@blocktrades you don't mention it directly but I assume the Ripple consensus protocol was traken into consideration.

I always thought about Bitshares as a Ripple alike system, but with the capability of being run by anonymous entities who are economically stimulated not to collude against the network.

Now because of the Tron attack thanks to the help of the centralized exchanges (Binance, Huobi, Poloniex), the STEEM network has been put in a situation that resembles the early days of Ripple, when most of the validators (witnesses) are controlled by the same entity.

The obvious difference, is that from TRONs perspective, there is no real economical incentive to protect the value of the STEEM chain. Ripple acted as a "benevolent chain dictator" until they managed to decentralize the validators.

At this point, I don't see how a fork can be avoided, because Justin Sun has no real incentive to act as a "Benevolent dictator" for the STEEM chain.

What about a group of “trustees”? Still requires too much trust

Dan’s next idea was just to have a set of trustees: trustworthy individuals in >the newly-born BitShares community who would be assigned to produce >blocks in round robin order.