Several months ago, I did a “malicious actor” analysis, looking at the total HP (as a percentage of actively-voting HP) required to take full control of 17 out of 20 top validators.

I’ll try to put the details of that analysis into a full post, maybe over spring break.

Here’s the breakdown:

As you can see, reducing the ratio of votes per token (relative to # of top validators) from 3:2 (as it currently stands) to 1:4 or 1:5 (which I proposed at HiveFest 2023) dramatically increases the amount of stake required for a hostile takeover.

If the Steem community had done this analysis in the early days, and adjusted the voting requirements accordingly, Justin Sun would most likely never have been able to take control of the chain.