This is one of the basic tenets of freedom that gets overlooked. It was something that found its way into the United State Constitution since the originators knew the value in it.
Sadly, governments were able to get around it. Today, while the freedom of assembly is still in the Constitution, regulations and permitting have basically made it a negligible. point. In other words, to assemble requires the approval of some government entity. If that authority figure does not want you to assemble, it can simply not issue the permit. Of course, if you do it without that, the police are sent in to arrest the organizers.
What we see take place the last few days exemplifies this same tenet. In the world of blockchain, we are free to assemble within whomever we want to. There is no forcing when it comes to the blockchain world.
This is a point that Justin Sun missed. He entered the Steem ecosystem believing he could push his way in and take over. The belief was that Steem was just something to discard by converting the entire community, the DApps, and the token to TRON. Hence, no freedom of assembly.
It was a rude awakening when the community got together and opted for another route.
At the same time, moving over to Hive is a totally voluntary decision. Nobody is forced to move. Certainly, it might be difficult to part from a favorite DApp that chooses to stay. Nevertheless, the decision to move on, or not, is up to the individual.
A group of developers and other parties got together (numbers range from 50-100 from what I heard) to form the Hive blockchain. These individuals decided to move on from Steem and offer people different options.
They exercised their freedom to not only to establish a forked blockchain but also to determine who was going to participate in the drop or not. Make no mistake, this was something that was within their right to do as the ones starting the project. They were under no obligation to anyone. In fact, if they wanted, they could have only issued out tokens to themselves and started from there.
At the same time, those who are still loyal to Steem are exercising their freedom. Now that the old Witnesses turned off their nodes, there is a new team in control of the blockchain. They are the ones now making the decisions. The same is true for all the developers still left on there.
People seem to want to pit Steem against Hive or Hive against Steem. That is old thinking. At this point, there are two blockchains, no different from Bitcoin and Ethereum. While they are built upon the same code, each are free to pursue whatever avenues they desire. Neither answers to the other nor do they have to "beat" the other. It is akin to a couple golfers: they are not playing against each other but the course.
Where Steem and Hive go from here is up to the communities that are left on each. What is going to be done to draw attention to each chain? Will there be an environment that people want to be a part of?
At the end of the day, it all comes down to what is being offered by the different communities. People on the outside looking in have the same freedom to exercise: where do they want to spend their time?
We are still very early in this game. Development is in its infancy with cryptocurrency still not being widely accepted. The situation with Steem seems like a big deal to those of us involved yet, on the grand scheme, is not even on the radar for 99.99% of the world.
The bottom line is we are faced with opportunity. There are a lot of blockchains with a number of projects that could influence society in the future. The concept of Steem is far from dead. Disagreements are part of the process. With freedom comes the ability to up and leave. By the same token, people also can choose to stay.
Interacting and associating with who we want is vital to our world going forward. This is not going to be the last fork of either of these blockchains. There will be other splits down the road. Another thing to keep in mind is that we do not know how things will pan out. While there are a lot of emotions at this point, keep in mind it is also possible to merge blockchains together.
Either way, we need to leave the time when governments and powerful figures are able to dictate how we live our lives. Facebook and Google are the online equivalents to governments with their silos dictating what takes place. People are technically free to leave but, in reality, it is almost impossible.
Blockchain is offering a new approach. What we saw the last month or so is that approach in action.
For this, it all should be celebrated.
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Posted via Steemleo
