Thoughts on what's on everyone's mind
A lot of people asking about this today and I can see a supermajority of posts already talking about this - although I haven't had the time to read through them yet as I've been out of the house most of today. After catching up on some discussions between witnesses and other stakeholders I wanted to chime in my thoughts on what this scuffed announcement could mean for the future of us Steemians.
For what it's worth I'm not as negative towards this as I initially expected to be when I first heard the news, so here are some reasons as to why and the scenarios I imagine to happen until I have more info on the matter.
Let's start off with the worst case scenario:
Most of the crypto community knows Tron has no "real" userbase, googling "Tron Dapps" will show you a site that lists a few thousand daily active users but since we're looking at mainly gambling dapps and we all know how people like to automate them (which they've also done on Steem) we realize that the real amount of users is way lower. Even though we have bots here as well through curation and in some of our dapps we know that there are a lot of real users because we are here active daily and interact with them, on top of that our front-ends to rather well on traffic sites compared to most other sites of the rest of cryptocurrencies.
So Justin may be after the userbase alone and wants to kill the Steem chain off, this would be considered as a "hostile takeover" in this worst case scenario. What he could do is attempt to bribe users to swap STEEM for STEEMTRON. The way he could do this is by powering down all the acquired stake he just got after he bought Steemit Inc and swap it for STEEMTRON telling the dapps @misterdelegation supports they'll only receive the support over on the STEEMTRON chain. Swapping coins I'm guessing will either burn that Steem or worse - he'll send it back to our chain to actively use it. (Who knows maybe he'll attempt to become another downvote bully to force people to join his chain - or just actively farm Steem Inflation that he exchanges for STEEMTRON and continuously takes value from Steem) This gets weird quick as there's so many possibilities and unknowns of what can and can't be done with the swap so let's skip it for now.
He already mentioned something about handing stake to TRX holders which I'm guessing will either be from his recently acquired Steemit Inc stake or recently purchased Steem (@cherrytomato2 funds maybe). Again things get confusing here because we don't know what STEEMTRON is yet; will it have inflation? Will it mean Steem will be inflated on two different chains with the swap being the bridge? Will they make it more lucrative to hold STEEMTRON or pump it's price to get users to swap? Will they swap all of the Steemit Inc Stake? Will this mean Steems supply will exist and inflation increase by existing on both chains (because inflation right now goes out no matter how much stake is powered up, if you were the only user posting and voting on Steem with 1000 SP you'd receive all of it's inflation). Anyway these are questions we can't know the answers to right now until more answers and clarity come forward.
In this scenario witnesses will have a say on what happens, if Tron were to attempt to vote in witnesses supporting them killing off the chain it could become iffy as that could classify Steem as a security and depending on where Tron is based get them a lot of legal trouble, not to mention it would make Steem not look as decentralized. I know people like to call chains decentralized but let's be real, none of them are considering it would just require some co-ordination of mining power or stake to get the desired outcome of those in power or stake. I'd argue Steem is one of the most decentralized in terms of distribution than any other.
I believe witnesses have what's best for Steem in mind so they will act accordingly in this scenario. Remember that Tron want the swap, meaning that their token doesn't exist on any exchanges yet but Steem does. I don't see how they could force people to swap to STEEMTRON. Without making this post too long though or talking about stuff and scenarios I may not know too much about let's move over to the better case scenario where both chains win.
The win-win scenario
Justinc's stake moves over to STEEMTRON, dapps open up shop on Tron as well but work on both chains (@splinterlands for instance already does this for Tron payments - I don't see why they would use a more expensive chain for their json requirements nor why any other dapp would - unless STEEMTRON a sidechain works similar to steem including hivemind, MIRA, communities and SMT's). STEEMTRON has some similar inflation to Steem which means there will again be a double inflation happening where people will either stake their Steem on Steem or on SteemTron or have them liquid on exchanges (like 30% of it currently is). Our inflation could also be lowered to make up for the cross-chain function which is something that has been discussed in general to put more emphasis on SMT's and the value they bring and give out to their users.
Again, there's so little info given out from the scuffed Medium announcement and the tweets that it's hard to comprehend what can happen as literally anything can happen, I'm also not too technical about stuff so there's probably many possibilities going over my head. Something people have discussed though is that if Justin truly wanted to kill the chain off he would've just copied what Steem already has or waited until SMT's were out if he wanted to improve on the tokens that already exist on Tron and then announce their own social media and lure people in with all the money he supposedly has or the supply of Tron the Tron Foundation has.
What we do know is that Sun wants users on Tron, by buying Steemit and it's traffic and having those users use SteemTron instead of the real Steem he could accomplish that. It'll be the users choice on what they will use. Another important detail to remember is that the announcement came out exactly today when Voice was supposed to go out into beta, and considering I heard some people already got an invite it's funny how few are posting about it compared to this so it definitely has had an impact - Sun sure knows how to be loud which is something Ned/Steemit always lacked.
A win scenario would be if the swap or bridge in this case would not be mandatory and always available allowing users to swap their Steem for SteemTron whenever they wanted to use services or smart contracts or whatever the SteemTron chain were to offer and Steem would continue with its vision and they would both gain value this way as the link would in a way cause a peg to both of them.
Justin has the marketing, he has the money, he has the marketcap and he now also has a lot of Steem. It'll be interesting to see what happens from here on out but I highly doubt this is one of those buyouts where they are just attempting to stifle competition and kill it off as we have gotten used to see giant companies do in the past. Things don't work similarly with blockchain and decentralization and hopefully Justin knows that although I doubt he knows much more about how Steem works and everything going on here. It would've almost made more sense to swap TRX for Steem considering the scalability of our chain and the upcoming SMT's with PoB.
I do see this as a partnership the way Justin mentioned in his tweet, the real competitor here might be EOS-Voice as TRX is more on their level in terms of marketcaps and what they can do and the timing of this announcement points even more towards that. His Weibo account having been blocked recently and him looking for a more decentralized content platform points even more towards that. If not much changes for Steem and this is just a friendly "peg" similar to steem-engine's SteemP with SteemTron also being another side-chain that just happens to operate on Tron instead of using the Steem chain for validating transactions then you could see this as if Steem had become the next big thing; steem-engine would've profited off of it as well.
If this is the scenario they had in mind this will be a big win for Steem, Steemians and Tron users, also for it's distribution as someone who's attempted to distribute this coin to as many deserving contributers as possible it will be nice being able to do so on Tron users as well and work together to reach the masses in the near future. 2020 has started off with a bang and mass adoption doesn't seem to be as out of reach as it used to with the way our chain has been developing and may now receive the much needed funding and marketing and co-operation with another big chain it may have needed. Notice I say may because if things go the way it somehow hurts Steem and it's users then we will have to think of other ways to move forward because in my opinion if this partnership isn't mutual than we'll be better off alone.
Anyway, can't say much more right now as everything is still in limbo until we know more details. I'm hoping this will be something positive and that there will be even more opportunities than there have been so far for Steemians.
Dear @acidyo
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I'm glad to hear that you're see some positives. I remember in the past Instagram users were also worried once Facebook bought over. Similar story.
You've surely asked many valid questions. Thanks for that.
Any idea how much did Justin pay for this transaction? Most likely he could spent less money on building similar userbase by hiring several professional marketing agencies across the globe. I may be wrong, but I like to believe that he wouldn't spent much just for that reason. Especially knowing how badly STEEM userbase shrinked after recent fork.
Im afraid that if we would need to do SWAP and exchange steem to TRX, then it means that everyone need to power down to receive liquid steem. And that would mean cancelling all delegations.
All curation trail and network of auto-upvotes would be distrubted. All of it would be gone. For many large projects out there (like curie, ocdb, tipu) it may be a very challenging time.
What a year so far. Iran , coronavirus, chinese economy and manufacturing in chaos, printing record high amount of money by central banks, upcoming recession and now this news about steem and tron.
Indeed ... interesting times ahead of us.
Yours, Piotr
Yeah I'm sure spammers like you are mainly concerned about your free delegations you're busy front-running with to maximize your curation rewards. Taking a look at project.hope's CR efficiency and when they vote on posts on steemworld.org is pretty disgusting and doesn't really give me much hope.
Seriously @acidyo?
Downvoting my genuine and polite comment? Even now you're into fighting with me and others?
Your behaviour does seriously make me wonder, if TRON buying us over isn't the best thing for this community. You and many other whales are so hostile on daily basis.
Regards,
Piotr
You think I'd just forget what a spammer you are? I'm not into fighting at all, just wanted to let you know your fake ass comment isn't welcomed here. Maybe if you attempt to do some actual curation instead of maximizing rewards and worked to get engagement on your posts instead of spamming everyone with memos others would have some respect for you.
New road without inflation and downvote is our real way for decentralization and mass adoption. We win togehter without hate and flag. I believe in awesome future for all Steemians. We win together
I agree with you.
$trdo
I think you're missing what I think is the most likely scenario from having closely read the announcement.
It sounds to me like they will make a new token on the Tron blockchain called "STEEM". They will then implement the Steem "Proof of Brain" system as a Tron smart contract that uses that new token and steemit.com and any other dapps that migrate over will switch to using that.
Then they tell the exchanges (with which they now own all of the relationships that Steemit, Inc had, on top of their existing relationships) that "STEEM" is now the Tron token version. My guess is Justin probably already discussed this with most major exchanges that list STEEM before he made the acquisition.
Then they have steemit.com, some other dapps, and all of the major exchanges considering the Tron token STEEM as the real STEEM, and just like that Steem is now on Tron.
The blockchain we know as Steem will still continue to run, but it will have lost its exchange listings, main dapp, and therefore most of its value. We will have to start all over to get exchanges to list it again and they will do so under another name like "Steem Classic" for example.
This is by far the most likely scenario to me. It makes perfect sense from Justin/Tron's perspective and I think the wording in the announcement alludes to it. It doesn't require them to do anything with the steemit stake, or bother with the witnesses on the current Steem chain.
A lot of people are focusing on the "token swap" term, but my guess is that was just a misnomer and it be more like what we know as an airdrop where for every STEEM/SP you have on the current Steem chain you get the equivalent of the Tron version.
Is it possible to do this in a backwards compatible way such that:
It doesn't seem like an easy task to port the Steem node implementation, itself a major codebase, to a smart contract.
This is an important comment, and is a scenario that is likely. When you look at the front-end for Steem (through a google search) it is mostly steemit inc properties.
I hope there is a token swap so existing steem holders don't get shafted with their current holdings. We'll find out more following the stream.
The front end is condenser and is open sourced.
We're going to fork the current state of STEEM and branch off from this fucking Steemit Inc sellout bullshit.
This seems to be some sort of exit scam plan or some shit in my opinion. Steemit inc no longer has to struggle developing STEEM, easier just to sell out and walk away with some cash.
I still don't get what they really get out of their purchase if they do all that? Some dapps? Some new users? That is a very expensive acquisition to kill most of it off - isn't it?
Good dapps and real users are kind of the holy grail when it comes to blockchain platforms, and Steem has a good amount of both and was available to buy at probably a relatively low price.
Quite the contrary I think. Let's say they bought Steemit for $20M (this is just a made up number, I don't know what the price was) and they have maybe a $400M stake in Tron (also a made up number), then if TRX goes up even just 5% as a result of all this then it's well worth it for them.
Sure, but it would have to hold there and they'd have to sell.
It makes sense to keep Steem as it is (SMTs/ communities) running into a Bull-market, wouldn't it? TRX holdings and 40M Steem is going to be more interesting in 6 months just because of the hype.
Nah, my guess is they could care less about the STEEM. It's a tiny nothing compared to TRX as far as market cap is concerned. Justin/Tron has a lot of money and they want to use it to give more value to TRX generally.
Then, they could just offer TRX incentives for the Dapps and community and many would jump ship.
He bought the real capital of steem, a group of relentless shitposters, he wants that traffic farm for tron, simple as that. He could have "offered incentives" as you say, but from a pragmatic perspective a hostile take over is way cheaper and simpler. And from a marketing perspective the take over has the sufficient shock and awe(specially the day Voice launches), when the "offering incentives" alternative clearly lacks it.
What is Voice? Lol
There is marketing potential but also a lot of risk that what he buys is vacant.
but how retarded is this. He buys Steemit inc and Steem gets fucked?
On a Blockchain Free uncensorable blah blah blah it shouldnd possible.
Fork out Steemit, with all there Steem and bam we win. It should be fast before things goes crazy.
newsflash: it was all a charade
Ninja Start, Ninja Exit
ninja profit
Interesting point.
But wouldn't $20million allow them to organize huge marketing campaign and hire several professional businesses to build community of loyal TRON followers?
If this takeover will be considered 'hostile' by current userbase, then TRON would lose not only money but they would end up having large amount of wealthy users, who would be very unhappy - such a community surely wouldn't bring much value. And it would create many conflicts.
Exactly my thoughts.
Trying to fight our way back would involve a lot of explaining to do. There are even long-time Steem users who use Steem and Steemit interchangeably. The original chain would probably have to be renamed. It would go the way of the earlier Steem forks pretty much into obscurity. Does anyone even remember Whaleshares any longer? Golos has a whopping $0.8 million market cap.
The exchanges are key. Without being listed on major exchanges, a coin has no liquidity. No liquidity means no monetary value. Of course, the chain will survive but only as the playground of a few hard cores.
On the other hand, the user base is what Sun really wants. The question is what the current user base of Steem is really worth. 40,000 daily active users or so might be big for a blockchain supporting social DApps but it's a drop in the bucket in the larger world of social media.
I really don't know exactly what to make of this, yet.
Good points. It's hard not to agree with you @markkujantunen.
Lack of liquidity is the very main reason why most businesses fail.
I agree with this. I would stay on Steem Classic and would like to have conversations about allowing rewards to be given out in ways other then posts / comments. I would like to see it become not only blogging but a great blockchains for games.
Are you interested in running a Steem classic witness ?
That's not the best scenario, I'm guessing we'll be like ETC is to ETH if Vitalik had sold ETH to Ripple. Hmm, it's all very confusing right now.
It sure is!
Steem Classic would be too small to survive if the dapps go and we lose exchanges.
This is exactly what I anticipate to happen..
and are you worried or excited @itstime?
worridly excited....
Hi again @itstime
Can I ask you for little favour? I joined contest called "Community of the week" with project I manage and I would be grateful if you could RESTEEM it and help me get some exposure and drop some encouraging comment :)
Link to my post: on steemit or on steempeak
Thanks :)
Yours, Piotr
So they will basically buy Steemit.com and the STEEM token brand/listing and leave the Steem blockchain on its own ...
This is. exactly the scenario I see.
Steem Classic is the one that pegs to steemp - with steemp we are already on the exchanges, whether through DEC on newdex, btcp, pegged ltc or doge.
Ironically, that peg may save the chain.
Damn. This makes sense and would be unstoppable.
Actually this scenario has already happend with Russian Steem fork Golos that became a token on EOS fork and exchanges list both tokens - Golos and Golos Classic. They don't care about old stake.
Yeah, i think thats the most likely scenario.
People wont complain much if they get airdropped a bunch of tokens and will simply go with it. The fuckery will come from exchanges that will start trading the STEEMTRON token as Steem. That way "its the exchanges fault"-
Witnesses will lose the most and STEEM as we know it will be gone.
I hardly think TRON can emulate what Steem is currently or copy all the development done already (you might know more about that if its indeed doable). I found Steem to be a far superior chain, even more so with SMTs.
What i think will happen is that STEEM on TRON will be demoted to being just a TRC20 token, or whatever, whose future will always be tied into TRONs future and never exceed being simply a blogging platform...
The best course of action, at least for me, a this time based on the news given is unfortunately to start powering down and wait for the snapshot. After, that try to sell as fast as i can.
I have 0 interest in being invested in something that isnt STEEM, which is under full control by a third party, which will never exceed or grow its utility outside what Justin sees it as right now.
STEEM would have had a brighter future then TRON and if he lets us keep STEEM as it is now and simply continues development along with creating a bridge to TRON, Steem would outperform TRON, im sure of it as much as im sure that Justin wouldnt like that.
Hi @yabapmatt
I wonder - would that still mean, that all projects relying on delegations, curation trails and sometimes auto-upvotes would have to start from the scratch?
Any view on that ?
Yours,
Piotr
Yeah like why purchase Steemit and not Steempeak? if I wanted to draw in users to interact with the Tron blockchain, isn't that what any sensible soul would do?
Weirdly ... I feel bad for the Steemit Inc developers. They have worked so hard on communities and SMTs. Now it seems like they will never come into existence? That just sucks to work that hard on something and for it never to happen.
I am just going to continue with this line of thought ...
The Steemit Inc developers are part of this community as well and i doubt they want to see this place destroyed. This boils down to a few people who made this happen. I hope the AMA clears this all up.
Let's hope their work and progress won't be in vain.
Dear @sepracore
I was also wondering how will it affect SMTs and HIVEs. I'm mostly concerned about potential swap. What about all those businesses on steem, which rely so much on delegations.
Good point about the delegations.
Hi again @sepracore
Can I ask you for little favour? I joined contest called "Community of the week" with project I manage and I would be grateful if you could RESTEEM it and help me get some exposure and drop some encouraging comment :)
Link to my post: on steemit or on steempeak
Thanks :)
Yours, Piotr
Surely the weak link here is the guarantee that the steem devs will continue to develop communities and smts to their conclusion. If they are instructed by their new employer to cease development of these items on steem and instead immediately start implementing these features into tron, Steem becomes a dead chain over night (in conjunction with the moves with integrating steemit.com and changing out the token on the exchanges). The only thing we rely on now is vanderberg and the other steem devs having the balls to step down out of principle. and simultaneously, the steem community finding a way to pay these guys to finish the SMT and community work on Steem and not Tron.
We are basically dependent on the level of principle the key steemit inc members hold in their propensity to step down from their nicely paid new jobs and go it alone to finish the Steem blockchain dev work, or continue to work for Tron.
This issue MUST be solved before forking and it must be solved in order to protect the chain from future hostile take over attempts, regardless of whether this is a hostile take over or a win win.
wow, you found your principles back now after milking stinc for years? you are just saying this because you will likely lose your 2 million steem delegation, thats all, dont come playing like you have any ethics left, you are a double faced shill.
eh vandeburg can go to tron and social over there. Go eip somewhere else, let us unleash this blockchain.
Justin Sun recently met with Warren Buffett, the best value investor ever. Perhaps they had a discussion about how to find value, we all perceive Steem to be one of if not the best blockchains, but it certainly isn't priced that way.
Most of what I read here is just rehashing the news, saying let's wait or the sky is falling! I see this as a huge nod. Who cares if we lose a couple of deals Steemit Inc. made or if Justin Sun does something with Tron, whatever happens, this is great for Steem. Steemit Inc. Is not Steem. Steemit Inc was failing, Justin probably picked it up super cheap and may be using it to combine his lesser chain with his superior marketing skills.
My problem lies here:
This is true but not necessarily something we want. Looking up what this Sun guy is all about and he hardly has a decent reputation, a convicted criminal of no less than 15 charges including hiring illegal prostitutes to march around his offices or something?
An absolute narcissist promising broken dreams every other day and his Tron chain considered by many to be a total scam shitcoin or whatever. We're hardly moving to greener pastures, are we?
We've been trying for years to create a place with decent reputation; we are the exception to the rule that crypto is for scammers, we are legit, look at our community. And then they turn and see we're now owned by this 富二代 sociopath or whatever.
For me personally, the fact that he's involved with (in the sense that he has the attention of) the Chinese Government should be a major concern considering how centralised they are trying to make everything.
If we lack decentralization any more and become run by a Chinese guy in cahoots with very pro-communist party folk such as Jack Ma, we can probably say goodbye to the idea of 'uncensored', too.
After some hours though, the fact that Steem itself is basically a stagnant pit at this point, and has been for as long as I can remember in terms of overall development moving forward (sign up yet, anyone?) something had to be done. Maybe this is the better way forward if it otherwise means sitting around announcing 50,000 crypto projects that disappear again after a few weeks.
I dunno. Either way it's probably the end for me unless I can get clarity on how much of a connection to the CCP this new format entails
Humorous View:
Justin Buys Steemit Inc
Next, Justin buys Chain Link
TRX, Tronit, and Steem all live happily ever after?
It's really hard to imagine what Sun is planning here. Neds motivation is Crystal clear though, "Eat that, Dan!"
The timing is so awkward for us as a community, it seemed we were finally starting to work things out on our own with the Advent of communities and SMTs and all the improvements of the last few hardforks.
Sun could easily take that all away, but I hope he sees US as the most valuable asset in the deal, because we are.
I think Justin Sun needs a Justin Sun because he is our Warren Buffet right now. You'd make a good one :-D
Ya Ned certainly said thank god someone bought it, good riddance! He was a pretty poor motivator, so with that lack of leadership the probe suffered. It’s anyone’s guess what will happen now.
Thanks @acidyo for spelling all that out. This stuff has been driving me crazy all evening!
I don't know if you saw it yet but Justin now has two accounts (that I know of) @justinsunsteemit and perhaps @justinsuntron. The former account he made a post with and instantly self-voted it which earned a downvote from me but perhaps he will do more than circle-jerk on it and actually communicate like a real human being.
Time will assuredly tell how this all works out but for now it is good to see that the Witnesses are not remaining silent.