The truth about what happened today!

I’ve been absorbing the news like we all have. I’ve been listening in during the town hall, on and off, for almost six hours. I’m mentally and emotionally depleted. Most of us are. I’ve fluctuated between manic bouts of the the denial/anger/bargaining phase, to the more somber moments of acceptance, thinking “What’s next?”. I mentioned the blockchain whiplash a week ago, and it’s only gotten worse. I don’t know what’s going to happen. I thought I’d share a few facts that, after an entire day of thinking, that are irreparably

A fundamental flaw in all DPOS blockchains has been revealed. Years ago, I met @fox and @robrigo at a blockchain gathering in Minneapolis. I was wet behind the ears, uninitiated to this space. I was inspired by all of it, after having my “red bill, blue pill” moment. It was perfect fodder for fiction, and I asked all kinds of questions. Questions like “What if someone tried to hack the blockchain?”, to which @robrigo and @fox said “…that can’t happen.”. I asked why and they explained to me the integrity of witnesses and consensus needed to fork.

As a fiction writer/comic book creator, I kept drilling down to more unlikely scenarios, like “Well, what if a ring of terrorists kidnapped the families of 13 of the top witnesses, forcing them to vote in favor of a malicious hard fork?”, and eventually, I’d find this perfect grey area where I could convince both of them to suspend belief and say “…well, maybe then.”. Today, we experienced an event far more unlikely, dramatic and troubling than anything I could have come up with for a novel or comic book. It was an unprecedented betrayal by @poloniex, @huobi-withdrawal, Binance and all participating exchanges.

What happened today undermines the underlining structure of DPOS blockchains. A coordinated attack that successfully compromised an architecture that was specifically designed to solve for the very problem of centralization. That is perhaps the more tragic reality than even what happened to STEEM today. This has repercussions far beyond just STEEM. Any DPOS now has look to the cautionary tale of what could happen with enough money and influence and a willingness to win at all costs. There was so much skepticism with the TRON acquisition to begin with, and after the events of this last week, I can’t see a path forward that doesn’t leave casualties on both sides.

There is a silver lining, though, as tough as a pill as this may be to swallow. STEEM was never as decentralized as we’d all have allowed ourselves to believe. Part of the acquisition by TRON was to control the Steemit Inc. stake. That's why the witnesses made the subsequent made the decision to forked as a protective measure […we can debate the ethics of that another day, but I think we knew there’d be a reaction, just not as extreme as the scenario played out]. The bitter pill I mentioned, is being enlightened to that very real vulnerability of bad actors steering this, or any blockchain, away from the community good.

During this current climate, naturally @justinsunsteemit is the antagonist in a rapidly escalating drama, but I will remind you, @ned has been selling out STEEM for his own personal gain long before he left the company board and TRON showed up. The wheels kept turning here with the assumption that Steemit Inc. would always walk towards the just path of a decentralized community, but there was never a guarantee of that. It was, perhaps, naive trust. It was a norm. That is all. So, what happens now? We’ll likely see an evolution, and hopefully better iteration, of DPOS implementations with addition exchange-centric aiding and abetting guardrails.

Everyone’s cards are on the table. We know who @ned is, and he will forever be the catalyst for what happened today. I mean, he’ll be playing guitar while wearing sunglasses indoors, so it won't change him, but the rest of us know who he is. @justinsunsteemit played a brutal hand. Someone in the afternoon Discord described it as “Evil, but straight up gangster and very smart.”. If you were curious about his compunction, there's no need to speculate after today. The exchanges, I feel, are the biggest losers in the long run. They've participated in their own sabotage, for money. It was an exercise in human greed and corruption, consolidation of power for the few at the expense of the many. We won't forget.

It’s a bleak form of optimism, but wherever we go, we’re informed on the weaknesses […and strengths] of this community we hold dear. As I mentioned, I listened to about 150 possible scenarios from the former top witnesses. Rest assured, whatever path the Steemit community takes going forward, there will be protections in place to ensure this doesn’t happen again. Our trust has been checked. Our resilience will be tested. We’re better informed of where to keep our stake and how to use it. We’ll get through this. It may not look the same tomorrow, but we’re survivors.