That ability to fork is also a reason why some people stay away from HIVE. What's to stop the witnesses from colluding and forking out someone's stake? In theory, nothing, and it's a lot easier to get 17 people to agree on something that it is hundreds or thousands to agree on something...
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I think about that a lot. What if a champion of the people ascended to power and began a crusade to take resources away from the elite and give it to the people? Wouldn't the elite do what they always do, and stab Caesar 100 times on the senate floor?
At the same time, pulling something like this is just as risky as what Justin Sun did. Are you really going to risk it all by potentially alienating the entire community? The chance that such a hardfork would backfire is massive, and the chance of a counter hardfork is even bigger.
This counter-hardfork would nullify the stake of all those 17 witnesses and possibly even the big whales that voted for them (if you could show that those whales were in on it). You'd easily be able to show that those whales were in on it because, as we've already seen, it's more preferable to correct the injustice rather than start all over again with a new fork. Lines would be drawn, and I have faith that the 17 bad actor witnesses in this case would "never work in this town again". All they'd be left with was a gutted network with tons of selling pressure, and unlike Justin Sun, they would not have to finances to prop up the value of the coin and they'd look like instant failures.
Anyone can fork any crypto and create whatever rules they want.
The question is: who's going to follow them?
Yeah, I think it's pretty clear, just as with economics, the threat of competition is just as effective as real competition, and the threat of the entire community just upping and leaving is enough in itself to thwart the idea of a hostile takeover. I almost completely rule out the possibility of another after having seen the failure in real time. I think it even less likely that current witnesses somehow do a 180 degree turn about from their demonstrated commitment to the crypto ethos. No, no. They've shown themselves to be the real thing. HIVE has a foundation to build on that is every cryptocurrency's envy.
That having been said, I also agree with @jrcornel with regards to the need to expand the number of witnesses. That is something I think that needs to be one of our top priorities.
I'd like to see a lot more non-consensus witnesses at the very least.
Paying one 1 random every 21 blocks seems stingy at best.
Maybe, maybe not. Many people are here for the rewards, probably the majority in fact, so it's tough to say how many of them would actually leave were this situation to play out.
A more likely an equally scary scenario would be that the witnesses hid within the code a bug that allocated them inflation or more inflation than they are supposed to be getting. Much of the community would be oblivious to it for some time. Not saying our current witnesses would do this, but I'm saying that having only 17 people needed to pull off something like that is an issue.
Overall, I think we need to change the consensus witnesses number well beyond 17, but perhaps it is setup this way initially to get the infrastructure built that they want with plans to further decentralize down the road? That's my hope anyways.
That's 100% impossible because it would instantly destroy consensus across every single node in existence. It would alter every witness signature and every block_id across the entire network. It would be clear to all non-consensus nodes immediately that the witnesses went rogue and booted up a hardfork without telling anyone.
All that being said, I'm sure there's many shady things they could do that haven't been conceived of yet. Even the threat of such a thing is detrimental to investor sentiment regardless of the threat even being possible. Sometimes perception is reality.
No, I am saying the hf was already expected and other things were slipped in.
Oh interesting like it's already happened in the confusion of the hostile takeover and the reboot of a theoretically new chain. Certainly more plausible but all the code changes can be reviewed by anyone. It's a lot easier to review code than it is to write it, and considering the time frame and urgency of it all I wouldn't expect that crisis to be capitalized on.
On the other hand you have blocktrades and an elite group who just decided everything right down to the name and logo of the new network; no vote.
On the other side of the coin yet again the ninjamine was a big enough honeypot to stay legit and simply funnel those coins into their own pocket... which is going into effect next hardfork so I don't expect foul play. Everything seems pretty transparent.
Yep exactly.
Them deciding everything isn't exactly bad at this stage, as long as they have big aspirations and don't get caught up in the short term greed. However, once they get things setup they will need to work on decentralizing it if they want it to truly thrive.
Vitalik said it best in my opinion...
Yeah I was looking at that and agreeing with it as well.
Honestly though Hive is positioned very well to get where it needs to go.
How many other networks can say the same?
I hear even Ethereum has a daunting 50%+ premine to this day.