Yeah that's the thing though, just because you sell tokens that were unfairly mined (on top of personal stake earned in a similar fashion) doesn't mean you can just ignore the fact and sell them off and put the burden onto a new person.
It is a reason Dan left from what I've understood while Ned attempted to just ignore it and hope stakeholders and witnesses who made decisions based on the promises of how that stake would be used, would just forget about it.
That said ned is the real culprit cause I doubt he mentioned any of this or maybe he did and is the reason why only someone with an already shady reputation was the only one that took the deal.
Oh well, all in all we definitely came out better and whatever collaboration or intentions sun may have had proved to be nothing considering the state of Steem today.
The harm of launching things unfairly and then trying to make up for it with empty promises is definitely something others should avoid. Even if this unfair start made it harder for hive's distribution, there's been plenty of time for curators, buyers and sellers to balance it now.
The further back in history we go, the murkier and darker it gets hehe. I tried to do my own research into what exactly was "promised" and how official it was, and I wasn't really able to turn up much beyond vague statements that were made in places that nobody could actually verify. I have little doubt that some shady stuff happened back then, as well probably when the sale took place. As you said - if Ned didn't mention any of this to the buyer then that by itself is pretty shady, and if he did - well then the fact they knew and didn't honor it is shady too - lol.
All is well that ends well though, and like I said before - I'm pretty happy how everything turned out. I'm still on good terms with everyone that is important to me, even if we don't talk as often as we used to. Even the stakeholders who stopped voting for me I have no hard feelings about. We all made our own decisions at the time for what we thought was best for the chain + community.