Binance Issues an Apology to the Steem Community & Exposes a DPoS Vulnerability | Steemleo Show #21
The Binance saga seems to be drawing to a close as CZ and Binance itself have issued multiple apologies and statements regarding the Steem Hostile Takeover and their involvement in helping Justin Sun overthrow the governance of the Steem Blockchain.
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Obviously, their apologies are carefully worded and they don’t really appear to take on much blame at all. Any blame aimed at them was redirected toward Justin. Ultimately, CZ chalked up his part of this “fiasco” as a simple lack of understanding when he signed off on the hard fork, powerup of STEEM and installment of fake witnesses.
Still, Binance has retracted the vote and initiated a power down of the customer funds that they used in the hostile takeover.
This doesn’t make up for the fact that they took part in a hostile takeover that is still ongoing. Without Binance’s involvement, the hostile takeover would never have happened. Steem would have never had Justin Sun in charge of the entire blockchain with 20 fake witness accounts and we would have likely resolved the power struggle in closed door meetings with Tron and Justin.
Instead, we (the Steem Community) have been forced into an ongoing battle for the top witness spots. We currently hold 9/20 of these spots and are fighting Justin who is leveraging both the Steemit, Inc. ninja-mined stake as well as Poloniex’s customer funds.
Justin has also been neglecting the duties of running Steemit, Inc. and certain functionalities are already falling apart at the seams like account recovery.
I talk about this and more in today’s episode.
Links Mentioned:
- https://www.binance.com/en/blog/421499824684900453/A-Letter-to-the-STEEM-Community
- https://twitter.com/steemleo/status/1237404393139552256
- https://twitter.com/TheCryptoDrive/status/1237295220342943745
- How to change your recovery account using steemworld https://twitter.com/ausbitbank/status/1237420987747938304
- Status of the top witnesses https://steempeak.com/me/witnesses
- Shady Deals Between Justin, Ned and Poloniex? https://twitter.com/okean12345/status/1237384375668338689
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▶️ 3Speak
Sad state of affairs, I am afraid this will be a long talked about situation.
I agree, this one is for the history books. I know that the Steem community will end up on the right side of history, my hope is that we live to tell the story rather than just watch it happen to us.
Posted via Steemleo
Yea man, has been a wake up call for many... here is hoping 🤞
I now always look forward to these shows, very informative for the uninformed like myself.
Posted via Steemleo
Thanks Rolland :)
Posted via Steemleo
A welcomed step in the right direction, but I still don't feel very well.
I used Binance, but I never really trusted or particularly liked them, but at least they sorta listen when they have little choice else but to damage their reputation. I wamt to believe this is good. But I am also not naive.
It's something and that's better than nothing, but it still isn't much.
I wish we would see some concrete protocols put into place (i.e. decline_voting_rights) for both Steemit, Inc. accounts AND binance/exchange accounts.
It's wrong that you can use funds that don't belong to you to vote on consensus. That goes for both exchange-held funds and Steemit, Inc. funds as the ladder is tied down with a multitude of promises that it wouldn't be used for DPoS voting nor for personal gain.
Posted via Steemleo
I do feel like their announcement holds us hostage. I guess it serves as a warning and accountability, too.
However, at least now we can expect it. I wonder if a powerup period would help? Maybe that's too complicated.
Easiest option to satisfy the most people would be to reduce the power down period to 4 weeks (plenty of time to recover a stolen account) for reward pool voting and inflation earning to keep the shorter term investors happy (we could never please the day traders), but require a 26-week power down if any proposals or witnesses were voted on (make it longer so they think twice about sabotaging our sinister plans again).
Yes, I've seen that extended powerdown time for those specific actions that have to do with governance/proposals. It's an interesting idea but would definitely cloud the waters even further for users who don't fully understand/have the time to learn every nitty gritty detail of this chain.
Once this war is over, I think we (the whole community) need to have continual discussions in discord AND (and this is the important part) take extensive notes and create concrete proposals. Follow-up on that with voting on the proposals and continual discussions about improvements and then put them into the SPS for actual development when we strike a good compromise.
Posted via Steemleo
Solutions do need to avoid making things more confusing for average users.
I agree sincere discussions are always the best way to move forward and develop. I think developing an official version of dpoll for sps may help, too.
I think it's actually impossible for Binance to allow their users to vote on this issue. All their powered up stake is in a single account and you can't split the votes up like that.
Posted via Steemleo
Also, the reason why Ned is messing with powering down directly to exchanges is because a softfork can't block the transaction once it goes through. It won't matter of Sun loses the majority vote as he is powering down, the softfork will not block it. We would need to hardfork.
Posted via Steemleo
Yeah. I would imagine their "solution" to the voting issue is that majority rules. They put out a poll to support two sets of top 30 witnesses, perhaps, and the majority wins the vote.
If they even do that at all. My assumption is that they don't really care and will just vote whenever they feel like it. Nobody is there to stop them. No regulatory oversight. Nada.
Posted via Steemleo
Thanks for this breakdown on the Binance apology. I'm afraid that Binance is setting a very dangerous precedents with their recent actions..
Np! Yeah I am afraid as well and doing my best to spread the message far and wide -- any crypto listed on binance that uses stake-based governance is at a high degree of risk now that both Binance and Huobi, 2 of the largest exchanges in the space, have used customer funds to change the rules of a blockchain. It's wrong and dangerous on so many levels.
Posted via Steemleo
Yes, they are powering down while holding the ability to vote in order to protect their business.
Yeah and that's wrong. If they ever vote again, I think a regulatory body needs to step in and examine that business model. It's interference at the highest level
Posted via Steemleo
This apology is a farce and literally plants the seeds of another attack within the "apology".
https://www.binance.com/en/blog/421499824684900453/A-Letter-to-the-STEEM-Community
Cool story, bro...
Seriously though, who do they think they're fooling?
Posted via Steemleo
Exactly. I was pretty heated when I read that and then proceeded to make this video right away.
Those two sentences are a backdoor. They're giving themselves permission to fuck with our governance whenever they decide that something "poses potential risks/damages to STEEM users on Binance" -- what a load garbage. They'll do whatever is in their best interest
Posted via Steemleo
You know what's posing the biggest threat to Steem holders on Binance?
Binance being insolvent.
Yesterday there was a 20% discount on Steem via Binance due to their insolvency.
Do not transfer coins to @deepcrypto8
Binance has 1.2M coins and they have withdrawals disabled.
I repeat: they have liquidity and are actively choosing to be insolvent.
They are attacking us. (@binance-hot)
I think the discount is done now, but I still think they may be insolvent. I'm not 100% sure though.
I'm no longer a binance user. I loved their exchange and used it for years. Now I'm moving over to bittrex and other options that haven't used user funds to vote on blockchain consensus.
Posted via Steemleo
The Problem I have is that Binance still offers me service without KYC... and I still really appreciate that. I'm a little torn, but not really because Steem is my favorite project... maybe I'll use KuCoin more.