For those who have not heard yet, a majority of the witnesses recently launched a soft fork as a precaution to protect the chain against the massive stake bought by Justin Sun of Tron.
Not necessarily the stake itself but the ambiguity surrounding the acquisition and the rhetoric that followed soon after about a possible move to the Tron Network.
Unlike a hard fork, a soft fork is reversible. The soft fork implemented partial restrictions on the Steem Inc, Ninja-mined stake. Some operations that have been restricted are listed below.
• account_witness_proxy_operation
• account_witness_vote_operation
• update_proposal_votes_operation
• vote_operation
• withdraw_vesting_operation
• set_withdraw_vesting_route_operation
• transfer_operation
• limit_order_create_operation
• limit_order_create2_operation
• transfer_to_vesting_operation
• transfer_to_savings_operation
The most important of the operations that has been restricted is the setting of a witness voting proxy and voting on witnesses. This means that the stake cannot be used to manipulate the governance on the Steem blockchain. There has always existed a gentleman’s agreement with Ned prior to the sale that this stake would not be used to vote on witnesses.
Naturally, this stake has always posed a threat on the decentralized nature of the Steem Blockchain, especially when one entity holds such a massive pool of Steem Power.
The soft fork seems to only be a short-term measure to give the Steem community leverage and it worked to bring Justin to the table.
Justin Sun quickly put out a post on his Steem blog addressing the concerns but again it feels empty. There is nothing actionable in what he put down in the post so it is not really worth putting much faith in it.
There needs to be something concrete put in the code that will preserve the integrity of the chain. Both teams, Tron and Steem, need to meet and chart a way forward and put in measures that protect this amazing community that we have built through the bulls and bears of the crypto market.
There are so many DApps running on the chain including my favorite, Splinterlands. The community will not be dissolved due to the serpentine actions of one Ned Scott. A hard fork should be a last resort as that would set us back. We can only hope for level heads to prosper and a realization that Steem is better of as a separate entity and it would massively gain from Justin Sun’s involvement in the marketing and his enthusiasm in tokenized communities.
Steem on!
