Good catch @swerdan.
I didnt think to look at Twitter.
It appears they are forking instead of SMTs...they figured they could do it all themselves and become the blockchain and have everyone else pile on top of them.
I wonder if @ned will have any comments about this.
That’s all allowed within the world of open source. Don’t think there’s any ’splaining required.
AFAIK Steem has no fork block set yet. So it seems more like Vice have hosen a specific point at which they make a snapshot and launch their presale. As a standalone solution, apparently airdropping
for user acquisitionas a thank youfor user acquisition.Much ado about nothing. Just somebody who thinks their Rolodex is big enough to run solo with it. And given Kelly Holland, that may very well be the case.
Plus... it may give them a bonus when looking at the competitiveness in the niche. Why not start a chain yourself rather than also sharing it with others, while being only guests on it. :)
Where will the airdrop happen? In your VIT wallet. Hence why the 18,500 block snapshot. A fork, but just an under the radar fork which has no explicit intention to compete with the Steem ecosystem. Just doesn’t want to be hosted on the Steem chain.
AFAIK the first action is a presale in January tho. No roll-out yet. As such this summary could still lead to an actual SMT (as well as them going solo). Both seem still possible, although the highlighted bits seem to point at a snapshot & [under the radar] fork.
Dependent on licence though. It's only relatively recently that the blockchain code license allowed for a new genesis block to be created, i.e. a new blockchain, on any derivative of the Steem source code. You might remember @dan wrote a post drawing attention to this the day before he left which he subsequently "deleted" by editing to update to blank document.
Open source ≠ free for all uses.
If they are forking I agree with you, let them do it (not that anyone can stop them). I'd even go as far as to say we should encourage this. Competition can only be good for us.
What exactly is forking?
@jonle1...Pop it in a search engine and get a good schooling...
It's pretty much a correction of a platform to make it 'better'. But, this is a novice explanation....
One of the best things I've learned since joining Steemit is, do your own research for the most accurate results ;+)!!!!
Also, following experts, such as @taskmaster4450 helps one gain a lot of knowledge as well.
Peace.