We were hoping that JS will recognize those Ned's promises, but all the signs coming from various communication channels was making us to believe that the whole platform is in danger (more on that in @pfunk's post).
And yes, you are absolutely right, we should enforce those promises in the code (actually at the time of HF14 such code was developed for solely that purpose: decline_voting_rights, however it wasn't ever used).
So after yet another failure of Ned that resulted in Steemit Inc. crisis by the end of 2018, we discussed that once again, unfortunately at that time there were no consensus on enforcing it via code and community decided to trust his words once again, which as we all see now was a grave mistake. And I mean it. It caused the end of Steem as we know it.
I'm very appreciate that you use translator to read my post. My English is not well so I use my mother language writing this post to post my opinion. You're the star in the community and I also voted you long time ago. I think your contribution is very important for the community.
In this incident, the division of power between the company and the community was very chaotic. And I don't think Justin Sun known Ned's promises before he bought Steem Inc. But this is only my guess, because we do not know the content of the purchase contract and the purchase process.
Justin is a very clever business man. He is good at using the focus news on media to improve his assets' value. The words he spoken is just words in most time. His purpose is to make investors pay attention to Tron. He said he will move Steem to Tron. I think that just was words. His purpose is to tell investors Tron will have a good social media and Steem is that social media.
As for whether to do so, I think the community can talk about it with Justin. But the community worried about Justin is the second Ned and the top witnesses locked the Steem Inc. 's coins immediately. I think this is a very very bad choice. Locked coins is like to use nuclear weapon in the real world. It should be the last choice not the first choice. In Justin's meaning, the community locked his money. He thinks he used the real money bought the whole Steem Inc's asset including the coins which have been locked.
I run the version 0.22.5 to support that community should unlock the coins first and then talk about the future of Steem with Justin.
I think the only possible solution at present is to let Ned return the equivalent of the value of the locked coin to Justin, and then in version 0.22.6, directly make the locked coin to the community control by coding.
In the blockchain world, code is everything and human promise is shit. If the human promise is useful, we don't need law and even the blockchain.
Yes, I quite agree with you about that
We actually know pretty a lot about the purchase (like that price was much much lower than the market value of assets themselves - so he had to know at least to some extent that those resources have strings attached) and we also tried to communicate with him and/or his representatives.
Trust me, we tried talking for over a month now, and it always ended up the same: we hear some promises and in the meantime we see more and more hostile actions. Since the time of the incident with exchanges (note that funds of Steemians were abused for impacting the governance and that locked with withdrawals suspended) none of the witnesses is blocking anything, and yet we experience even more hostile actions and simple lies.
I was really hoping for a win-win scenario with Justin Sun, especially that with his robustness, contacts with business world and 点石成金 (?) he could do a lot of good for Steem and many people actually was pointing that out - many, many months ago -that he would be much better for Steem than Ned ("Be careful what you wish fork").
After a whole month of hard work and trying to find some way of cooperation, a month of lies and hostile actions from him and his team, I no longer think that he care about Steem. I think the best way is to abandon our hopes for Steem friendly Justin Sun and redirect our hopes to what never failed us: our community.
Steem is not a place, not even a name. We can do wonders, and we don't need Sun for that :-)
As I said, the top witnesses made a very wrong and dangerous choice. Lock someone's asset is not the spirit of the blockchain. Lock asset is a nuclear weapon. Another nuclear weapon is exchange's vote. The two weapons should be the last choices but the top witnesses used one. So I think the top witnesses upgrade the conflict to the war.
I absolutely persist my opinion that people's asset cannot be locked and that's why I choose 0.22.5.
And I also confuse why the top witnesses did not lock coins when Ned was there? Is this a double standard way?
Respect is mutual. If Ned was the former leader of the Steem, do you think lock asset is a respect way to welcome a new leader?
If lock someone's asset becomes the normal state of the community, I don't think there is any need to explore the future of the community. What's to talk about after the assets have been confiscated? :-)
No, it was a mistake that we didn't want repeat again.
It was more of a delay than lock, to ensure that assets in question wont be abused past the unrecoverable point. Unfortunately there was high probability of doing so (abuse of non-voting stake by same party on TRON network).
No. Need was former leader of Steemit Inc. Steem is more than that. Steem has no leader.
While I have a lot of bad opinions now about Justin Sun, I also think that he is also a victim of a situation created by Ned, although, as mentioned already, I'm pretty convinced (due to value of contract) that Sun knew about problems, yet, didn't cared to talk and pushing changes without respect to governance rules (initial press releases about token swap through Poloniex, etc).
It was least disruptive way of dealing with existential danger of the platform.