I have a hard time believing that any of what you're talking about is "enforceable", or that the sale itself was criminal.
From what I understand of contract law, there are a few criteria that need to be made for any contracts to be valid/legal -- and I doubt that any of those promises related to the "intent" of the neon-green stake would fulfill all criteria.
- Offer and Acceptance;
- While there appears to have been numerous accounts of what Steemit-Inc was promising to do with the stake -- I haven't seen any mention of what would be returned (from the community) to them for their act (i.e. "We'll use our stake for development, but the community has to write 5-posts a day" or some such nonsense)? Was this just a one-sided promise? I wasn't involved in any discussions, but it sounds like it was just a "hey we've got concerns!" from the community, with a "relaaaax, we promise we wont abuse the stake -- we'll do good things with it" from SteemitInc.
- Lawful Purpose;
- This seems to be satisfied. I don't think anyone was promising to break the law by developing with the stake.
- (Lawful) Consideration;
- Similar to Offer and Acceptance, there doesn't seem to be any two-way exchange of anything. While Steemit-Inc did appear to promise to provide a service of using the stake for development and whatnot -- there was nothing being exchanged to them for said promise. You can maybe make an argument of "but that's where the investors come in!" -- but I would argue that most investors were investing in their own projects, or buying Steem to have their influence increased; not as consideration to Steemits promise of being benevolent with their stake.
- Consent;
- Similar to this ongoing discussion with SF22.2, I would imagine that someone could make an argument that the party with neon-green stake (previously Ned / Steemit Inc; now Justin / Tronit or whatever) is only promising to be benevolent with said stake because they feel under duress to consent.
- Capacity;
- I would imagine this criteria is satisfied. Steemit should have the capacity to develop the chain with said funds.
In my (unprofessional) opinion, no contract was formed, primarily because it was one-sided and there was no consideration behind the "promise" of what the neon-green stake was ever supposed to be. Only one-sided, potentially coerced, promises were ever on the table. I know little of the man (Ned), but if he was in a position where he owned Steemit-Inc, and the neon-green stake belong to Steemit-Inc -- then he's free to sell said company, and the stake goes with it. Business people gonna business.
At the end of the day, it sounds like there was nothing more than empty promises attached to the stake, and not any real contractual obligation -- unfortunate as it is. If a company owns a shovel that they promised would only be used to dig gardens because people yelled at them to dig more gardens, but then a new financier purchases the company and decides to use the shovel to scratch their balls or something -- I don't think there's anything you're legally able to do about it.
But I'm not a lawyer, so I dunno. I would agree, though, that the entire thing is frustrating, and business-people are generally worth their weight in garbage.
Very robust analysis here.
That got me laughing really hard. Lol
You're giving me far too much credit.
Glad you got a laugh out of it.
Some valid points. I also don't believe that Sun would pay 10M without audits and lawyers.
Agreed.
Though, I heard that he did spend $4M+ to have lunch with Warren Buffet -- so who knows. Might just be an idiot.
This is one thing I wish we all knew more about. No one seems to know anything about the sale and even the Steemit Inc staff members found out about it at the same time as everyone else. It would be good to know if there was an audit done and a confirmation of what Justin thinks it is he bought.
It would be good but it's not our business. It's Ned's company and Sun's money.
When it comes to the open source repositories, absolutely our business. Everything else, no.
Wonder if cease and desist notices can be legally sent in the memo fields of STEEM transfers? 😎
You hit the nail on the head here. Kudos
Investors bought stake, and creators created content, with the understanding in place.
Without this understanding in place exactly what was attempted, the ability to wreck the chain, would have precluded prudent money from buying in, IMO.
So, there was an offer and acceptance in place from very early on.
I saw a number of people leave when the two year power down was forked out.
Yeah, maybe.
I have a hard time believing that the "understanding" was a part of any kind of agreement, or pretense to people buying Steem -- especially considering how many people seemed to not really know much about it until many of the witnesses raised a ruckus.
The earliest large investors knew, there are very few of them, and that is who is defended here.
The people that took a chance with 100's of btc to get us here, 4 years later.
They couldn't be sure they would get a viable chain and worked to ensure steem could work at all.
Many of them have that money back in multiples.
Such is crapitalism, and investing.
What was saved here was the author's ability to decide to invest their time into steem.
If 4 years of our lives can be sold by Ned, what are we doing here?
I know many of us would not be here knowing that everything we did only profited stinc.
If Ned wanted it that way, he shouldn't have let us twist his arm into open sourcing the code.
He did have to be reminded.
This is the fruit of that arrangement.
Ned is trying to welch on his deals, and the investors didn't let him because code is law.
Can we know tron will fail?
No.
Do we know that we were promised a free open source platform that pays us to record our lives on it?
Yes.
Is that demonstrated by this fork?
Absolutely.
I'd say this is the best the chain has looked since I got here in '16.
Maybe we could flag some more price abusers, but it takes time to build that narrative.
That would be a good use of stinc stake, iyam.
Offer and Acceptance; we as a community will use this thing because you did promise that you will not abuse it, and by using it we will add value to your company.
It may be worth looking into the Steemit Terms of Service and seeing if there's anything noteworthy in there.