By this time, I am sure everyone has seen the Decrypt article detailing Justin Sun's moves against Steem. It is a rather fascinating read that covers Sun's true intentions from the very beginning. Evidently, much of what was going on behind the scenes counters statements Sun was making in public.
If you did not get a chance to read the article, here is the link:
https://decrypt.co/38050/steem-steemit-tron-justin-sun-cryptocurrency-war
The article did a great job capturing the essence of the discussion. Sun was trying to take control of an entity in a similar fashion to what takes place regularly in the present system. He thought he would enter Steem and start dictating how things would go. By now, it is obvious that his intention was to roll Steem onto Tron and do away with the former altogether. We are starting to see this process unfold now.
Sun's saw the opportunity to add a lot of users to his network. Tron, like many blockchains, can boast lots of DApps but few users. Most of the traffic tends to be bots, moving money back and forth. In the end, real users are still scarce in the blockchain world.
That is something that Steem had. This had to make Sun salivate. However, there was a problem that Ari Paul, the co-founder of Blocktower Capital, and known crypto figure, points out.
He stated is another way but the essence is there. Community is what all projects are seeking. Sun approached it much like they do in the business world, just buy it. Unfortunately for him, it does not work that way.
As we all know, most of the community picked up and left. Since Steem was open source, the blockchain could be replicated and used for other purposes. After much development, the blockchain was released in March. Since that time, a large number of DApps moved over from Steem.
There is an interesting part of Paul's tweet that caught my attention. When he talks about the more decentralized projects beat the more centralized ones on a long enough time frame, I start to wonder what he is referring to. Is that in reference to what happened in the past or his project for the future?
Obviously he is talking past tense and stating his observation. However, we could also take it to be a forecast for the future. The more decentralized projects will take out centralized ones, it will just take time. Given enough time, the centralized power structure cannot hold up.
This brings us back to the decentralized/centralized debate. What is really taking place in this industry right now and how does it apply to the future? In fact, the actions of today are truly paving the way for a new future.
Things often move at a slow pace. We cannot see all that is happening, especially behind the scenes. What appears to be stagnant is often vibrant and thriving.
Each day we are seeing more decentralization across the board. Certainly, there are individual projects that do not meet this criteria. In fact, it is easy to make the case that some, like Steem, are going in the other direction. That said, when we look at the totality of what is occurring, we see massive changes on whole.
If community is at the core of this, which I believe it is, then we are seeing things expand. Numbers are growing, albeit slowly. This will likely not always be the case. There will come a point in time when the numbers are expanding rapidly. It is what happens with technological growth.
At the same time, we are seeing more ideas and innovations popping up. This is creating more diversity across the entire industry with some projects moving into the forefront. Over time, we are going to see some of those projects start to eat away at their centralized counterparts.
Finally, there is a lot of wealth being distributed throughout the cryptosphere. Tokens are being doled out each day. Blockchains and different projects are dropping tokens on a consistent basis. This keeps adding to the bags people are holding and giving most the opportunity to pursue other endeavors.
Here is where we see the tentacles really starting to spread. This stage is akin to opening the doors on the last day of school and letting the kids out. They flee in all different directions.
Presently, people are taking their tokens and following different paths. Some are getting involved in the DeFi craze, staking tokens which are providing massive gains. Others are trading back and forth for profits. Others are investing in developers, bringing their own ideas to light. Finally, there are many, like those of us who are on Hive, who are involved in games, content creation, or artwork and being tokenized there.
In conclusion, I look at what is taking place and apply Ari Paul's words as an optimistic viewpoint. Over time, the more decentralized systems will overtake the centralized counterparts.
This simply means that we must focus our attention on pushing decentralization in whatever manner we can. Doing this ensures that all centralized foes will ultimately fail.
Thus far, it looks like the Hive community is the leading example of this. It stood up to a push towards centralization and, in the end, created something better than was there before.
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