"Pay the man his money."

This was my initial response the the Soft Fork (in fact, that's a direct quote from my post on the matter). However, since then Tron has executed the threat the Soft Fork was intended to prevent, and it's no longer possible to do this. The Tron stake is large enough that the Steem governance mechanism breaks down when that stake is applied to it. That stake has been applied to it, and the governance mechanism has broken.

The only way that stake can exist and Steem remain viable is if it declines voting rights, which it has not done. Therefore Steem is not viable, and DPoS has proven to not have been instituted functionally via Steem. Only @ned allowed it to appear to be viable by not exercising his sole option to undertake governance at will during his possession of it. @ned is no longer in control of that stake, and that allowance no longer pertains. Had Sun understood this, he would not have done what he did, because destroying Steem destroys the value of his stake, but he did not (or he did not care), and he destroyed the value of his stake by assuming control of governance of Steem with it, because he destroyed the viability of Steem by doing so.

So, those are done deals. All we can do now is proceed to undertake a project that may be viable, unlike Steem today. Given that Steem approaches viability and only the existence of stakes large enough to take over governance breaks it, it seems possible to adapt the Steem protocols and migrate the community to a new blockchain that prevents such a stake from being instituted.

If one party can control governance, and that party isn't @ned who can be trusted to not do so, Steem is no longer viable, and that's just the fact.

Since that is demonstrated today, it's time to move on to things that are possible. There is a question as to whether Steem can be forked to a new chain that may be viable, and I am awaiting the community's arrival at this conclusion and implementation of it. Until then, I can still post and discuss here, so I do.

Thanks!