Soft Fork 22.2, Ninja Mining, TRON, Marketing & Future STEEM!

In case you are unaware, the STEEM blockchain now runs a soft fork (v. 22.2) that effectively deactivated the large number of STEEM tokens held by accounts operated by Steemit Inc. While these tokens remain owned by TRON / Steemit inc., they are unable to be used to vote for witnesses and cannot be powered down - at least until another fork is activated that reverses the situation.

This has been done for a variety of reasons, though mainly due to uncertainty among the witnesses and the STEEM community regarding the intentions that the TRON organisation has for the future of STEEM. There is also some concern that Justin Sun perhaps did not fully appreciate that the community here holds the ultimate power over the blockchain. This fork was partially intended to make the situation clearer.

Ninjas Lurk

These latest events have been a long time coming. Long before TRON and @justinsunsteemit bought Steemit Inc., the Ninja Mined tokens owned by Steemit Inc. became a contentious issue that caused many to devalue the entire STEEM project to some extent.

Ninja mined tokens can create an air of unfairness among an allegedly decentralised community and in this case, Steemit inc. (in the very early days) appears to have deliberately created a situation where they would produce far more tokens than anyone else. Considering that very few people even knew about the STEEM mining process, their actions seem all the more intended to ensure they create an empire for themselves rather than a truly decentralised eco-system.

The result was that the largest holders of STEEM became @ned, @dan and Steemit inc. - which meant that despite the idea that STEEM become a decentralised community, the nature of the stake weighted voting system in the DPOS algorithm meant that it was ultimately centralised.

Gentleman's agreement

To get around this contentious situation, @ned and various whales agreed to not use the Steemit inc. Ninja Mined tokens to vote for witnesses or to vote on posts. However, it was used to delegate funds to certain projects. It seems that over the years it may also have been used for various other purposes that the community might not have liked if they had fully seen them.

With @ned selling Steemit inc. to TRON, this community agreement needed to be re-affirmed, but was not mentioned either by Ned or Justin Sun - therefore leaving the situation cloudy.

Vagueness Intensifies

It was decided that this situation presented an existential threat to the blockchain, since Justin had repeatedly stated that his plan was to 'take STEEM to TRON' and seemingly to swap STEEM tokens for a TRON based STEEM token. However, communication of the finer points of the situation was lacking and the vagueness left the community uncomfortable.

The 1st Steem-a-Tron Public Meeting?

A few hours ago, Justin posted to reassure the community that he wanted to work with us to 'Make Steem Great Again', which has calmed some people's nerves. The more cynical remain unwavering in their abuse hurling (as is to be expected given their propensity towards dysfunctional behaviour in almost all situations).

Justin announced a Mayor meeting for March 6th and invited the top 50 witnesses to participate and to resolve the pertinent issues in a way that everyone is happy with. I commend this and wish success for all involved.

NOTE: I am currently just outside the top 50 active witnesses, so if you would like to have me be involved in that meeting then please consider asking any larger STEEM stake holders that you know to vote for my witness server.

Future STEEM

The future of STEEM still looks bright to me, despite the uncertainty regarding TRON's acquisition of Steemit inc.
The reality is that Steemit inc. was not guided well by Ned and many opportunities have been lost due to inaction or poorly managed activity.

It would take some pretty stunningly poor decisions by the TRON group to do worse than the previous owners, so for this reason alone I am interested to see what happens from here on out.

This has also made clear to all of us the STEEM community is more than ready to step up and guide the future of STEEM, with or without a reliable company running the code development side of things. We have numerous developers who could work to take the blockchain into the truly decentralised future that it deserves. None the less, there is always room for large groups to participate and co-create a more diverse and exciting future for STEEM too - perhaps TRON will really add some greatness to the mix too as time goes by.

From my POV, there is every reason to think that the evolution of STEEM to include the already live 'communities' features and the soon to go live SMTs will deeply change internet culture in ways that make community building and teamwork much more practical online - I will continue to do what I can to help that.

Marketing? What's that?

One of the main limitations to STEEM has been marketing in general. Steemit inc. seemed to have done little or no marketing whatsoever (playing a guitar on a livestream doesn't really count). The ban on crypto ads by Facebook and other Social platforms also didn't help (although paying Facebook to advertise STEEM could be said to be logically counter-productive anyway).

I recently announced that I have formed a company in Britain to provide Digital Marketing Services to private clients, called 'Crucial Web' (@crucialweb). We are carefully watching the unfolding situation to ensure that we can provide the best support for any organisations seeking to promote themselves and their use of STEEM, plus to also promote STEEM itself where possible.

I can foresee a time in the not too distant future where STEEM is the go-to place online for community building and social commerce - all taking place in a voluntary and decentralised way. Who knows what changes this might bring for an injured world that has been locked up in pyramid schemes and limitations on free will (held in place by epic psychological manipulations) for so long!

Here's to liberation!

Wishing you well,
Ura Soul

Proud member of @tribesteemup.