It's been a very busy week for most people working in the finance field due to the extreme volatility - if I remember correctly, this is the first time in history when S&P 500 went up and down for more than 5% for every day of the week.
While it has been 3 days since the [Four-Party dialogue] (https://steemit.com/hive-101145/@sct/four-party-dialogue-proposal-steem-foundation-tron-foundation-steem-witnesses-and-korean-community), there were no significant other (public) discussions as of I know. Thus, I hope this summary and review is not too late.
- Full script can be found here: Meeting between Justin Sun, Korean Stakeholders, Steem Witnesses and Steem Foundation 12/03/2020
Goal
The main purpose of the dialogue was to discuss specific issues in which the Korean community(or @proxy.token) is interested (to make further decision) , so that we may understand positions of different parties and find a compromise between the dialogue participants if possible.
To achieve this goal, we have delivered potential discussion topics in advance so that the participants may prepare.
For example,
My understanding and thoughts regarding this ongoing witness battle provided background thoughts of how many Korean Steemians have felt,
Let's change 1SP 30 votes (current) to 1SP 1vote introduced a relatively new topic to solve the current stalemate situation,
and both witnesses and the Steem Foundation have presented their roadmap: see the comment section of [공지]Four-Party Dialogue Proposal (Steem foundation, Tron foundation, Steem witnesses, and Korean community) and the posting Steem Foundation Proposed Roadmap.
Agenda
Since this meeting is requested by the Korean community to hear opinions of others, we thought that it would be better to let other participants talk and the Korean community representative (me, @glory7) should simply set the agenda - and the opinion of the Korean community is already presented before so it would not be a very good use of limited discussion time.
There were four specific questions:
Do you agree to change the current voting system (1 steem power 30 vote) to 1SP 1vote? or 1SP 3 or 5 votes?
Do you agree to change the powerdown period to 1 or 4 weeks? (Note: we thought that we should not give privilege to exchanges regarding this and every user should be treated equally, so that part is left out and only shortening the period was asked).
Do you agree to remove free downvoting mana or make it mandatory to specify the downvoting reason?
Justin's witness voting rights. Justin: under which condition would you like to give up your voting rights (if you ever would like to). Other paricipants: how can you guarantee that softfork or hardfork like 22.2 would not happen again if Justin removes witness votes, according to your request
Answers
- Witnesses (represented by @roelandp):
- I cannot speak for all witnesses as individual opinions may vary, but in general we believe that these issues should be discussed more and let's make decision using the SPS.
- Same as the above.
- Disagree with removing free downvote mana, and stating downvote reason may be solved by UI improvements.
- Cannot guarantee anything as different witnesses may have different opinions.
- Steem Foundation(represented by @guiltyparties):
- Needs to be discussed more.
- Should be decided via SPS and personally do not think that 4 weeks is a bad idea.
- Disagree with removing free downvote mana, agree with stating downvote reasons.
- Steem Foundation has no direct relationship with softfork.
- Tron/Steem INC(represented by Justin):
- Needs to be discussed more with the community.
- Yes, shorter the better. Tron powerdown is 3 days, for instance.
- Agree to remove free downvoting mana.
- Willing to give up witnesses voting rights if it is guaranteed that all(in particular his) accounts and assets are safe.
(Personal) Review
Going through 4 preset questions already took about an hour, which was the estimated meeting time. Hence, we had a short Q&A session (to Justin) and wrapped up.
It would have been better if we had more time, but I think it was pretty productive given time constraints.
My personal findings are as follows:
- Witnesses (represented by @roelandp):
In retrospect, I should have known that it is practically impossible for one witness to speak of other witnesses. Thus, the answers could not be definite and had to be general.
After the meeting, @therealwolf pointed out that "20 witnesses are 20 different individuals and if any of you truly values decentralisation, then there are no "simple" answers"
Some witnesses, including @steempress and @followbtcnews, have provided their opinions regarding the 4 questions after the meeting. I would like to appreciate their time again.
- Steem Foundation(represented by @guiltyparties):
While some people questioned the eligibility of the Steem Foundation participating the dialogue, I believe that their answers were straightforward and helped us to progress.
- Tron/Steem INC(Justin):
- It was great that his answers were clear and easy to understand.
- However, someone maybe get skeptical that the some answers were in line with what the host (Korean community) has suggested before.
What now?
While it is said that lots of discussions are going on unofficially, as far as I know, there has been no official meeting with Justin and 22.2 witnesses after this dialogue.
It seems that there is a clear gap between Justin and 22.2 witnesses - and if we are not going to fork out sister chain, we should compromise.
Based on my understanding regarding both sides' requests, I believe that the first step (and meaningful step) is that both parties make public statements on Steem:
Each witness officially posts that he or she would not freeze anyone's asset, in particular Justin's.
Justin posts that he would not exercise witness voting rights (or cast 5 votes maximum to prevent hard fork) if top witnesses, say top 30, officially post that they won't freeze his accounts.