As many of you know by know @justinsunsteemit has colluded with Binance, Huobi , and poloniex to replace duly elected witnesses with 20 sock puppet witnesses running on a single node. Steemians gathered yesterday in PALnet for 7 hours and launched a somewhat disorganized campaign to make sure the broader cryptosphere was made aware of the actions of Justin, Steemit, and the exchanges. Today at noon eastern (3 hours from now) we'll be meeting again, but this time the plan is to organize.
Why this matters
Within 12 hours of powering up Steem and using it to vote in sock puppets the pressure from the Steem community and broader crypto community was enough to get CZ to back down. He put out the following post and then cowardly deleted it shortly there after. CZ has removed his votes for the current witness, but to be clear damage is done.
New sock puppet witnesses are in charge of the chain because of CZ's approval of an action plan that
- Took custodial Steem.
- Locked it up for 13 weeks.
- Used that Steem to proxy for sock puppet witnesses.
We'll continue to pressure this exchange and I plan to organize a cryptowide boycott until duly elected witnesses are restored on Steem.
Huobi also bails on Justin, Steemit and Poloniex
https://medium.com/huobi-global/community-counts-a-letter-to-the-steem-community-340881448ea7
Here you can see Huobi running as fast as they can from this fiasco. They are in a similar position of having used custodial stake to elect sock puppet accounts. Those witnesses are still in power because of these decisions. I'll be organizing a boycott against Huobi as well.
Community Voices against Tyranny matter
We've existed on this blockchain for 3 years. In all of them I've never seen anything like this. What's also amazing is that the Steem witnesses are staging a comeback of epic proportions. As you can see several of the top duly elected witnesses are in spitting distance of regaining the top 20 consensus spots from the Tron Tyrants.
What's the plan? Operation Liberation
We'll be meeting today in the PALnet Discord Channel to get an organized response going.
@justinsunsteemit is doubling down on his rhetoric despite overwhelming opposition on the chain, overwhelming criticism in the cryptosphere, and two of his colluding partners backing out on the first day. The comments are breathtaking.
Today is day 2. And the goal is to amplify our unified voices until this occupation is ended.
Go home Tron. You're drunk.
You forgot to mention 3 key Steemit employees resigning in protest (including crucial blockchain devs).
This is extremely telling because they know things from the inside and have risked their livelihood in uncertain times to protest tyranny.
Great respect to @andrarchy @vandenberg & @gerbino.
It was 4 out of 7 last I heard.
1 stake = 30 votes for witnesses is a part of the reason why 20 new top witnesses were elected. Only fair relation is 1 stake = 1 vote.
Do witnesses plan to keep the rule 1 stake = 30 votes, which promotes centralization, oligarchy, and is a blockchain safety vulnerability?
I like the idea of decreasing the number of votes, at least to a lower number of witnesses, if not to 1:1 that you can arrange however you'd like.
At the same time, I would love to see an increase in the # of consensus witnesses. The number 20 is arbitrary (though it is written into the whole 63-second cycle, 20+1x3sec blocks), and we definitely have far more extremely dedicated & active witnesses than that. Why not switch it up to top 32 or to 40 or 64. If that's possible somehow I would love to move that direction.
Wider distribution of the "consensus" needed, as well as a vast decrease in how much voting power each VEST has would create far more decentralization.
See my full post steem blockchain designed vulnerability.
That rule will likely stay because changing it doesn't change distribution.
The ratios remain the same.
It also lowers the bar to vote in witnesses making attacks cheaper.
Better we force exchange accounts to decline voting rights.
Stunc's accounts, too.
I have described steem blockchain designed vulnerability in the linked post.
I gave @yabapmatt a witness vote. It's not much, but I do hope that we can win this fight.
Vote for the other community witnesses too.
I'll wait and see where my votes are best served. I am only a minnow here.
Vote for all the witnesses below the Sock Puppets, that is where your votes are best served. Waiting doesn't help.
I would argue waiting hurts. A show of force is a powerful statement.
In this case waiting helped because I got to study what and who I was voting for before I went ahead and used my votes. Some witnesses were disengaged or otherwise inactive and these would have been wasted votes.
If I had just followed the above advise literally this would have been the case.
Now I know that I can see who is already in the top 20 that doesn't have my vote, I can then use strategy to either strengthen who's already there or bring up someone else who should be, or both.
You have 30 votes, all equal. We need a minimum of four of our own guys to prevent Justin Sun's sock puppets from having a super majority of 17/20 consensus witnesses. Please use all of your votes.
It's my intention to do just that, when more details of Operation Liberation are revealed.
The tweets...
Less of the slagging and offensive bullshit please. Try be more constructive. Maybe we wouldnt be in this mess if the published communications from our side were not so toxic.
I suppose you didn't read Sun's tweets. He called the witnesses criminal hackers who broke the law. Those tweets were irrational and not something that should be comming from a person in his position. It is blockchain busting.
Not that I condone all the negativity here. But yes Sun is acting like a tyrant and yes those tweets seemed like they were comming from someone who is not thinking rationally and acting out of passion. I fail to see the toxicity in the post and the offensive bs.
Sun is destroying his reputation.
I did read his tweets, but my concern is not how Justin behaves.
"Go home Tron. You're drunk." - seems to be directed at a community and I wouldn't think it's very positive.
"I'll be organizing a boycott against Huobi as well."
Huobi has already said they might reinstate these votes and will be watching. Why wind them up with a statement like this when they have reversed the vote for now. We know Justin deceived them, however statements like this make it look like we are the ones trying to block people out.
Let sun destroy his reputation, while we nourish our instead of tarnishing it
Being diplomatic is always a wise solution. Insults only add to injury. Just pointing out those words were warranted although they wouldn't be my approach. There are two sides to every story.
yes there are two sides, and both sides have played their parts with forks. continued tit for tat is not really good. we are all emotional, including me :-)
You really think there is a world where Sun would have spared us this humiliation?
I totally agree!
Agreed @paulag. I wrote about this in my Minority Report post earlier today, as I believe with better intentions and far better communication ...
... although that is now "water under the bridge." Hopefully wiser heads and calmer tones going forward into negotiations will increase the possibility of some sense of peace and cooperation being restored going forward, however unlikely that may now be.
I don't think the tone is getting calmer, unfortunately, I think we have more interesting days ahead
Nope. "Flame throwing" begets more "flame throwing." 😧
"Who knew?" ... 😞
II like this coordinated and organized response to what happened yesterday and despite a busy schedule I'll be there to check in. Boycotting binance too, what CZ did proves he isn't capable of leading a company. You shouldn't make such decisions without weighing the consequences or maybe he did...
I am there! I love Steem and want to protect it for life! Splinterlands to the moon! We can all come together and help fix everything together! We are a strong community!
You really missed out on the chance to call it operation solar eclipse.
okay I will show myself out
22.4444 💪
I was all for and open minded for the future of STEEM and steemit.com with the purchase by Sun.. After this take over it done fried that idea! Now that the wrong was done and the takeover happened trust is gone across the board. These exchanges really should have seen what garbage was happening rather then trying to save face after the damage and 22.5 is already going. All over greed. We shall take OUR community back. See ya at the meeting @aggroed keep up the fight brother!
Yes, some concrete leadership. I just voted for our community Witnesses with my meager 8000SP. Every little bit helps.
Thank you, Aggroed, for staying to educate & and fight!
In my small way, trying to do the same here and on Twitter:
https://steemit.com/hive-174578/@yahialababidi/why-am-i-still-here
I might be a small, insignificant steemian.
But please listen: this is not Splinterland with winners and losers, it is not a fight to wipe out the "opponent", there is much more at stake. A possible short victory over JS will force him to use even stronger weapons.
Please seek the dialogue, talk to him and find a win-win solution for us and for him and his company, which - after all - is Steemit.
Communication is the key to a solution - not War!
As Patrick Henry said in 1775:
When there is such a blatant attack threatening the decentralization of the network, there can be no peace. Steem is notable primarily for its decentralization. If a single entity controls the network, as is currently the case, there is no purpose to Steem. The only chance of surviving is to rebel and regain community control.
Good to see you ready for this mission man ;)
Who is the "community"? The top 20 witnesses? The biggest stakeholders of the previous witnesses were just two accounts! The rest are peanuts! Steem is and never was decentralized! The witness voting system is aimed for centralization from the beginning until now!
BTW: who started the attack? I am not pro or contra JS! I am pro a conversation in mutual respect with the goal to find a solution, which is good for both sides. Hopefully the meeting on Friday is still taking place!
No the community are the pre-existing witnesses that have been contributing to the Steem ecosystem for years and have thousands of accounts voting for them.
Steem always had the potential to become centralized because of large pots of stake that shouldn't be voting but technically could still vote. These pots include exchange funds and the ninja-mined Steemit stake. Yesterday, we saw all of these pots become voting. They voted for changes that are against the will of the community, i.e. users. No one with a deep technical understanding of Steem that cares for the community will support Justin Sun at this point.
I get your point! No problem. I am not supporting JS, I would rather like to see a respectful discussion and not a shooting at each other! After all, he is the owner of Steemit and we have to deal with him! We certainly can agree on this!
Forking the chain to get rid of him would be the death of Steem in my opinion.
Agree.
I haven't heard of the meeting being cancelled, but after watching events unfold I'm less than convinced it was ever extended in sincerity to begin with. I believe Sun tossed a bone out there to distract us while he organized what we're seeing. I believe the soft fork only forced his hand to act more quickly than he had planned, but this was his plan all along.
I'm more offended by the actions of the exchanges justin thought he could buy into this block chain... But the fault was he bought pre mined steem... The community alkready wanted to opt out that steem... he got robbed not by us but the previous owner of that steem.
This action will be also the end of tron too because of the manipulation all trust in him and all future actions done by him is gone in one blow.
It's not an act of war but good redination of all the facts. Internet can make you but it can also break you.
Only top 20 witnesses can vote this must be changed also. But I think it's too late. It's the end of steem and tron and the exchanges involved... personally I think it's illegal I will file a complaint to all controlling regulators.
This x 100, A war against Justin Sun isn't one that can be won. The man has much more money and resources not to mention he is the owner of STEEMIT and he did attain his stake via Purchase.
Pulled all my outgoing delegations. Voting is fixed on my side, making some further votes now
Your delegations don't affect voting for witnesses or the DAO/SPS.
There's the separate option to "proxy" your governance voting, but delegation is only for curation voting.
You have community votes as well.
Community Voices against Tyranny matter
what about the tyranny we have been going through over the last three years? Where was your voice then?
It is amazing how defensive people can be when it comes to admitting they did something wrong.
In my view the current situation is a result of the action the previous top witnesses did. When you and the fellow witnesses where so concerned about the Steemit stake and what it "could" be used for, why didn't you all made that soft fork YEARS ago?
Face it, you started this!
We should all be buying STEEM now!
Voted for our old witnesses, made a call to action for my followers to do the same and now ready to participate in whatever is needed so that the Operation Liberation is successful. Thank you, the Steemian community, for being YOU. Love this place.
I believe in miracles
Just saw that too :) I think it´s because Huobi just removed their votes.
My point of view concerning CZ/Binance...
Well, CZ has done a mistake. I guess he wasn't aware the implications his activism has. CZ has got our response AND... he has undone it - and he has done it fast!
I think we should not focus to penalize Binance. On the contrary, we should let him know that we welcome his decision. The damage that was done maybe cannot be repaired immediately but CZ's decision after our protest was clear and strong.
However, maybe we should acknowledge that.
foresee a future where we build something better and excellent and foolproof
May the forces be with you
Hope you can somehow de-escalate the whole situation. Freezing Steemit's account was maybe too harsh an action and Sun's reaction stupid, corrupt and revealing. But at least the plan to migrate Steem to Tron is off the table. But now a cooperation has become even more difficult. Hoping the best, Steem On :)
Top witnesses reached out to him for a week after we learned of the acquisition, before the soft fork, and initiated it as a reversible precaution. It may seem harsh on the surface but it was necessary to secure the stake Sun thinks he owns as part of the acquisition of Steemit inc remains in community control until as this can be hashed out. From what I'm gathering Sun is claiming he was not informed of the obligation he bought and that's what all this is about.
The main reason for freezing him was so he couldnt take us on to tron. Which he has said wont happen.
So why we trying to fight him.
Lets face it they tried screwing him and got done over twice as hard.
Just take it like men/women and move on
He hasn’t said it won’t move to Tron. He stated Steem wouldn’t be rolled into Tron unless the community wanted it to be. However, he also stated that the community united to defeat the villainous “hackers” who sought to destroy the Steem blockchain. Ergo, in his mind community = Justin Sun. We’ll be forced onto Tron if we don’t regain witnesses.
I think the plan is quite simple. We need to send our votes to the witnesses that have the best chance of getting into the top 20. If we can get 4 or 5 across the line, we should be back in business.
Edit
There's a new Justin account with over 2 million SP, check out hkdev404.
I am with you, witnesses are elected.
Let the games begin! We will not go gently into that sun light? Rage against it!
wow... I am just watching the numbers and they are climbing fast! Yabap should have it in 1-2 hours!!
This is crazy! Go STEEM!
From all the previous STEEM WITNESS I vote for you because I believe in your actions and what you represent and done so far, please be the grown man and dont hate or try to destroy what you dont know, always look up for the understanding between both parts before taking any defensive or aggressive actions, thanks for your great support to the steem community
Hello!
This post has been manually curated, resteemed
and gifted with some virtually delicious cake
from the @helpiecake curation team!
Much love to you from all of us at @helpie!
Keep up the great work!
Manually curated by @solominer.
@helpie is a Community Witness.
Your witness node seems to be reporting itself as using version 0.22.1. That's the real version is was it mocked up like the 0.22.4444 one?
Wasn't sure where you were hoping to have links to old Ned/Dan/Steemit statements about the ninja mine sent @aggroed, but this seems to be the oldest mention.
Down about 3/4 of the way: