There is no way forward without a hardfork?

In light of the decision by the top steem witnesses to implement HF 0.22.2 which esentially temporarily prevents the steemit account's from voting on witnesses, powering down and moving funds in anyway until clarification happens from Tron on their intentions I have reached the conclusion that a hardfork is inevitable down the road.

The reasons are the following:

• Tron has expressed their intention to migrate steem to Tron

Together, TRON Foundation and Steemit Inc. will look to create further value for their users and to augment their advancements in decentralized technologies, including moving old STEEM token to a new TRON based STEEM token...

• This was also communicated on Poloniex (which is owned by Tron/Justin Sun).

The way I see this (and also by others on the blockchain) is that Tron is saying to us what they wann't to do.

It seems logical to think that the acquisition of Steemit Inc by Justin Sun was done with the intention to prop up the value of the Tron blockchain not Steem.

Now in order to do this Justin Sun would need to setup and vote on his own witness nodes to the top positions which he can do with the stake that steemit inc currently has.

This is not a far fetched posibility . Just a few days ago Justin Sun used his stake to vote in two Super Represenatives on the Tron blockchain which caused quite a controversy in that community:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/tron-community-in-uproar-as-genesis-coins-used-in-super-reps-vote

So this recent event shows that he is willing to carry out any actions in order to further his agenda.

Going back to HF 0.22.2...what is going to happen after Tron clarifies their position?

Well, there are several scenarios:

• An agreement is reached to remove the witness voting rights of the steemit account's but not the right to transact with those accounts (I can't imagine a scenario where anyone would agree to forfeit their right to use their assets).
• No agreement is reached and a harfork is inevitable.
• An agreement is reached to handover steemit's stake to the community (highly unlikely).

Option one still gives the posibility to steemit inc to power down and reroute the stake to other accounts that can futher be used to change the witness positions (in which case a hardork is inevitable).

If I was to make a bet on which outcomes are posible I would give an overall 50% chance of a hardofork that removes steemit's stake.

As a side note...I view the posibility of a token swap as an attempt to infringe on my property rights. It may be that Tron does not have the intention to force anyone to accept such a deal. But as stated in their official communications it doesn't seem that they know the difference.

The current situation poses some interesting questions regarding DPOS governance. What if Justin Sun (or anyone else for that matter) purchased his stake on the open market and tried to steer the blockchain into becoming a side chain for Tron (or simply shut it down)?

I dare to say that in that hypothetical case we would also need to hardfork the stake of anyone that would make such an attempt. Given the fact that voter apathy is the norm on steem (maybe it is also the case on other DPOS blockchains?) it is not necesary to have a majority stake to take over a chain like this one and the only defense is the marketcap of the coin. It really needs to be expensive to prevent a takeover.