So Ned Scott sold Steemit Inc. (not the Blockchain, not the Community, not the Steem Coin) to the Tron Foundation, to Justin Sun. We all don't know what is written in the documents as sold and not exactly how much Justin Sun paid. We do know that he bought about 65 million steems that were assets of Steem Inc.
That 65 million was intended to support the community and developers at Steem Blockchain. This was promised by the former CEO of Steem Inc. or it was assured to the community. In addition, Ned Scott also promised not to vote for Witnesses with the 65 million Steem.
For some who don't know, the Witnesses are the ones running the Steem database (nodes). Each of them has on their servers all the information (votings, posts, comments, pictures etc.) since the beginning of Steem. The top20 of the Witnesses decide for the community what is best for the community and they are elected, each user has 30 votes to give.
Everyone makes mistakes - this is understandable even if mistakes can arise from emotions. Justin Sun was not at all familiar with DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake) and made suggestions for changes, like every businessman after a takeover. But the Blockchain is decentralized and runs on DPOS which means the change must be confirmed by the TOP20 Witnesses.
I personally think that the Witnesses saw their position of power endangered. Justin Sun wanted to pay out the verbally promised 65 million steem, which is his legal right, more on that later. I think he wanted to recover part of his investment by selling 65 million steems. This plan was prevented because the Witnesses did something that should NEVER have happened. They changed the rules on the Blockchain through a softfork to freeze the assets of Steemit Inc / Justin Sun.
This led to the next action. These assets are legal property of Justin Sun regardless of what anyone may think and whatever the background. The problem was that the Witnesses could do a softfork at any time they wanted and freeze the assets of the users.
We all know that the top 20 had nothing bad in mind, but future investors can see that you can freeze money practically, not theoretically. Before it was just theory because it's never been done before, but after this incident it is practically possible. So investors are wondering if it's going to happen again if the circumstances are right.
Anyway, after the assets were frozen, the Witnesses demanded certain things to unfreeze the assets and threatened to nullify everything. These demands, before Justin Sun even set anything in motion, are already an act of terrorism. Why? You freeze someone's 5 million US dollars or so (which comes across as kidnapping) and make demands (which comes across as ransom) and threaten to reset everything to zero (which comes across as killing the hostage) if that doesn't happen.
You can't threaten a billionaire and his 5 million without consequence and that's exactly why the 3 stock exchanges got involved, even if it wasn't okay and maybe they were lied to. The stock exchanges voted Tron Witnesses to get the top 20 position and undo this soft fork. Steemit Inc. published an open letter about what exactly their plan is. No demands but a roadmap. That the governance goes back to the old Witnesses (community) after the assets have been secured.
The drama is still going on now and I think it's time for a HARDFORK for a sister chain.
We can only solve this situation if we do a hardfork and everyone gets what they want. The neutrals get their change and the pro steemites get their decentralization.
There are advantages and disadvantages of a decentralized social network. Advantages would be that we decide and build together, but the disadvantage you see is that we cannot build if the decision makers are against it. Facebook & Co. would never have become so big if Zuckerberg had asked his users for permission to change.
And here we are trapped in a circle. Personally, I've completely dealt with social media in 2019 and know what Steemit needs in terms of updates to become mass ready.
Let's forget this drama for a moment. What can Tron or Sun Steemit bring if we don't fork:
Justin Sun is Chinese and comes from a country that's a population of over 1.2 billion people. The 5 largest Chinese companies alone by market value add up to almost 2 trillion US dollars.
| Rank (Market Value) | Forbes 2000 rank | Name | Market Value (in B. U$D) | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 59 | Alibaba Group | 480.8 | E-Commerce |
| 2 | 74 | Tencent | 472.1 | Technology |
| 3 | 1 | ICBA (Industrial and Commercial Bank of China) |
305.1 | Banking |
| 4 | 3 | China Construction Bank | 225.0 | Banking |
| 5 | 7 | Ping An Insurance | 220.2 | Insurance |
This is a market where Steem, Steemit and all decentralized applications on the Steem Blockchain could enter. Plus of course the Tron network. Let's not forget that WeChat is also a payment service and only hypothetically it might be possible to integrate STEEM or even SteemDollars (SBD) as a payment method in China. Which of course would be very good for all of us.
Decentralization is good but not perfect. Social media companies need to take a line to change. Everyone wants to go in their own direction and pull equally hard, which means you're not getting anywhere.
Back to the drama. I personally understand each party but we have to move forward and if that doesn't happen on Steemit then we have to fork. But I tell you in advance the old chain will stay decentralized and everyone will get what they want but it won't be successful in the long run. If all investors go to the new chain and give their added value because there is more to get there, the Steem Blockchain will simply co-exist.
After all, this is a social network. Since Steemit is so often compared to Reddit I will mention this briefly. Reddit has 330 million monthly active users. Steemit on the other hand has 1.3 million accounts according to the database, how many of them are really active and how many have several accounts.
This means that there is no real engagement. There are, let me lie, maybe 500-1500 active users on the platform. Steem is the currency that we all earn on the platform but it has no added value at all except that you get paid for it and you keep it for power or value enhancement. Steem needs an ecosystem for the reuse of the earned coins. If I'm gonna make 100 Steem a month, I need to be able to do something with it. If I was earning Bitcoin on Steem I could buy a lot of things with it. But in order for me to get something from Steem, I need to trade it for something else so I have something outside the social network.
Finally, I wanted to mention about the 65 million Steem that Justin Sun or Steemit Inc. owns. Everyone thinks it belongs to the community. There was something similar in America, well not really, it was about Red Bull and their motto "Red Bull gives wings". Red Bull was sued and had to pay the plaintiffs money. But because there were so many of them, they each got about $2-10.
If we divide the 65 million steems into 1.3 million accounts, each account gets about 50 steems. So think about it, at the end of the day ALL will be left empty. Justin Sun can split this 65 million to the community and each account will get 50 steems and that's it. And we will see if this happens the Witnesses will prevent it and they will be exposed as gold diggers.
