Last night, there was a conference call between Justin Sun, what is left of Steemit Inc, and Steem Witnesses regarding the situation over the last couple weeks. I am sure most heard it by now so it is known what was said. If you haven't, there are a number of posts which most likely have the link in them.
The call went exactly how it was expected with things being so volatile right now. Neither side was willing to give, thus little was accomplished. That said, there were a few things that were found out.
This comes under the category of "Could have guessed this one".
According to Sun, he had no idea of the stated obligations that Ned made regarding the Steemit Inc stake. There was nothing in the contracts that told Sun that the ninja-mined state was to be used for the development and promotion of the blockchain. It was from this batch of funds that the employees of Steemit Inc and other operating expenses were paid from.
We all know cashflow was a problem at Steemit Inc. It is also no secret that roughly 800K STEEM per month was sold as a means of covering costs. This was the extent of Ned's business plan.
Justin Sun comes in and buys Steemit Inc. Hence he assumes all the obligations the company has. Of course, that tends to be what is in writing and where a contract exists. This is where we enter a cloudy area legally. It is obvious Ned made verbal commitments yet nothing was in writing nor was it coded in.
Thus we have a situation where Sun had no idea about the stake and what the intention was for it. On this count, I can believe him. Does anyone really think that Ned would divulge this information during negotiations? In fact, it would not be surprising if he didn't even think about it. He simply viewed it as his
Another thing that came out of the call was that Justin Sun really did not understand what he was getting into. His grasp of Steem is non-existent. This is normal since he was not involved yet there are many layers to what is taking place.
In his past purchases, he bought a company and everything came along with it. The "community" was nothing. Those entities were not decentralized with much in the way of token distribution. The DLive/Lino is an example. From what I could garner, DLive was all there was on there that did anything at all. Hence, you take DLive, the whole show is yours.
We also know that most blockchains, including Tron, have very little human activity. Tron likes to tout the 700 DApps but how many have people using them? The biggest applications are gambling which are likely automated to a great degree. We see how applications try to fight off bots written to automate their games; it is a never ending battle.
With Steem, he got a different can of worms. The community is actually independent with interests of their own. I still believe Sun's initial tweet explain how he thought things would unfold. Like DLive, he figured buying Steemit meant reprogramming that to post on Tron, bring all the DApps over, and STEEM would be swapped for a Tron based token. Simple. Easy. Clean.
That, as we know, is not how things unfolded.
This was a statement he made during the call. There is some confusion, on my end, what he meant exactly.
Given the headaches he has received, I can see him just wanting to part ways altogether. He got himself into something that is not working out has he planned. Perhaps he sees a way to grow this yet the basis for a collaborative experience is missing at the moment.
If he wanted to exit stage left, could anyone blame him?
There is another possibility since much of the call centered around the Steemit Inc stake and him "wanting to get his money back". It is obvious that this is his primary concern which, quite frankly, is logical. Therefore, the "wanting out" could mean he just wants to get his money out of the deal.
When asked what type of time frame commitment he was willing to make to Steem, he wavered and basically indicated that after the roadmap was implemented, he was going to move on. According to Sun, he claimed this was an investment to him. He is posturing that his intention all along was simply to buy Steemit Inc and leave things along. The initial Tweet throws a lot of water on that view in my opinion.
That is the billion dollar question.
Over the past few days, most who were tied to Steemit Inc have resigned. We do not know the reasons for it and we will likely never know. However, the developers who knew the chain the best are no longer there. With Sun putting his Witnesses in, we have the blockchain running on one node for the most part. Their lack of understanding is shown in the fact the price feeds are not even being updated.
Therefore, even if Sun was looking to invest money in Steemit Inc, is he willing to? He made it clear that he is looking at the ROI (again, not a surprise nor faulting him for it). On the call, it sounded like he wants the 1 day power down time so he can execute a pump and dump. That is my take and I could be way off base on that.
For now, the battle for Witnesses rages on. The community is staging a get out the vote campaign in an effort to negate the "sock puppets" that Sun inserted as Witnesses. This is likely to wage on for a while.
At the same time, I am sure code is being written that will provide at least one fork. I would not be surprised to see a few different chains result from this. Overall, I think this would be healthy since more chains decentralizes things to a greater degree. Unfortunately, with so few actual people, this might only serve to dilute the activity.
In the end, nothing substantial was accomplished. We learned a few things, most of which fail to provide any direction. For now, both Sun and the community want what was promised to them. Unfortunately, what each wants are in direct opposition.
Welcome to Day 3 of the tug-o-war over the Witness spots.
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Posted via Steemleo
