stay away from voting altogether.

In the event of an attempt of taking over action by the same 73 mil stakeholder, there would be plenty of time for other stakeholders to consolidate their votes around the top 4-7 as a counter-measure to reject any hostile actions/forks.

This was my logic. But I don't know much. You are right. It wouldn't work.

Ive had it with you lady, Of course he is right and you are wrong, smooth knows this chain and community 100 times better than you and you are just pulling your arguments out of your ass.
So why dont you just listen, watch and learn? Just a suggestion...

Not necessary. The discussion about the voting system is perfectly fine and appropriate. It is an exercise in tradeoffs and people see the advantages and disadvantages differently.

Ok, I hear you.

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmfM4is3BPc4q3uWmZ5HEnEDV8x5rhC2r14MHou9DbFVg3/beckstromslaw.png]

So that didnt work for you then.... you would have come up with an equation that includes real world considerations I guess or apply it correctly.
As you've been clearly told by people that truly understands how this works, your theoretical considerations dont work in reality.

I don't think you grasp that splitting your stake across multiple accounts causes the limitation on witness votes to be split across the accounts as well. It's true that it would reduce the amount of stake each account could vote with, but the ~75M Steem is still enough split 20 ways to be a deciding factor in consensus witness elections.

Consider this as well. If one stakeholder has 1M Steem each witness vote cast is for 1M Steem, meaning that stakeholder applies 30M Steem worth of influence on the witnesses. Another stakeholder has 10 Steem, and each vote for witness they cast is worth 10 Steem, meaning they deploy 300 Steem worth of influence on the witnesses. The difference in influence on governance between the two stakeholders is not 999,990 Steem, but 29,999,700 Steem. This is how the current witness election mechanism effects centralization of governance by multiplying the influence of substantial stakeholders 30x.

I reckon influence on the witnesses should be equitable, and 1 Steem = 1 witness vote increases decentralization of governance of the blockchain 30x from current conditions.

I think we are on the same page. We both want to see decreased amount of witnesses votes per account. Your idea is basically to lower to 1 vote per account, still based on Steem/SP you have. It makes sense. I like it. Not an easy task to convince the witnesses.

I find that nothing worth doing is ever easy.

> Once acquisition happened those stakes were no longer ninja-minded.

Seems like essentially if you do something bad, its ok as long as you sell it off.

If I steal a car and sell it to someone, they get to keep that car regardless of what the true owner says?

Your argument makes no sense because no one said the ninja mine is okay. When it is sold, then the bad action has been done. Ninja mine for profit = bad.

But the person who bought the stake is not responsible for the actions of the previous holder of that stake.

If I sold you 1000 Steem and was abusing my stake, upvoting myself 10 times a day, does that mean that you should now be downvoted by spam preventers?

And to answer your car example, if the car was sold illegally, then yes, it still belongs to the original owner. However, if the transaction was completely legal, then it belongs to the buyer. Other problems are not his to deal with.

Tron acquired their stake fairly.

What Netouso said is 100% correct. You even have laws in place for this exact thing.
The person who bought the stake doesnt get to keep the stake no string attached. If he has a problem, Ned is the person he should get reparations from..

You're mistaken about how stolen property works, though that analogy is so strained as to be entirely irrelevant here.

But as a matter of trivia (and so you are better informed), in fact if property is stolen then even a 'legitimate' buyer has to give it back to the rightful owner and then get a refund from the seller.

You have a very strange definition of fairness, and that stake came with strings attached, it swapping hands makes no difference, the strings are still attached.

If this was really something bad, witnesses should have taken these measures long time ago. Inaction has legitimized the stakes long tine ago. Ned himself said they Steemit Inc do not owe anybody anything. Witnesses didn’t do anything then either. So justifying these measures with claims of “ninja-mine” are not reasonable. These stakes are fully paid for.

I expect a fight back to protect their investment. Hopefully mutually beneficial resolution will be reached.

I share the concerns of potential hostile take over, but I don’t think keeping funds hostage is a good way to achieve any fruitful results.

"Ned himself said they Steemit Inc do not owe anybody anything."

I don't give a damn what the guilty party has to say. It makes 0 sense that you would.

Stinc stake was never legitimized, simply tolerated to a point.
If it was legitimized Ned wouldn't have hidden millions of steem in exchanges.
He knew he had to run.

Witness inaction at that time doesn't mean anything except that they were lazy and inert when they shouldn't have been so.

There is no legally binding document or protocol-based evidence Inc stakes belong to the community. Some announcements of roadmaps or blogposts of a companies intentions don't mean anything. Companies, especially startups pivot all the time.

Most importantly I don't like witnesses acting as a central bank and taking measures that affect the funds, regardless whose they are. I hope this is just a negotiating tactic and produce some meaningful results without diminishing the confidence on the chain.

Pivoting, once you have given your word, is called lying where i grew up.

No doubt ned was not reliable.
Anybody that can tolerate associating with that kind of energy is suspect, imo.
Doubly so when it pronounces the demise of three years of my work.

I don't much like this, either, but i would rather see js prosecute ned for fraud than to allow ned's lies to wreck the chain.
Which may be the intended outcome.
He's got his ball and has gone away.

Well, is thats your approach, there is no legally binding document that says that the witnesses cant do this soft fork either....
Wanna play hard ball? it goes both ways.

lol, expressing an opinion is playing “hard ball”?

My reservations are very simple, all funds should be safe and secure for the chain to be reliable.

I don’t have a strong position one way or the other. Just trying to make sense of things. As I read other comments I am learning more.

Feel free to play ball elsewhere. :)

I wasn't referring to you lady, but to Justin Sun, we can either play the game in a moral and ethical dimension or a legalistic one.
What Im saying is that you are denoting any other agreements that are not legally binding documents as invalid and irrelevant, and if thats the case, then why should the witnesses follow anything but strictly legally binding contracts?
See my point now?

Checkmate.

>Witness inaction at that time doesn't mean anything except that they were lazy and inert when they shouldn't have been so.

Personally, I foolishly wanted to believe that Ned had at least some interest in ensuring the success of Steem. He co-founded the thing after all. I think many people had a similar opinion.

When Ned showed that we were indeed fools for trusting him, and that our hope was useless, it was clear it was time to take action. I agree this should have been done long ago, but it was done today.

If it didn't happen today, the same thing would be said in the future about it should of having been done sooner or that witnesses were just lazy.

> Ned himself said they Steemit Inc do not owe anybody anything

So now we are going to pick and choose which things Ned said we decide to decide are important and which are not? And we're going to do so by selectively quoting the ones that are most self-serving to Ned? I don't think so.

I agree action should have been taken long ago. I also see incremental reasons to take action now. The straw that broke the camel's back so to speak.

> Once acquisition happened those stakes were no longer ninja-minded

Sorry I can't agree on this point, particularly in so far as the transaction was described as acquisition of the company. I fail to see how the identity of the sharesholders of a company, or a change in the list of shareholders, changes anything about a particular block of stake that was ninja mined to support development of the ecosystem.

If the stake alone was sold (not that there is any evidence of this), then I would think either there would or should have been disclosure of any baggage associated with the asset (whether legal, reputational, unrealized risks, or pertaining to strategic business considerations surrounding the use of the asset). If not then it seems like something for the parties to the sale to work out.

Any Hard (or Soft fork) that proposes to fork out any account or limit the actions of an account on the Steem blockchain we will oppose now and in the future and anyone on the Steem blockchain should be able to do with their stake whatever they want.

We would have liked to have seen more communications and talks between Witnesses, Steemit Inc. and the TRON foundation.

To be clear, this is a temporary and reversible soft fork.

That's the whole purpose of proof of stake platform.
You weren't invited in a secret slack?

They were invited, yes.

I have a question? As of today I’m not able to access my account from steemit.com but can for other frontends. Is my not accessing my steemit account has something to do with that? I don’t know, just asking cause it’s weird to me. Thanks

You will have to take that up with steemit.com support. If your account works on other platforms then it isn't a blockchain issue.

And where is that at? Are they in discord? Where in discord?

I don't know. Maybe try the #help channel on steem.chat. That still exists, right?

yeah, steem.chat is still alive and a lot of witnesses and steem lovers are still there ! I still use it and the help channel there is awesome !

Thanks for the info!

I guess it is time for me to look at my witnesses that are associated with this account. We the end-users and the blockchain itself is being protected by the supporters of this temporary measure.

My witnesses protect the blockchain, when they don't? I find a new witness that will!

Time for negotiations
with SteemiTron on equal-footing. The witnesses have spoken.

That's a good point. This creates a more level negotiation between equals.

Looks like an old school Mexican standoff. Love the idea of being prepared for a possible hostile take over.

an apt metaphor.

For who is reading: We are discussing the Soft Fork NOW at minnowpond.org / the PALnet server.

Make sure to mention who broke the NAP first ;)

I support and run this update on my witness @roelandp. It has been an intense 10 days but great worker with a big group of long term Steem stakeholders, consisting of investors, community members, witnesses.

I will issue my own views shortly on my account - but the gist is:
1. This is a preventive temporarily measure - softfork nonetheless
2. The Steemit inc stake is a special fund, just like @steem.dao is and should have had been coded with special ruleset long time ago.
3. Mixed signals from the new owner of the Steemit stake rise the risks in irreversible use of the stake.
4. Again: this is temporal and done for the s(t)ake of the Steem chain. Your chain, our chain.

Thank you for protecting Steem @roelandp Voted for you as witness.

PLEASE investiate the Matrix-8 Multi-Level Governance Platform to be, as a potential system of governance for Steem. You can begin to find out about it here: https://steempeak.com/naturalmedicine/@atma.love/why

Namaste
Atma

Its not a good thing

It's not temporary if he doesn't meet these strong armed demands though, correct?

Please show me on this rat doll where the witnesses touched you.

Supported!! 💪🏼🙌🏼💯

Posted using Partiko iOS

We support this soft fork, based on it being presented as a win win for Steemit inc (under Tron) and Steem blockchain. Steemit inc / Tron has an opportunity to publicly demonstrate its support for true decentralization by supporting this fork. Based on this, we expect this current soft fork to be temporary and removed based on the successful outcomes of future talks between witnesses and Steemit inc / Tron.

I fully support this Important update to ensure the security of the Steem blockchain. C-squared is in the process of updating.

> Relevant Accounts:
misterdelegation
steem
steemit
steemit2
steemitadmin
Excluded Operations:
account_witness_proxy_operation
account_witness_vote_operation

👏👏👏👏👏👏

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYB4bYyGr7ezc1rJcZ8YREYEb41KX4qxnBooNfouheEZC/giphy%20(3).gif]

It was essential to prepare for and preempt any coup style witness voting from the stake acquired by Tron. Given the deafening silence from them on what they plan to do, I think this was the right decision!

I see some in the comments section talk about ownership, and how this decision goes against the spirit of decentralisation.

I'm gonna shout out for the people who gave this place the data that fuels its function. What about the fckn ownership of people's content, and their right to have a say in the platform they have chosen to place their thoughts, dreams and words on? What happens if someone who has had nothing to do with this blockchain's development simply votes in sock puppet witnesses to shift the whole direction of this place somewhere I don't want it to go? I have no option to destroy the content I've published here, so I'm pretty invested in keeping steem developing in a positive direction.

The question of ownership does not only apply to Justin Sun. But I guess my concerns over intellectual property don't count as I'm not a blockchain millionaire!

I truly hope that JS is looking to develop and market steem as a separate blockchain to Tron to grow the value of his stake, and maybe forge partnerships between dapps that are mutually beneficial to both ecosystems.

But we don't know anything at the moment, and silence is unsettling.

I fully support these measures, until a statement of intention and maybe a contract can be drawn up between Tron foundation and the community represented by consensus witnesses.

I'm hoping for a decentralised partnership between Tron and Steem, so that together both blockchain communities can become greater than the sum of their parts!

I wouldn't describe it as silence, instead a bunch of vague mixed messages that seem to follow the theme of the initial announcement.

I was in the AMA and since then I've seen nothing other than Justin Sun's origonal tweet about how he wants all steem dapps to migrate to Tron, and a token swap.

> instead a bunch of vague mixed messages that seem to follow the theme of the initial announcement.

Fair point, but mixed signals are hardly reassuring. Granted he back tracked on the token swap idea in the dlive ama, but since then silence apart from an introduction on steem that said very little about his plans for steemit.inc. One of my worries now is that he's planning on ditching SMT's in favour of pushing Tron tokens as an option for communities, which would water down the potential value of steem tokens moving into the bull market. SMT's have the potential to catapult steem back into top ten market cap if they're successful coupled with communities, especially in a bull market.

While it's possible I've missed something somewhere, I do follow Tron foundation on twitter so would have thought I'd catch an update.

To be fair that tweet I mentioned was pretty damning from a content producers perspective. Especially someone like myself who has powered up 90% of their earnings over 2 and a half years and, until now, has had no interest in Tron.

Not to mention the fact that steem token is still worth 10x Trons value in dollars. I know that they've got a much bigger market cap etc but if steem tokens we're to be migrated to Tron in some type of swap airdrop tomorrow, I'm pretty sure we'd all lose value while Tron airdrop recipients got a windfall of free money.

It's these types of concern that make me feel this extreme softfork is necessary, coupled with JS history in regards to voting with his stake in governance issues on Tron.

Wow. This is awesome. Tron is shaking things up. lol

No comment.
sigh of relief, or was it just gas.

I hope you folks know what you're doing.
[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcWWVH1Uzi3q17BVfwP8SruTuDpQkw4PNpYNi3u4pPXBn/NoNamesLeftToUse%20-%20Fork.jpeg]

I'm afraid they don't.

I have no fear. Who the fuck am I to say what is right or wrong around here. If this leads to success, I shall celebrate alongside. If things get ugly, I'll feel their pain.

That image above, I produced years ago, long before any of this. Same with this one:

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmas3dDRwhitZ2oTNiTJdi5Te1wB52pKpu1AuNETnDB1bR/NoNamesLeftToUse%20-%20Just%20Kill%20Me%20Already.jpeg]

I've said enough over the years.

Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. The rest of these witnesses are in good hands. :)

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmYG7eJoxgVQBo8fPSqEyCxcJTAX5eMuFMBN7KmRQkqSuw/NoNamesLeftToUse%20-%20My%20Offering%20to%20the%20Silence.png]

I'm not worried.

their hands are forks, they know what they're doing lol

I've seen amoeba with more of a clue.

Thank you witnesses for having our back! Ninja mine should have never been there in the first place. Having such a concentrated chunk of SP in hands of one entity that has given mixed signals and constantly spreading confusing information about Steem becoming Tron and that they basically have acquired blockchain instead of Steemit Inc the company has been stressful for us all. We all have worked hard on Steem both the chain and the community and Tron foundation will have to take it seriously and have better communication and plan of how to move forward.

I support this change, thank you all! <3

Most importantly I think is the fact that we have a LARGE number of the active witnesses working together to come to a consensus to do what they feel is in the best interest of the chain. This seems like a kinda historic moment.

Seeing all witnesses ignore their differences and work together for the security of the chain was great.

However, I don't feel comfortable with blocking anyone stake when the reason for doing it is a potential risk that isn't confirmed yet.

As a low ranked witness, my decision won't affect much anyway so I decided to not upgrade to this soft-fork and wait for more info from Steemit Inc and Tron. Just like @timcliff I'd love to come to an arrangement between all involved parties.

Coming to a trustless and executable agreement is the goal of pretty much everyone who had discussed this for the past 9-10 days. Before that could happen, the security risk needed to be addressed. Now that step one is complete, we can hopefully work on step two - along with new Steemit Inc. ownership.

I did follow the discussions and understand the decision being made. I hope an agreement can be made so we can revert the fork.

It was great seeing you stand up against the peer pressure. There had to be some solution which would have affected everyone equally instead of targetting one stake holder.

I support this action- we should all try to make a win-win out of this!

The Portuguese Community also supports this update!!!

Can any of the (current) Consensus Witnesses share with me if there has been an attempt to try to set up a communication channel with Justin Sun before taking this action?

Follow-up question: has this statement been properly shared with Justin Sun accompanied with an invitation to discuss further and debate the nuances/details that might not translate well through this statement alone?

He is well aware of it and even referenced it in his own post (but perhaps you have seen that since you asked this question).

An attempt to speak with the new ownership was made prior to this taking effect and contact information has been exchanged. As of right now, I don't believe a meeting time has been scheduled, but others may have more info regarding that.

!SHADE 5 !DERANGED

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This tip bot is powered by witness untersatz!

Awesome news! Thanks for your continued support of Steem.

I am currently running this soft fork, as a temporary measure.

I would also like to note that this is an instance of network availability (of utility) and that this measure does not affect ownership of property.

Thanks you @anyx

PLEASE investigate the Matrix-8 Multi-Level Governance Platform to be, as a potential system of governance for Steem. You can begin to find out about it here: https://steempeak.com/naturalmedicine/@atma.love/why

Namaste
Atma

I'm not stealing your land but I'm putting a fence all around it and you cannot get in or out.

just for now, to make sure you don't shoot me with your shotgun, yes. But once i'm sure you won't, the fence will come down!

Exactly.
The mental gymnastics employed to justify an unethical decision, shows everything about the character.

These analogies are highly flawed, and different types of property are, frankly, different. Land just sits there and doesn't require anyone else to take action in order for you to use it. Putting up a fence is an action which requires authority.

In this case, witnesses are declining to process certain (hypothetical) transactions because they do not believe, on balance, those transactions are in the best interests of Steem. Stakeholders are free to vote in a different set of witnesses if they disagree with that judgment (and I wouldn't rule out that this may well happen especially once some very large stakeholders have found out about the situation and decided to weigh in on it).

We are talking about ninja-mined and ninja-exited stake here that posed an existential threat to Steem, not land. You are sufficiently smart to see the difference.
And BTW , to talk in your jargon, the NAP was clearly broken by Justin announcing a swap and plans to deprecate the steem chain.

!SHADE 5 !DERANGED !COFFEE

I like what you said!

https://i.imgur.com/6WYsD9Y.png @anyx you have received 5 SHADE from sgt-dan!View and trade the tokens on Steem Engine.
This tip bot is powered by witness untersatz!

You just received DERANGED @anyx Keep up the great work. Congrats, you have been gifted 1 DerangedCoin. You can redeem 20 of them for an upvote from the deranged.coin account. Redeem your tokens by sending to deranged.coin through Steem Engine with your post URL in the memo field, view all your tokens at steem-engine.com

> Let the InformationWar begin!

Upvoted by @aagabriel

Our purpose is to encourage posts discussing Information War, Propaganda, Disinformation, and Liberty. We are a peaceful and non-violent movement that sees information as being held back by corrupt forces in the private sector and government.

The 2017 roadmap link took me to: https://www.mext.go.jp/component/b_menu/shingi/toushin/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2017/10/18/1388523_002.pdf

I think it is meant to link to: https://steem.com/2017roadmap.pdf

Thank you for pointing this out!

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmcoqiJZjm7qxoA2bhH5ihTFmqCz6XPyuKDXCjtFs1pjkr/image.png]

SF22.2

WE HAVE MADE A HISTORICAL MOVE IN THE WORLD OF BLOCKCHAIN TECH.

ENSURING THE EXISTENTIAL SECURITY OF THE BLOCKCHAIN.

Well done my friend. !SHADE 5 !DERANGED !COFFEE

https://i.imgur.com/6WYsD9Y.png @jackmiller you have received 5 SHADE from sgt-dan!View and trade the tokens on Steem Engine.
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You just received DERANGED @jackmiller Keep up the great work. Congrats, you have been gifted 1 DerangedCoin. You can redeem 20 of them for an upvote from the deranged.coin account. Redeem your tokens by sending to deranged.coin through Steem Engine with your post URL in the memo field, view all your tokens at steem-engine.com

Witness @rotfl fully supports this update.

Adam of Team ROTFL.

Thanks @rotfl. You have my vote.

PLEASE investigate the Matrix-8 Multi-Level Governance Platform to be, as a potential system of governance for Steem. You can begin to find out about it here: https://steempeak.com/naturalmedicine/@atma.love/why

Namaste
Atma

[IMAGE: https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmWrDLdvPGCtevrw81RV5ywL7WWYBfhNAanaC1k5MGXh3u/26779C49-831C-4F9A-A790-17A5F54A98C5.jpeg]

Justin Sun’s next tweet should be interesting.

We should buy some vaseline.

This is going to be very interesting.

we fully support this update

> withdraw_vesting_operation
> set_withdraw_vesting_route_operation
> transfer_operation
> limit_order_create_operation
> limit_order_create2_operation
> transfer_to_vesting_operation
>* transfer_to_savings_operation

What the fuck? That's theft.

Preventing voting is one thing, preventing transfer is another thing. I know I dont matter because I'm small fry but I will be removing my witness vote from people supporting this.

It is not theft. This is not affecting ownership. And it is a temporary measure.

I didn't steal your money, I put it in my vault and you cant use it. It's semantics.

Perhaps. But if you had a shotgun anD were waving it around in my face with your finger near to the trigger, and i locked it away, just for now, until you agreed you wouldnt shoot me with it, or at least until we removed the bullets, it might be a sensible thing to do :-)

You are terrible with this analogy 😂 Quite a smart response.

Posted using Partiko Android

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Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!

Having assessed all available options and seen both sides from the community, @c0ff33a Witness and backup Witness has update to soft fork 22.2

I do appreciate all arguments either way, but this is a reversible fork that simply ensures that the Steem Blockchain and it all it's stake holders are treated fairly. My impression is all parties need clear and public discussion to ensure all our stakes are safe.

Thank you @c0ff33a for this. You have my witness vote.

PLEASE investigate the Matrix-8 Multi-Level Governance Platform to be, as a potential system of governance for Steem. You can begin to find out about it here: https://steempeak.com/naturalmedicine/@atma.love/why

Namaste
Atma

That is why you are my witness! Well done! !SHADE 5 !DERANGED

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I wish this would have been done earlier when Steemit Inc was in charge. Also, Steemit Inc shouldn't have been allowed to delegate or vote.

Tron shouldn't be allowed to delegate but they should be allowed to withdraw at a certain pace which is slower than other accounts.

Completely agree. The community is right to demand that code is law, but should have demanded such from Dan/Ned when they made those promises to the community which so many have invested time and money based on afterward.

Do you also think they should not be able to delegate to new accounts? Personally, I think delegations can be fine as long as it can be shown to contribute to growing the ecosystem and the rewards don't go back to Steemit Inc, but instead to other projects that comes to build here (thus living up to the promise of being used to further decentralize stake and grow the platform). I understand and respet that there are different opinions here though.

As for withdrawals, I was also against this being included. My condition for approving this was that it would only be a temporary limitation until Steemit Inc's new ownership has shared their intent with using it, and i's been guaranteed that they will do as promised.

In any case, it is very promising to see so many community devs, witnesses and stakeholders come together and put in such an amount of work this fast! I'm left very optimistic about where we can go from here.

Delegations are never neutral and advantage some witnesses over others. The repercussions are long-lasting and widespread.

I think they should be able to withdraw their Steem Power but a slower pace than everyone else. 50% slower would be neat.

Even 50% slower, after a few weeks, you have a big unaccounted for block of ninja-mined stake potentially with no transparency or accountability at all.

The already happened in the past when Ned was concerned that witnesses might take some action. He started powering down and hiding Steem, and to my knowledge that Steem was never accounted for in any way.

That would be the end result for sure but in the end, it's their stake. They should have access to it.

I wouldn't vote to withheld their stake indefinitely.

It is better described as development stake (non-voting at that) held by a company (a company which has now changed hands, but the company changing hands doesn't change anything about the nature of the stake).

There is no real doubt that Ned said it was all to be used to develop the ecosystem. On other occasions he said it was theirs to do as they see fit.

But, really, I don't see how one person or company saying one thing when it is convenient and then saying another thing when that is convenient should play in his favor. If anything the opposite.

One practical issue with power down is that it can be hidden and powered up into other accounts to vote for witnesses, proposals (SPS) or payouts. Even at a slow rate, a small to moderate portion of 73 million quickly has enormous influence (only 5-10% of it is still easily one of the largest stakes on the platform).

If the decision is made that voting is harmful and unacceptable then IMO you have to likewise consider power down too as a practical matter, until some other arrangement can be made such as putting a trustee in place to ensure that powered-down stake is then only used appropriately when the chain can no longer enforce it.

As a member, non witness, I fully support! It’s awesome to see all my witnesses supporting as well! This shows true strength of this community and chain!

So in layman terms you're just gonna fuck Justin out of what he bought?

So in layman terms
You're just gonna fuck Justin
Out of what he bought?

                 - davedickeyyall

I'm a bot. I detect haiku.

Not at all. It's a temporary measure, not affecting ownership of his Steem. That is very clear.

Not exactly.
What he bought didn't have voting rights, what he got did until now.

nedstrikesagain

What he bought DID have voting rights. Otherwise there'd be no need to soft fork them out. Taking away his rights is shady AF

Ned selling what he didn't own was shady af.
This whole time, up until a couple days ago, many people invested based on that stake not voting, ever.
We know that promise has already been broken in tron.

It remains to be seen how this plays out.
I blame Ned.

Why blame Ned? I can't think of a single person who made their decision to join/ invest based on a ninja mined stake.

Holy cow

Jaguar Force supports this update and congratulates all involved.
This is what making history looks like. Onwards!

There are few witnesses powering down that i noticed, but why are they still up for voting if they are going to leave?

Witnesses are paid in VESTS (STEEM Power). Most witnesses power down to receive STEEM to pay for their expenses and time.

From my understanding and what I’ve read and gathered from other posts that isn’t so for powering down. Why not use the saving withdrawal if he/she just intends to pay bills?

Witness rewards are not put in savings, they are SP which requires a powerdown to make liquid STEEM.

Those are some fucking balls on you guys. Took you a while but i cant be more proud. Hope you dont let up and i hope that the words of us from the community had at least a small effect on this decision.

https://media2.giphy.com/media/NJZMSqRY3rG9i/giphy.gif

I stepped down as a witness due to concerns over the ongoing time commitment as well as anticipated increase in witness demands connected to this fork and the recent sale of Steemit more broadly.

However, as a stakeholder, I support the actions taken, I am voting for witnesses running the modified code. I believe that firm action to address Steemit's lack of transparency and candor, repeated empty and broken promises, mismanagement, and exploitation of the community should have been taken long ago, though, unfortunately, consensus to do so could never be reached for a variety of reasons. Better late then never, I guess.

Is there an easy way to see who has upgraded and who hasn't so people might adjust their witness votes?

Thanks

0.22.2 is the updated version. Look on https://steemd.com/witnesses

Thanks

Time to reshuffle my votes

>Is there an easy way to see who has upgraded...

https://steemian.info/witnesses

> Better late then never

Well said, @smooth!

Doesn't this look like a form of the Top witnesses just entrenching themselves in the top witness spots?

Not to me, unless you think that the way to get them out would be with the ninja-mined stake voting. I don't believe that.

No other votes are affected. The top witnesses can be voted out just as easily today as they could two days ago. In fact I would venture to say there has been more movement in and out of the top 20 in the wake of this fork than most times before, but I'm not basing that on real data, just an impression.

BOOM! There is nothing quite like an existential threat to bring everyone together. Well played sirs and madams.

Even apart from the totally ludicrous conflict of interest issues in witnesses who are voted in by Freedom deciding to fork out other ninja-mined stake because it might be used to choose witnesses...

Does nobody who runs this chain understand how a blockchain works? If something truly dastardly were ever done by the new owners of the Steemit Inc. stake, the witnesses could always choose to fork by restarting the chain from the preceding block. Nobody has to prepare for it ahead of time.

You might lose the support of exchanges by doing it that way, I suppose, when they would ignore this method. But if that's the real concern here then hiding it in the background while making arguments that have no technical standing is basically fraudulent.

This is an effort to avoid that.
We don't want a fork, but we don't want a master, either.

If ned sold those steem as fully vested with voting rights then that was fraudulent based on past assurances given by ned.

If you have evidence of freedom being a Steemit insider or otherwise making statements about how that account was going to be used, please bring it forward because I haven't seen it. I have my suspicions for sure, but one can hardly blame the witnesses for not considering suspicions alone to be enough to mean anything.

Also, as a practical matter, nothing can be done about the existing freedom votes with a soft fork.

While I am disappointed the other side did not implement the mechanics to do this on their own accounts as an olive branch. With them making statements ahead of time of how they support decentralization as a PR move. I can understand how poorly the first 72-hours were handled by their top shareholder. It is at least nice to see these actions were not done right away as a knee-jerk reaction.

I just hope we don’t see consequences such as critical funding and other forms of help withheld to advance quicker the blockchain as a whole. The majority of people tend to flow where the money is. This is something this ecosystem has always struggled to have a lot of.

As a content creator, I have spent a lot of time with some amazing people out there in our ecosystem. It has been hell for them with many looking for alternative options to branch out into with how things were handled by Justin and his “PR” team. I can only hope this will in the short term cause them to regain confidence and continue building their brands up with Steem being home base.

I support this update

Seeing everyone together here for the same cause, of strengthening our beloved blockchain, makes me feel that I have a human chain close to it, worried about keeping this ship afloat and each one from its space brings positive things. All this attitude builds trust.
  The changes are accompanied by fears, but fear allows us to know that we are alive, to continue to be better and to reach our transformation positive.
I love STEEM and what I can support as a small user here I am. Good vibes for everyone and lots of good energy to protect our beloved blockchain.

Buena vibra.

It is probably a good idea but I think we should make an effort to communicate to the Tron team that this is not antagonistic.

We should make every effort to work with them if they are willing to respect the will of the community but also create some leverage for ourselves in case they don’t have any interest in doing that. But we need to communicate in as many ways as we can that we want to work together if possible

We should make every effort to work with them if they are willing to respect the will of the community but also create some leverage for ourselves in case they don’t have any interest in doing that. But we need to communicate in as many ways as we can that we want to work together if possible

I feel like this is something that should have been done against the steemit stake from the very start. I will take it one step further and say that:

That PRE-MINED stake does not represent governance rights, it has always been an attack vector against the the true governance rights of the community.

I have read the comments from some of the detractors in regard to censorship and I understand them. I disagree. The reason I disagree is that the original intent of this stake was made clear. It was to be used as a funding source only, and would not be used for governance. That expectation of this stake continues regardless whether or not that stake was sold as part of the Steemit Inc. purchase.

Steemit, by their own definition, does not qualify as a stakeholder in terms of governance. Steemit being sold to Justin Sun doesn't absolve them of this compact they made with the community.

That being said. I am a man of my word, and this was the exact kind of signal I was looking for to restore confidence in this endeavor we call STEEM.

I am therefore halting my powerdown, and will continue to accumulate STEEM and participate as previously.

There are no guarantees in life, but this sends a clear message that the STEEM community does not want a TRX-powered Publish0x clone, which I believe would have been the end result of a Tron-powered STEEM.

Thanks to all involved for finally enforcing the covenant to which we have all relied and agreed on. I hope in time, that inflation, sales, and airdrops will render this measure moot.

No shit! Well put @joshman!

Thank you for understanding what was at stake. The decisions weren’t taken lightly and it was the interests of the invested that we had in mind when these actions were debated and ultimately taken.

I just want to personally assure you that I will never support code that takes any investor’s assets. This is a unique circumstance that unfortunately requires unique action. Nobody in the witness discussions expressed anything otherwise.

This gives me a great deal of hope and even more confidence in our witnesses. Thank you very much! Much better than crisis management. I salute all of you for being proactive instead of reactive.

Your implementation of this soft fork shows your loyalty to the blockchain and its users. I can not thank you enough!

To @therealwolf & all other Witnesses that supported this measure.

I have seen a lot of unpopular moves done in communities over the years by those responsible for the security and safety of said communities. There are always folks (usually those either not well informed or those with an over-inflated sense of being informed) who 'after the fact' dislike the decisions that were made for the protection of a community which often leads those same folk to taking up a stance of confusion, doubt, hostility and purporting a general lack of faith in the decision makers.

There are also those folks who tend to either take some moral or ethical 'high ground' whilst espousing that they would never make such decisions which in my not-so-humble opinion amounts to a sort of cowardice and failure to take action and do what needs to be done regardless of the blowback or potential risk to themselves... which is exactly why those folks are not in a role of responsibility for the security and safety of a community to start with.

In this instance a Super Majority of fairly voted Witnesses have made a difficult choice and executed that choice in a non-hostile fashion with the hopes of maintaining the safety and security of the community and all any of us should really be doing in this moment is saying thank you but hey I am not here to tell you how to live or what to do so please feel free to behave/misbehave however you want to!

If these Witnesses had not voted on this protective measure and something horrible happened with the ninja mined stake everyone would be blaming them for failing to protect the community... call me a liar on this PLEASE!

"When there is a loose canon on the deck of a ship you chain it down before it can go off and sink the ship with it." ~ Unknown Sailor

It's too late to matter now, but it strikes me as a really really bad idea to launch a financial war with a billionaire.

This move probably just made it impossible for Steemit to continue to refrain from voting, once JS purchases a controlling interest and installs his own slate of witnesses. Fiduciary duty now almost certainly makes it necessary for Steemit to begin voting for witnesses with their stake. I hope I'm wrong, but I suspect that the consensus witnesses just ushered in the change that they claim to fear.

My stake doesn't matter much, but for whatever it's worth I have unvoted all witnesses running 0.22.2, which makes me sad, because there were some witnesses there that I really wish I could continue supporting.

Bottom line: I do not support locking out a legitimate stakeholder under any circumstances, and even if I did, I suspect that this was a strategically bad move.

Powerful move by the witnesses! It should force Mr Sun to come talk on STEEM more often :)

Its a victory for the community and the witnesses. It shows how much they care for us all. I am sure this is a good leap for steem and those who believe in it

I salute the work done by a consensus witnesses to come up with a measure that proactively protect the integrity of Steem Blockchain. You are doing what you where elected for. Therefore, I support the soft fork 0.22.2 while the discussions are going on.

I don’t agree with you.

Economic sanctions rarely work, quite often they lead to war and devastation. With the witnesses living in many countries, and a lot of you are a lot smarter than I am business wise, what do you think would be the results if Justin decided to challenge your actions in a legal arena? The sale of steemit.inc seems to have been a very legal process conducted between two very diverse countries, China (Tron), and America (Steemit). The sale evidently did not violate either Countries legal System. The witnesses with this action, if I read/understand correctly, have basically Frozen Steemit.inc's assets. In most parts of the world it takes a court order to legally freeze an individual or companies assets.

If you look at literally what is happening, it is witnesses declining to process certain transactions. That's a little different from 'freezing', even if the practical effect is similar. I'm not sure how courts might take up the issue of compelling witnesses to process a transaction they don't support, but morally I'm pretty sure I am okay with it, so long as the witnesses can still be voted out and replaced, which they can.

IMO, if someone doesn't like the way the witnesses chosen by stakeholders do their job, then the best recourse is to vote in new ones, and if you don't like DPoS where stakeholders choose witnesses, choose another blockchain.

> IMO, if someone doesn't like the way the witnesses chosen by stakeholders do their job, then the best recourse is to vote in new ones, and if you don't like DPoS where stakeholders choose witnesses, choose another blockchain.

Vote in new ones, I don't know how current and up to date http://www.steemreports.com/witnesses/ is, but if It is current and up to date, blocktrades is now the nuber one voter and can cast 10454 votes, where as all accounts that have voted and can cast less than 35 votes is 3,572 votes. (that is for the first witness on the list which is gtg, so I am skeptical of the accuracy since I did see another tool that showed Roland as the numeber one witness). Small accounts like mine make no difference in a vote and that is why we use proxies to bolster our collective vote power.

I do just love how when people point issues out with certain aspects, or pass on their thoughts if it is wrong thought in the minds of some the typical response is if you don't like go somewhere else.

I like the steem block chain. I perceive a problem with the way down votes work, and with the way the witness vote system works. So your IMO is more relevant than mine, that is fine you have invested money, after seeing this issue do you think any other large investors are going to be willing to risk having their funds tied up and crippled.

There were rumors of a sale before the official announcement, if there was such a concern over the ninja mined stake being sold then this action should have been taken at that time. The witness have had four years to do this, they did not.

Just my honest opinion of how I see it, but if you want everyone to be an echo box of your opinion, I would suggest that you find a place where people are not allowed to voice their opinion such as you tube and face book. Just as you suggested I find another block chain.

oh, it is good news for me.

I support this.thank you for share.take love brother❤❤❤

Posted using Partiko Android

I fully support this update and now I know how Steemit Inc got that Steem ass ninja ish, I feel it us void and a scam.... I dont even recognize it.

Posted using Partiko Android

Thank you for looking out for us.

I support this move because I feel the "Ninja mined" steem were unfair to begin with, and now has a strong chance of being misused for controlling the steem block-chain, due to the conflicting declarations and certain moves which have been taking place on the tron block-chain itself. In fact, I would have preferred if the whole lot was burned!!

Regardless of how you feel about Justin, Ned or this situation.

What we learned today is that a small group of people can make a decision, write code and execute it without a single public conversation.

I am very thankful today for this lesson in our governance model.

Thank you for bringing that to light, it will be discussed when everyone has forgotten about what their first reaction to Justin was.

I second you on this. This is an interesting lesson given to everyone about the governance model of Steem, probably one of the biggest (hardest for some) since I'm there. But well, we keep learning day per day.
I am still torn between few feelings... even if this is not a big suprize to me.
Apparently Justin has reacted : https://steemit.com/steemit/@justinsunsteemit/open-letter-to-steem-community

This was not a small group and you’re running your ignorant mouth about shit you know nothing about.

Yea, you’ve got all those moron sheep who follow you to believe you, but, you’re just making yourself look like a fucking fool.

65 people who were hand selected.

So, you’re butthurt. 65 people, 95% of which have contributed far more than you ever will.

Consider the reasons you weren’t invited.

Not butthurt, but it is very easy for me to come up with several reasons I wouldn't be invited.. one is stake, two is I am not a witness, three is people could easily guess I would be opposed based on views I have been vocal about. There are many more.

Would you care to share what the criteria was? That could change my opinion.

I am nobody. Small fish, no importance. But I don't like this. I understand the witnesses/big money are afraid of losing their power, but changing the rules and locking a guy out seems to me to be wrong.

He bought his SP just like everyone else did, and now he is excluded because you're afraid of how he might vote it. Its bad karma.

"First they came for your neighbor, then they come for you".

Like I said, I'm nothing. But frankly, I'm even more disgusted with Steemit by the way people are acting on this issue. I will never forget this lesson and I'm sure it will taint the chain forever (or as long as it lasts).

This isn't about losing power or money. This is about mitigating the high possibility that the entire chain would be shut down. When Steemit Inc sold their company and stake the messages that were received from Tron and are still received (look at their Medium article) is that the intent was for the Steem blockchain to be cannibalized, STEEM swapped, and all the dapps that people built on Steem to be moved to Tron. Tron decided to make this decision for independent companies and dapps, on their behalf. That's why this had to happen.

For whatever noble reason you may think (or imagine), it doesn't justify "THEFT".

1. The bottom line is Justin Sun PAID money to buy SP like everyone else. There were no conditions EVER placed on that steem in any formal manner (a blog post or promise doesn't count as restricting that Steem). It is not Justin Sun's issue, if that SP from Ned was not valid, then the restrictions should have been in place long before now.

2. Many (if not all) of the witnesses were well aware that the SP existed and chose not to do anything about it at any time for YEARS (until it was sold to someone that they felt threatened by). That puts the witnesses into a situation where they have NOT been "duped" by Justin Sun and in fact, they have now opened themselves up personally to being sued for:

a) possible collusion (20 witnesses had secret meeting with possible backers to "take this guy's stake"???), b) possible extortion (put your money in limbo land unless you do what pleases me???), and
c) outright theft (taking something that belongs to someone else and doesn't belong to you).

They better be prepared to spend $100k or more to defend themselves, because its a no brainer this guy will sue them too if they don't remove this.

3 This group of witnesses just created a situation where Steem is pretty close to guaranteed to go away now. Because a) they will lose this battle in court b) they have taken actions that are major deterrents to investment in Steem by real money and c) they have destroyed the myth that this is a "decentralized" exchange (and that will be a hard one to ever shake again).

I'm not saying this because I care about Justin Sun, I'm saying this because I have been through many things like this before. I've seen how it will play out and it is a very stupid decision. They may think (and have some people convinced) their actions are noble too. But that will never justify taking someone's private property because you are worried about what he may do with his intentions.

What's the solution you might ask? If they were really concerned about Sun taking over and doing something unsavory, they should've bought more Steem. That's what a real decentralized platform would've forced as a solution.

ps... don't think for a second this is something that "had to happen". That's absurd.

1. Actually, there were conditions. There were very specific conditions of what that specific piece of stake was to be used for. If there weren't that'd be an entire different ballgame. 2. You are absolutely right on this, excellently put. Except for the part where witnesses would be sued because as you know, if you sell a piece of property and fail to disclose that property had condition, the seller is the one going to court.

a) No. Did not happen. b) No, mitigation until a solution is obtained. c) Not what the code does.

1. No, the situation was prevented. a) Witnesses aren't the one who sold a product under false pretenses. b) Preventing the destruction of dapps and investment like yours is encouraging for investors. c) This is exactly how decentralization works; preventing one person from shutting down a public OS blockchain.

Think for what would happen to all of the Steem ecosystem, users, dapps and communities if they suddenly have no blockchain to exist on and are mandated to move to someone else's corporate controlled blockchain.

Yes, buying STEEM is definitely a good idea.

I appreciate the effort and never have a problem with someone sticking up for what they believe!

My respect to you :)

Thank you and likewise.

> He bought his SP just like everyone else did

Really? Who else bought a massive, consensus-breaking block of ninja-mined stake from Steemit Inc?

No one.

Did he not pay for the Steem Power that he purchased? The witnesses let Ned sell the so-called Steem onto the market and never locked it up like in a "soft-fork", so I think its the same Steem that everyone else has.

And regarding the "consensus-breaking block" its irrelevant... are you trying to say that people can buy Steem but not too much so that the witnesses keep their control? Bad message.

And regarding ninja-mined stake, aren't all the witnesses aware of many "ninja-mined" stakes that are out there? Why have they not been blocked before, is it because the witnesses benefited from the delegations from the ninja mined stakes? Why aren't you blocking other ninja-mined stakes right now?

It is totally a farce what you guys are doing, its visible to many and mark my words... It will backfire on the witnesses. While I don't have the power, and most people on the Steem blockchain don't have the power to stop you; you will find out soon enough what the legal system is like.

I have nothing against you all personally, in fact about 5 of the witnesses are my friends, but it won't stop the fact that this is a blunder that will not only cost you all personally, but will bring down the whole integrity of the Steem blockchain.

Sadly you can't defend it, you can try, but we both know you are twisting the facts the make you feel like you chose properly. Its called cognitive dissonance. But when you mess with multi-million dollar players its not the same as squashing a minnow into submission.

> Did he not pay for the Steem Power that he purchased?

I have no idea the terms of any deal which may have happened between Justin, Ned, and Steemit. The rumor is that Justin bought Steemit, the company, and not the stake directly, so I fail to see how a change in the shareholder list would make any difference. The company is not the blockchain and the blockchain is not the company.

Apart from that, as many others have said, a change of ownership even of the stake doesn't change anything. Could Justin sell everything back to Ned, and Ned would then be off the hook for any statements that he ever made pre-sale ("That was Old Ned, I'm New Ned, please don't try to hold me accountable for anything that Old Ned said"). This is absurd in my view.

> And regarding the "consensus-breaking block" its irrelevant... are you trying to say that people can buy Steem but not too much so that the witnesses keep their control? Bad message

That is hypothetial. It is much more difficult to buy a controlling stake on the open market. That is one of the premises behind any proof-of-stake system: that buying up enough stake to break consensus is extremely expensive and unlikely. If that turns out to be false we will have to face the fact that proof-of-stake (including DPoS) is a lot weaker than we thought and may not be able to be trusted. But again, that is hypothetical. Buying up a huge block of ninja-mined/premined/etc. stake that was described as non-voting is not hypothetical.

> aren't all the witnesses aware of many "ninja-mined" stakes that are out there?

I'm not aware of anyone other than Steemit who manipulated the mining to guarantee the outcome they wanted (effectively an 80% premine) by withholding information, posting broken mining instructions, resetting the chain when it didn't go their way, making public statements about how the ninja-mined stake was not going to vote on witnesses and earmarked to develop the ecosystem, etc. No one else did that. Steemit did. The situation is unique, and you can't wash away that history by selling a company.

Also, I'm not a witness, just a stakeholder like you, and I am voting to support the witnesses who are running the update. Your logic in trying to convince me to change my mind is seriously wanting, but you are free to vote your way and the votes will decide it. I'm not even sure what is the point of all this noise when we have voting. Don't like what the witnesses are doing? Vote them out!

ok... thanks for the discussion, I have nothing again you and wish you well!

Wish you well too.

If you were informed, you would know smooth is no longer a witness.
In so far as the rest of your devil's advocate diatribe:
that was then, and this is now, better late than never.

lol... devil diatribe? hahahaha

Thanks for fixing that @jaguar.force! I was hoping you didn't really think I was the devil :) ... Have a good day and I appreciate the engagement even if we disagree!!!

No, I think the only way to reach them is via steemit.com. With me not having access to it, there is no way to get there.

This is an epic thread

Is there an article that provides more information and explains the history and context of the Steemit Inc ninja-mined stake? I've heard lots of rumors about it for awhile now but I think a lot of the small players like me (I guess we are "minnows"?) don't have all the facts or details about exactly what happened. Thanks in advance.

https://steempeak.com/ninjamine/@epic-fail/here-is-a-description-of-what-the-ninja-mine-is

Sun buy power, now he is "restricted" to use that power... He might put it on "for sale" now.. haha.

You start off with
>As another major player in the decentralized space

Yet you have just demonstrated the centralized power controlling account behavior here in Steemit Land is in your hands.
Not a good look from where I am sitting.

Here is my take on this softfork. I support with caution

https://www.actnearn.com/actnearn/@prameshtyagi/my-take-on-soft-fork-0-22-2

I fully support this update and am now running it on my servers.

This seems great to me.

But. When will witnesses realize that they must be "workers" and not direct beneficiaries of the content, nor the soul of Steemit?

More than anything because it should be assumed that the more participatory people, the more benefit to the Witnesses? If not. We have a big problem

Personally, I'm interested in these things ... Even if it's just out of curiosity. And I don't mind seeing it, even reading it. But.. if my partner, for example, reads this.

He runs out of Steemit and never returns..

Isn't it time we started ordering strictly technical publications about Steemit? And not make these contents monopolize the platform completely?

What happens if a Witness community is used? For example ... and maybe so.
Can we start trying to sort the contents of the platform ...?

Does anyone see Facebook or Twitter passing their Trello boards through the social network? Well, surely, this is how maybe some Steemit users feel..

Because Steemit always eats himself? Isn't it time to get out of the shell? and try to make Steemit something more professional, focused on external users.

I do not know. It is only a thought.

Try to make Steemit something more professional, focused on external users.

A more serious platform. More NATURAL in its use. In your participation.

I do not know. It is just a thought.

It is really necessary that "curators" invade the cover, labels and now also the new communities.

Seriously? Still having changes.

Will anyone start using Steemit with a healthy conscience ..? Nobody is going to try to change their attitude of seizing the platform, instead of trying to create a nice platform that attracts more users?

Seriously? This is told by someone who has been watching Steemit from the shadow for two years.

If there aren't many people inside Steemit who start considering certain attitudes.

Or we take advantage of the situation and we all start looking at our belly button and serious changes begin to be made. About the publications and the way of publishing.

Or it is absolutely impossible for this project to grow, no matter how much the future can contribute. Or @justinsunsteemit Or tron. O Jesus Christ.

While the people who control most of the publications and those who earn the most money are the witnesses themselves, while the communities are controlled by the witnesses themselves. While each Witness continues to focus the labels as he pleases.

So. It will be impossible to move forward.

Now more complicated. If each community is going to take its users to publish within their own community ...

To continue segregating more and more instead of unifying ... So that the contents can be fed back.

Steemit's path. It is being a cat eating its own tail. Forever?

It seems. Because if the platform tries to make changes, but its users use those changes for their own benefit, instead of the benefit of the platform itself.

It is impossible to evolve.

Indeed. Thanks guys and let's move forward in a good way. I appreciate you all for coming to a consensus.

I fully support this ! I'm the founder of @dcooperation community. I think we have the right to protect our investment that way. Steem blockchain should work as it is always and forever. That's what we are fighting for here and that's what will make us steemians in a decentralized blockchain run by people, but not by a company !

Steem to the moon !

I hereby support this softfork update

Thanks for sharing the Steemians opinion I'll stand with the community for betterment of #STEEM

This soft fork is not right. Is it for a truly decentralized system? If you were a witness, you should have at least listened to the community. Collusion between a few Witnesses is bad. This is only for the benefit of a few.

What did the Witnesses do? One person has had fewer achievements in the last three years than he has done in two weeks. Is this normal? What did the Witnesses do to promote Steemit? The only thing you can do is whining who moved the cheese?

What the fuck do you know about any of the witnesses achievements in the last three years? Fuck, who let the regard on the internet.

Do not say bad word. If you swear it looks like a bad thing.

Did the witnesses work for free? They're rewarded.

So because the witnesses are rewarded it is ok to claim that they didn't achieve anything, correct?

Fuck off you scag. You're literally avoiding badmouthing the witnesses and trying to lecture me about how to confront such nonsensical badmouthing, you fucktard idiot. Let me ask you again so I can hear that sweet Sound of Silence, What the fuck in all hell do you know about what ANY of the top witnesses achieved, you fucktard?

Clue: Diddly Squat and Not Shit, that's what.

오만한 새끼!!
결국 너희만 잘났다는 이야기지.ㅂ ㅅ
아무것도 모르고 이야기하겠냐. ㅂㅅㄴ
너희는 스팀잇 커뮤니트를 암흑속으로 넣은거야.
남의 재산을 동결했지? 왜 너도 똑같이 당할수 있다는걸 생각않하니? ㅂㅅㅇ
남의 계정을 통제하는거 독재야. 독재.
이제 스팀잇은 혼란 뿐이야. 이것 잘 해결하길 바랄 뿐이야.

너 이새끼 내가 세상 태어나서 처음으로 공식적으로 욕하는 첫번째 너다. 영광스럽지??

너희들이 몰고온건 불법이야. 난 아래 링크의 포스팅에 동의해.

https://esteem.app/tron/@steemitblog/an-open-letter-to-the-community-hf22-5

Steem just lost a lot of spine! Thanks Yall... Time to Vote "witnesses"!

Thanks to the witnesses who have organized and planned this!

Soft Fork 0.22.2 is good for steem blockchain steemit users Stakes protection

I really appreciate you!!!!!!!

I will run this fork on my witness @firepower. It would've been great if Inc themselves had chosen to do these things years ago. Well we're here now and I hope the meeting with Justin goes well but his response in his post to the community is appreciated.

100% support

The Steemit Inc is not only ninja-mined stake owner here. What about @smooth and others? As always lots of hypocrisy here. Unbelievable!

You are full of it. I never ninja-mined anything. All I did is mine, like I did on dozens of other coins. I wasn't sneaky. I didn't hide anything. I didn't withhold material information (I didn't have any), much less do so deliberately to gain an advantage. I didn't restart the chain when things didn't go my way (in fact their chain restart hurt me). I didn't make statements about using all of my stake to develop the eccosystem, nor lie about how much I mined or about how I had rigged the process.

Despite Steemit's best efforts to shut out everyone but themselves, there were a few honest miners who still managed to get in on it (without ever knowing if what they were mining would be worth anything at all), and I was one of them.

For you to claim otherwise is a lie.

I'm glad that you didn't hide anything. No wonder that you are leaving this circlejerk as witness. This is only the begining of shitshow. He gave us the word. LOL. Back than you promise me few MRO. So what? Same cuisine. That time was hardfork which was much more honest.
How about delisting STEEM? Right time for cryptonote.exchange.to revival.
Good luck.

I fully support and stand by the decision made collectively by the Steem witnesses.

It was not an easy decision, but the recent actions undertaken by Justin Sun within his own network are not aligned with his discourse on respect for the community and the concept of decentralization.

Therefore, as a witness, I think that this reaction is therefore justified, as long as it is temporary and reversible.

I'm already running this soft fork.
And it's not a bad move. Steemit always promised to not use their (unfairly mined) stake in voting and changing witnesses.
Now someone comes and threatens Steem's existence by owning ninja mined stake. By this soft fork simply we make sure Steemit will not break their promise.
This soft fork should have been applied months ago.

when you community is developing, you personally will keep going forward, i hope this development is the betterment of all steemians. kuddos!

The soft fork proposed has a sense especially after all the discussions the communities had concerning the coming updates.
Thank you for the detailed information you provided above.

Memorable moments... =) I am starting to record these with high fidelity (more than 4K) for this prosperity to be remembered. Let's hope this all reaches a happy future.

It is moments like this that show me the true power of Steem. I will add my voice in support of the soft fork. Until we get a better idea of what plans Stemmit 2.0 has for the blockchain I think it is a good idea to halt the use of it's stake. The ball is now in their court.
Edit(I do however have concerns of what this will mean for any future investors in Steem. I wished there was a way to just halt witness votes while allowing the other uses of the tokens even if that was a powerdown.)
I will be watching this story with interest.

genius move! fully support.

I support this update as a precautionary, temporary measure.

Full support!. Fork them up.

edit: since HF22 I removed almost all my witness votes. Now I am giving them to all the supporters of this temporary measure.

I support fork 0.22.2 it is a sign of true freedom.

As a witness, I see all sides of this situation. Given the information available it is acceptable to me to support this soft fork. I will be updating my server asap. I also think that action should have been taken very early on by the community to not stand for ninja mined tokens at all (years ago) - it is unfortunate that so many were forced to go along with the ninja mined pool existing in the hands of steemit inc. (or anyone). The fact that it was informally agreed that the tokens would not be used to manipulate the Steem community is important and the fact that Tron has not commented on it gives me the impression that possibly Ned did not mention the situation to Justin at all (or Justin just doesn't care to talk about it for his own reasons, which is part of why is giving our community an uncomfortable feeling).
One issue I would like clarified is what this means for the already delegated stake from this pool - will it be 'stuck' being delegated and not be able to be edited until the next fork?

I commented on this here.
As a witness, I see all sides of this situation. Given the information available it is acceptable to me to support this soft fork. I will be updating my server asap. I also think that action should have been taken very early on by the community to not stand for ninja mined tokens at all (years ago) - it is unfortunate that so many were forced to go along with the ninja mined pool existing in the hands of steemit inc. (or anyone). The fact that it was informally agreed that the tokens would not be used to manipulate the Steem community is important and the fact that Tron has not commented on it gives me the impression that possibly Ned did not mention the situation to Justin at all (or Justin just doesn't care to talk about it for his own reasons, which is part of why is giving our community an uncomfortable feeling).
One issue I would like clarified is what this means for the already delegated stake from this pool - will it be 'stuck' being delegated and not be able to be edited until the next fork?

Apparently "delegate_vesting_shares" operation is not included. So I guess the delegated stake is not "stuck".

OK, yes, it seems you are right. :)

Serious question for the witness cabal, if Justin subsequently buys a large amount of STEEM over the counter from exchanges to gain a majority share over the network, would the witness cabal freeze those funds too?

I can't speak for everyone, but I would not be for that or run a fork that did it. A key factor in all of this is the fact that Steemit Inc made a public promise, which it has repeated often, stating that it will not use its stake in witness voting, and that it will be used to further decentralize and grow Steem. People have invested their time and money into Steem on this basis. The problem here is not that action was taken, but that it wasn't done a long time ago.

I under stand the governance issue, but this goes further, it also prevents the accounts from powering down and withdrawing which has nothing to do with governance. To say that the STEEM is "earmarked" for special purposes after it has been sold to a new owner is bizarre as the witnesses don't have any investment stake in Steemit Inc. that I am aware of. I would not be surprised to see civil action against any US actors involved in this, and it wouldn't surprise me if freezing the assets of a US-based company violated criminal law.

> it also prevents the accounts from powering down and withdrawing which has nothing to do with governance.

I understand how many can find this troubling. I found it troubling too, as 1. it affects other business operations Steemit Inc may have wanted to do and 2. it also goes beyond just preventing certain actions from being made to also preventing any counter-measures to be done. (While that was the argument to add those op's to the limitations, aka so that they could not simply power down and move their stake to a different account and vote from them instead, it does assume ill intent and hostility. Which I don't think is something we can or should assume yet.)

> To say that the STEEM is "earmarked" for special purposes after it has been sold to a new owner is bizarre

That's another debate. In my opinion, Justin Sun acquired Steemit Inc. Steemit Inc held certain obligations and had made public statements that others had invested based on. Those obligations and statements remain the same despite a change of ownership. Would you think it was fine if Ned bought Steemit Inc back and decided to take all of that stake promised for community development and marketing for himself? While not exactly the same, I would say that this is similar to saying that if you sell stolen goods to someone else, then it is wrong for the original owner to want it back. The status of the asset don't change just because the owner does.

Steemit Inc. has no obligations and anyone who invested based on Ned's promises can litigate their grievances with him, but this is something completely different which reveals a fundamental flaw in the nature and value of this chain, and to address your point #2 that is the crux of my question to witnesses, if someone buys a majority stake from exchanges to control witness votes, will the current cabal treat them as hostile and freeze their assets? This is a very important question.

> if someone buys a majority stake from exchanges to control witness votes, will the current cabal treat them as hostile and freeze their assets? This is a very important question.

I would not. And after this, I think a good idea would be to reduce the number of witness votes each account has to 10. That way, it would take a lot more for one buyer to be able to fully control the chain.

Thank you for your input, it's really useful to hear what community members think.

Promises are made to be broken...

I'm not a witness but as a stakeholder I would not vote for witnesses doing that.

No

Buying a company owning 'something' is never the same as buying 'something'.
It's what corporate lawyers are paid for, to be aware of the differense and to act accordingly. That isn't something to be executed by volonteers)

I support this update.

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This is great, thank you all for doing this.

"The Steemit Inc ninja-mined stake is a special case, as up to this point it has been clearly declared on many occasions as earmarked solely for the development of the Steem ecosystem, and to be non-voting in governance issues."

An epic move indeed. With one swift gesture you have shown that you really care about the platform and that your can work as an efficient team.

I have to admit this is a very pleasant surprise :)

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Thanks for explaining the situation so well @softfork222

@future.witness is not supporting this fork.
Tron has payed to have these tokens, he can make what he wants with. If you had payed several millions for something you can expect to do what you want with them, it is normal. This is the capitalism, come on guyz.
And now he has more interest than all of you to to develop the project, what are you afraid of? To loose your few tokens?
And all of you were aware of this ninja mining when you start steem, you did nothing until now except to start a war agains bigger than you. You start the war to prevent the war, not really a good idea. The history will remember that it is you and not him who start the war, but sorry for you guyz, I think he is smarter than that and will not response to your war declaration.
And can we speak about the witness centralization? Voting between each others? If you want to do something for the decentralization, switch from top20 to a top100, set up temporary delegation instead of lifetime.
Welcome Tron, thank you for your interest in this project, and thank for your help to develop this blockchain for the mass adoption.

Justin Sun can make what he wants with these tokens on the unforked version of Steem. He can even swap them for Tron tokens now.

>And all of you were aware of this ninja mining when you start steem, you did nothing until now

So what? If Steemit showed no reason to be placed under such trustless rules that doesn't mean that everyone is treated with the same trust. You are also advocating for ninja mines stake that has been bought off the market for what would surely amount to pennies on the dollar to be used However, even if that undermines the network itself, because capitalism.

I support this proposal and thus have upgraded my witness node to 0.22.2!

As a backup witness that is ranked more than 50, my main concern is to be able to produce blocks - i.e. secure the steem blockchain.

I can understand why most Top 20 witnesses are in favor of the proposal and want to protect the steem blockchain for the best interests.

IMHO, this is a compromise and temporary solution - we want to protect the blockchain also we want to be censorship resistant.

Steem On!

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I admire the swiftness with which these decisions have been made and implemented. If anything, this serves as a proof of the health of the community and its major stakeholders.

Whether or not there is an actual threat is written on a different sheet of paper, but is had definitely caused @justinsunsteemit to react with an open letter.

Great work done here!

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Protecting the chain is great. Happy to see we stand up for ourselves. But one question: how about freedom? steemyoda? systema? whatever other account that “isn’t” made clear officially steem inc’s stake?

Just because it’s not official doesn’t mean they aren’t any threat.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough information about accounts like the ones you mention and can only go on what we know with regard to account ownership. It would be reckless to speculate on ownership in that way.

We only included accounts known to be owned by Steemit and that showed specific actions. And it was only Steemit Inc. that mined their stake for the explicit purposes that they had elucidated to the community on multiple occasions. Other miners made no public commitments/promises about how their stake would be used, nor were they privy to the initial launch times and complete configurations.

In other words - only the accounts and entity in question could be proven to 1) own the “ninja-mined” stake and 2) have placed public obligations on themselves regarding how the stake was to be used.

Thanks for the explanation.

inaction is NOT an option.. Everything can be worked out with diplomacy and tact

This only benefits the current set of witnesses. This is why this chain never really became popular

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This benefits the Steem blockchain and all the users.

Even @berniesanders approved this. I'm amazed. Sorry for the late reply.

I read it twice but still need some translation help.

What does this mean, to a simple content-creator like myself, who doesn't understand much of the technical jargon?

"Better safe than sorry", thanks for looking out for the many who you represented in decision making.

Many points raised in comments most are not even unaware of, so thank you!

When Steemit Inc, decided to open source the STEEM Blockchain, that is the moment that Steemit Inc begun to benefit (after pre-mining their Ninja Shares). That is when those shares took a value that could raise or lower or indeed be rendered null and void. There was (and is) not ever a guarantee that any tokens will have a value or specific use, and with the STEEM Blockchain being open source,..Steemit Inc is no longer in control of how it operates, the community has decided that Steemit Inc should not be able to transfer tokens that could potentially give controlling interest to another interest (Justin Sun) who then potentially takes the STEEM Blockchain in a direction not wanted by the majority of it's users.

This soft fork places a "for now" lock on the ability of Steemit Inc to transfer any tokens that could potentially provide majority voting rights to Justin Sun.(who could then potentially "take over STEEM"

Justin Sun Did NOT buy the STEEM Blockchain, he bought Steemit Inc.

This soft fork "for now" is a good thing in my view. As the only responses from Justin Sun is that "for now" ... (you fill in the rest).

Ok

There is a lot of technical information in this post, which I am not sure I fully understand.

As I think I understand it, this fork will ensure the safety of Steemit as a platform from any risks a large stakeholder could put it in by doing something that would not benefit the platform? It protects the platform and us better from the unfair advantage or a large stakeholder?

Cool

Crucial issue in the history of the Steemit blockchain, I see what you did there, you chose the lesser of the two centralizations to block the greater one.

This was a brave move!! , I appreciate this move though done to protect the Steem blockchain and get clarity from tron company on the roadmap, really. Thankyou, witnesses who are protecting the Steem Blockchain, much appreciations to you.

The future of Steem blockchain is in your hands, good luck with the meeting who ever going to meet Tron developers, please do whatever is best for steem blockchain!!

This was the right thing to do, to protect the ninja-stake and centralization. Thankyou, for making the move in interest of a decentralised Steem Blockchain. Really, it is witnesses who are running and securing the Steem blockchain. Much appreciations and thank you for it!!!

I have participate and always with you @softfork222

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