I've got this terrible curse of being able to put myself in almost anyone's shoes. When I think of it from Sun's position as a businessperson who fancies making money. He purchased more Steem than anyone in the history of Steem. He paid for it off-market and therefore made a killing. All of these things are what a businessperson might do.

But people got scared about what he might do with his stake, so much concentrated power in one man's hands is dangerous indeed, and the community desperately wanted to retain access to the stake reserved for development that was sold out from under them. Whether or not the contract with Ned about that SP was valid is up in the air, and probably something for lawyers or courts to hash out.

So because of worries of what Sun might do or not do with his stake, the witnesses decided to freeze his stake "temporarily," and this put Sun in a position of financial duress throughout the negotiation period. I think Sun panicked. He had just invested untold millions into a new front end and a lot of crypto, crypto that he no longer had control over because of the soft-fork.

Now his stake is in the hands of the community witnesses who can easily make it vanish, and this would completely obliterate his invested millions. I'm sure at that point, he saw the move as a blatant act of hostility, and therefore, resolved to do whatever he had to do to secure his investment, and that's when things really jumped the shark. He coopted the exchanges and put his astroturf witnesses into office.

Did he fight dirty, yes he most certainly did. But in all fairness, it was his money on the line, and the witnesses acted in bad faith when trying to get him to negotiate from a position of financial duress. Essentially they launched the first salvo in a financial/blockchain war with a billionaire.

I can also see this problem unfold from the community's perspective, and I'm glad you commented to me because I was just reading the comment that you left truthforce, this, so that I can better comprehend opposing viewpoints. I do see why you are disgusted with Sun's behavior. War is an ugly thing. Censorship of posts, the hijacking of exchanges, and now he's censoring the stake of users under the guise of protecting the Steem network. In essence, he's mirroring the same moves that were used against him and other users whose stake that HIVE censored. It's the 44th law of power.

I wish that both sides would cut down on all the hostility and simply engage in healthy competition. This, as opposed to all the underhanded chicanery that I see going on, on both chains. There's plenty of room in the cryptosphere for two moderately successful social media blockchains, and if both sides de-escalate and mind their own business, then both can put more emphasis on-chain development as opposed to all this nasty blockchain warfare garbage. I'm hoping that soon either entity will show they are the better individual and cut down on the hostilities.

One point I might make about your comment here.

"A single individual is NOT allowed to run multiple Witness accounts, let alone use Steemit Inc and Exchange power to vote in even 1 real Witness let alone 19 Fake Witnesses; pushing out EVERYBODY that the Steem community democratically chose."

According to the tyrannical rule that is "dPoS" (aka the law of the Jungle), one person CAN run multiple witnesses. This is ugly, just like false flags on posts with real original content. I think that most people, including myself, highly disagree with the tactic and what he did. But also remember it was the community witnesses who forced him to take extreme measures to protect his investment.

Unfortunately, when dPoS and decentralization are at loggerheads, it causes decentralization to break, or private property to get confiscated. This is a fundamental problem that both Steem and HIVE need to look into fixing. I don't know if a fix is even possible, tbh. I cannot fathom how to, but some people have ideas on the matter. I just worry some of these ideas might destroy the token's market value.

As far as the exchange power is concerned, I did see a clever comment about modifying the ability of exchange accounts so they can't vote for witnesses. This seems like a reasonable solution to me, something that could probably get coded and acted upon fairly quickly.

One more point on this comment.

"Everything that Justin did absolutely disgusted me, so I completely understand why the majority voted not to have HIVE given to those who willingly decided to be Justin's "Flying Monkeys" while he paints himself as a victim; when in fact Justin was the perpetrator of great evil on our community."

As far as I know, the censoring of stake on Steem's spiritual successor (HIVE) was never a thing that was voted on. If there was a vote, I sure didn't get the memo. The only thing I've voted for in the past were witnesses, and their job is to run the code and produce blocks. Meddling with the account balances of other HIVE folks (beyond STINC and their socks), I don't think that was their call. It's bad enough that we had to go down that road at all. But those extra 300 really took the cake if you believe in the integrity of the vote.