Thanks for the insight on your remarks about this hard fork. I appreciate that you tried to do what was right.

I am by no means stating that everyone is in lock-step. I am simply stating that there is a lot of pressure to be on board with Steemit, Inc.'s plans for the blockchain - and it's not just from them. It's pretty hard to deny the culture that I mentioned in the post when it's something that has been observed by many longstanding members of the community and new members alike. Those who push back against these pressures and this culture are risking a lot, as I'm sure you've noticed over the past 2+ years.

Even with that pressure and the culture here, I can't imagine why any top witness would want to push this fork through, knowing that it was an extremely ambitious hard fork and knowing that there was limited testing...and knowing that there were in fact problems with negative RC balances. And specifically in light of last week's halt to the chain due to one line of code that contained an error, I have a hard time believing that there wasn't more doubt among witnesses that this fork was going to be implemented smoothly.

Under such conditions, with access to that kind of information, it's mind-blowing to me that all of our top-20 witnesses updated to the new version anyway. I can only conclude that they...

1. Were not informed of the negative RC balances.
2. Did not sufficiently audit and/or test the new protocols.
   And/Or
3. Didn't care enough to be bothered with doing their witness duties and finding out about any potential issues with the code.

Any one of these three is a major concern for this blockchain and its users/investors. As a whole, the "most trusted" people in charge of Steem blockchain oversight and functionality were completely derelict in their duties. I think this is a huge signal to users and investors that there can be little actual trust in such a "trustless" network. And I think it also speaks volumes about the level of centralization that actually exists rather than the theoretical decentralization that everyone seemingly pretends we have.

Anyway - thanks for taking a stand against what many people believe was a failure of implementation, regardless of whether or not they were for or against the changes. I had already stated prior to the fork that I would like to try the RC system, but I was cautious/concerned about the scope of the fork and the implementation of it. I think my concern and the concerns from people like you and @drakos have been validated. I will continue to oppose these massive protocol change packages for as long as they continue to be proposed.