You definitely make some excellent points and I agree that it wasn't the best approach by Justin to run Steem on Steem blockchain via sockpuppet account he can control. It wasn't the best approach to call witnesses hackers on social media as well but after the move by witnesses to nullify his stake via softfork, I can't really blame him. We have to remember, that a financial transaction took place, Ned Scott sold and Justin Sun bought, witnesses should be taken up the details of that transaction with Ned Scott and should not have taken the measure they took.
This is the harsh reality of takeover, we must respect capital investment, the only time we can intervene is base on the terms of the agreement upon sale of the property. I wrote a post about this, even when countries go bankrupt and the IMF takes over, people who work the lifetime in public service lose everything. I understand the frustration of many as they see they voice and demands would not be heard but a lot of this had to be taken into consideration when Ned Scott decide to sell, that just the reality
I feel the best approach especially someone of your rank within the community should focus more on brokering a deal between the community and Justin Sun. Steem could not continue on the path it was going, each time we thought it was the floor, we were not disappointed. Even the utopian project run by several of the same witnesses could not even secure funding to continue developing as Steem token price could not support. The only relief for the last two years has been the occasional SBD pump, of which only a few were able to catch, so it could not be business as usual.
Steem needs the investment, lets try to broker a deal with Justin Sun, that ensure developers can get paid and witnesses can sell their reward to maintain their servers.
If no Justin Sun, what the next solution because it cannot be business as usual prior to the announcement, Steem was sinking.
This is factually incorrect. They could have nullified it, sending it to @null, but that is not what they did. Please do not repeat inaccurate misinformation. They set it so that it could not vote for witnesses, be sold, or transferred.
Which is what the witnesses did. Tron had purchased the founder's stake, which has never been used to vote for witnesses, and has consistently been claimed by Stinc, @ned, and @dantheman, to be earmarked for development, and used for that purpose since Steem began.
Tron began publishing articles stating Steem was going to 'migrate' onto Tron, Steem was going to be exchanged for a new token, and if stakeholders didn't undertake the exchange in a timely manner, they could lose all their money. Things like that indicated that Tron was going to do things with that stake like simply take over Steem.
Which is exactly what Tron did. All of Tron's 'witnesses' are just bots on one box. If anything happens to that box, wherever it is, the blockchain could crash, or worse. For days now I have watched the price feeds from the Tron puppets and our consensus witnesses. The real witnesses are updating the price feed, which is damn important. The Tron witnesses haven't yet since they were imposed.
Tron does not have the expertise to control Steem and keep the blockchain working, and Justin Sun has stated 'I just want to sell my Steem for profit.' Since he has ~100M Steem to sell, what do you think him dumping Steem on the market would do to the price?
Don't defend Sun or Tron in this matter. His actions have been despicable, and that's without even mentioning convincing exchanges to steal their customer's money and use it to vote for Tron.
So you saying I just bought 70 million worth of Steem and I can't vote for witnesses, can't transfer it, can't sell it and basically have it sitting on account at the discretion of witnesses??? What communist shithole is this???
Y'all fail to realize your criticism is with the terms of the sale between Ned Scott and if Ned explicitly mention that to Justin Sun and he went against that terms of sale then he did not honor the agreement.
This is capitalism, there was a financial transaction even countries go through this, people lose everything. The way things used to happen is often left in the past when the IMF takes over.
You know what surprise me here, the amount of people who brag about just how evil socialism and communism is and how great capitalism is but now we have a capital investment and they trying to defend the action as the excuse of a community. You take this to any court in the US and they ask you what was the terms of the sale between both parties and if Justin Sun was left to do as he wish, then you at the mercy of Justin Sun with the way he wants to move forward
That's basically right, but there was an alternative other than freezing that stake and, if one is going to quote using the legal system route, would have been for the witnesses or someone representing the witnesses to file in court asking for an injunction and freeze upon the money in question until they could prepare and file their legal argument(s) that the sale violated terms set between the owner and the those on the platform.
Justin could have just as easily filed against the witnesses in a court of law when they froze his stake because it is illegal to freeze someone else's stake, he could have done it with the right legal team that kept it narrowly focused on that point and that if the witnesses/platform had a beef they should file their own counter claim.
So the big question is really: Why is no one going the legal route to settle this?
Basically because everyone involved has been operating under the laws required regardless if you are talking about this platform or things pertaining to the rules and operations of the Tron platform. They ("everyone involved") are under some mistaken ill conceived notion that because the block chains are some new frontier they all get to ride around making up the rules, and they don't care who gets run over by all the horses, buggies and wagons. They don't want the scrutiny that's going to come down on them if they involve the legal system as they could all find themselves being slapped upside their heads.
That's pretty much the scope of it. In that regard it's sort of nonsensical to be arguing the what of's of the legalities involved when no one has taken them seriously before and from the looks of things aren't going to move forward doing it either.
Just my frank assessment of it all.
I don't disagree with you at all. I posted my opinion of the soft fork that day and here quote from that post:
Thanks!
One that respects the rights of investors to depend on the representations of people selling things. While you may prefer one in which anybody can say anything about whatever they're selling and no mechanism to protect investors from lies and fraud exists, I don't actually think that is the case.
You'd have nothing if you lived somewhere that failed to protect buyers from fraud and theft.
There'd be no law but force. Your only recourse against people that sold you some product that did not provide the benefits they claimed, or contained some harm they told you it didn't, would be limited to violence.
Is that the world you want?
It's hard to see what a compromise would look like. Steem wants the contract with Ned about the use of the STINC stake honoured, and Sun wants to be able to sell that stake at any point of his choosing. These two lines in the sand don't share any overlap.
Maybe a compromise (if coding it is feasible) is for us (steem) to lock up a proportion (25%?) of the STINC stake for a set period of time (1 or 2 years?) to be used for growing the blockchain value. After that point all the stake is available for Sun to withdraw at his pleasing. Sun is ultimately going to get the latter with the help of the exchanges by the looks of it, so it makes sense to give him that ability while still working to grow the value of his investment.
When the IMF takes over a distress country, the people of the country is often the last in the negotiation. Steemit INC and Ned Scott was running a financially saddle and struggling company. I come in with the capital and I have to let my money sit on an account at the mercy of witnesses who themselves have to cash out every month to cover bills and taxes.
You guys need to take up these concerns with Ned Scott, what was the terms of the sale? This is the way capitalism works, when there is a capital investment and I am now the majority shareholder, I dictate how things move going forward.
The IMF doesn't take over a country, it loans countries money to stabilize their currencies. This isn't just done to safeguard the well being of the international money markets but also out of consideration of what a collapsing economy's effect would have upon the people in that country and abroad depending upon the countries manufacturing capabilities and how that would effect the global economy. It also isn't done by one man's consensus but several members of a board in consensus from various other countries. Every country commits to contribute a quota of monetary funds dependent upon the economic size of each country, those countries aren't allowed to loan out more than their quota so if their quota is maxed out they have to try and convince countries who quota's aren't maxed out a compelling reason they should help stabilize another countries economy. Some may have more of a reason to be concerned about the economic well being of another country dependent upon how much they are intertwined with that countries economic input and output to their own country. That country could have already tried to help the other country but maybe things such as corruption among government officials are seen as a cause as to why it's not helping. Ultimately though when they come together at the IMF to make these request the issues are resolved among a consensus of individuals and not just one person from one of the countries whose losses stand at a greater risk if the country they are requesting money for fails. This gives everyone the opportunity to look at the risk factors and contemplate the movements/actions/requirements that must be met moving forward.