This post touches the subject and topic of a post by @markkujantunen.
I agree with Markku. This is what Justin seems to be after. And more.
Sad times coming...
Is Justin Stupid?
I don't think so.
He definitely is filthy rich, and to manage that much wealth does mean you need to have somewhat capable brains. Either that, or you would need to be Gladstone Gander.
I would say he is very smart.
Why Steem?
I'll cut straight to the chase, and leave the history lessons to someone who knows more about Justin. (In a nutshell he's been pretty much buying social and peer-to-peer companies left and right.)
In Steem, there is something Tron still lacks.
Tron does have some dapps with their separate communities of mainly gamblers, but as a blockchain, it doesn't have one cohesive community that could provide growth in the long run.
DLive
After having bought DLive, Justin probably noticed it wasn't easy to migrate the platform on to Tron. (I don't think it is classified as "a Tron dapp" yet.) Additionally, not many of the DLive users were likely too interested in Tron.
He might also have noticed that DLive came from Steem, and much of its community still has a background in Steem. Maybe he could use that to his advantage.
My assessment of Justin and how I came there
In a recent live discussion with my friend @Omsoc, I mentioned how Justin had bought Steemit, how he was publicizing the deal as a literal death-knee to Steem, then getting upset that the ninja-stake was frozen, and subsequently taking over the blockchain with his cardboard zombie witnesses.
My friend basically told me it was Game Over for Steem. Justin isn't just "some guy" who does something without a clear game plan.
He told me this is a guy who purposely set up shop in Malta, so that he would be protected from the law. That Justin is just too smart to not think about what would happen if he were to make grandiose claims and upset the Steem community.
Justin also didn't sue the witnesses, which would have been the go-to move of his caliber of a business man. Instead he went vigilante and took over the blockchain by using questionable, if not outright illegal means.
This got me thinking.
For the argument's sake, let's think of these two scenarios:
- Community did nothing, and Justin got majority power on Steem, and THEN took over the blockchain.
- Community gets upset, and blocks Justin from using his newly gotten power via a softfork.
Do you think these cases weren't something he ever thought about before going through with the acquisition? (After all he did have a year to plan it.)
Do you think he didn't already plan the next step? In both of these cases the next step is pretty much the same.
- Take over the majority vote by using either the ninja-stake, or like in this case, using the exchanges and blame Hackers. (Which he btw. did immediately. As if it was planned in advance.)
He likely knew about the 13 week powerdown period too, which he also used to his advantage, to pressure us to give in to his demands of shortening the powerdown to 3 to 7 days. He could make peace with CZ later.
It should also have been in his designs, that the community would get divided over governance and downvote issues. Even more so if he used just a little bit of persuation.
He is using this divide and conquer strategy right now during the stalemate, as he (using @misterdelegation) has undelegated some big curation projects like @steemcleaners, and delegated to the biggest spammers of the blockchain.
What this means is Justin is actively trying to make us fork the blockchain.
But why does he want us to fork?
He doesn't need most of us.
He only needs the blockchain, as it provides a framework, and content to build upon. He can use it as a base for his Tron followers, and maybe a few ex-steemians (perhaps the Korean community). What better, he can likely takeover the name "Steem" too, since if we fork, it would likely mean the exchanges would just continue using the old Steem nodes for Justin's copy of Steem, and we would end up renaming our new fork, and wait for exchanges to enlist that.
He might even get some dapps out of it.
Throw Justin's promises of SMT's and atomic swaps, in the mix, and it would start sounding pretty good for new people to join. Top it with DLive, and it would sound bloody amazing to most people.
What we'd be left with?
We'd have a no-name chain with most of the community and dapps, but with no developers, no money to develop the blockchain, no exchanges, no promises of SMT's, or atomic swaps, or lucrative streaming platforms like DLive.
We'd stay a relatively unknown blogging platform that's built on a blockchain.
That is what Justin wants.
He is smart.
This is what we are up against.
Now do we have what it takes to fork Steem and make it more successful than Tron?
The Show Must Go On
I recently listened to a Joe Rogan podcast w/ Neil deGrasse Tyson, where Neil pronounced "stem" as "steem".
I think we could drop one "e" without too much of a problem.
Anyways, I think we need to be quick about the fork, and make headway in development if we are to beat Justin in his game. Otherwise we'd just be dead in the water, waiting for the community to dwindle.
The only thing going for us is the resolution that we'd fix the holes in the governing side of our DPoS, which is something Justin himself will likely never do.
Yeah, that's how I see the problem. Do you think my logic is flawed, or is it smack on? Comment below!