My Statement Concerning the Potential Freeze of Steemit Inc's Accounts
A pull request was done last week to explore the possibility of halting Steemit Inc's regular powerdowns by proposing to freeze their stake and accounts. By doing so, some believe it would halt the monthly dumping of STEEM that contributes to reducing its price.
https://github.com/steemdev/steem/pull/1/commits/807d5e0e0aef8c6f940bd003fd8e7404d738138a
The pull request (PR) to freeze their accounts surprised many!
Many of the Steemians and witnesses, including myself, have expressed many concerns and dissatisfaction with Steemit Inc's lack of communication and transparency. Also, their mismanagement have led to many failures over the years, notably a painful HF20, 70% lay-off of their staff, exorbitant server expenses due to non-efficient code (that required huge amounts of RAM), prioritizing SMT's while the blockchain needed more urgent scalability optimizations. The list goes on...
I don't think that PR is the proper way to "get their attention", after all, it's been said over and over again, that Steemit Inc is a private company and they have the right to do what they want. Nevertheless, like any company, they have the duty to listen to their users, something that hasn't been addressed properly; for example, the steemit.com web interface is the main gateway to the STEEM blockchain, yet it hasn't been improved in 2 years, while other webapps (busy.org, steempeak.com) have presented sleek alternatives with very little budget compared to the huge budget Steemit has! Such discrepancies are part of the mismanagement I mentioned earlier.
It's been a tense relationship between Steemit Inc vs witnesses/users since the inception of STEEM, mixed with controversies and questionable moves, delegations, dubious fund transfers, powerdowns and of course the ninja-mined stake. I believe in STEEM and I'm 100% committed to its success. Freezing or forking out accounts, except in the case of a hack or serious security issues, violates the essence of a blockchain and I'm not a fan of that. It would open a Pandora's box with bad consequences. For example, we may disagree with some of the whale abuse, does that justify freezing their accounts? The mission of a blockchain is to allow freedom, not become restrictive like governments and banks.
Right now, that PR has caused quite a stir and spooked @ned (Steemit's CEO) to take measures to protect their stake by canceling several delegations and powering down to external exchanges. It's understandable. However extreme it may look, panic doesn't help, so I urge @ned to slow down and be open to dialogue. The proposed fork is far from the required 17/21 top witnesses majority support. More importantly, a fork doesn't happen overnight, there are many critical ramifications and it's not a simple light matter.
Steemit has done a lot in terms of blockchain development and tooling, not to forget the many times they stepped in to fix critical bugs and blockchain halts. For that I'm very grateful. So everyone, take a deep breath and act in the best interest of our blockchain. Don't let thing get out hand with rushed decisions and misunderstandings. We're here to add value to STEEM and make it great again, not destroy it with internal fights.
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If I remember correctly you were the first one talking about server specs reductions instead of smt.. that was a long time before you were top 20 witness.. all others were talking about SMT and you were shouting about reducing server specs.. So that's what is needed in first place. thx @drakos
Exactly, and I was shunned by @andrarchy for emphasizing that in a live forum. Well, it bit them in the ass because they didn't listen.
Reducing RAM requirements should be their top priority.
NO to freezing account, we are not the government, we should stay away against this idea.
My request to @ned is to slow the powerdown this will affect us all in the long run.
And for the next HF, instead of Top20 gaining most of the SP, change it to random so ALL active witnesses will get a fair share not only those witnesses with WHALE friends. This is NOT a popularity contest, let's behave a true decentralized blockchain.
Have a nice weekend.
Dear @yehey
That would kill my trust towards blockchain. And trust of many others.
Yours
Piotr
indeed..they wake up... a bit too late after all drama..
Andrarchy gonna shun man, I feel for you son. But yep, that was some sense.
Good comment @rival
I think that in the first place we need better communication with Steemit Inc.
Yours
Piotr
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Dear @drakos
Great choice of topic.
Indeed lack of communication is the reason why I stopped believing in Ned and his team.
We're on the same page here.
I'm still not really sure if it would be fair to freeze Steemit Inc accounts just because we disagree with the way they manage resources.
If that is possible and become normal practice then how blockchain would be any better and safer than keeping money on the bank account?
Correct. Trust towards blockchain would be permanently damaged.
Yours
piotr
The PR never had witness support and is just being used as Casus Belli.
Perfect cover for the next stage of the exit strategy. Call me when it's over. The real challenge that needs to be talked about is who/how is going to develop the blockchain tech once steemit is gone.
Indeed, future developers is a concern that I have voiced in the discussions.
This. Been thinking along the same lines too.
Do you think we're witnessing exit strategy taking place @buggedout?
Yours, Piotr
Yes I do.
That said, I'd still much rather see the powered down steem dumped on the market than have such a centralised stake be hidden from view otherwise we can give up any hope of this platform being decentralised.
Unfortunatelly it seem that you're very right @buggedout :/
Now, if steemit made all that STEEM by posting or running the top witness, than i would have no beef with them doing whatever they pleased with it.
However, most of that STEEM came from early days of mining before steemit came out as a platform. Or, basically, they just gave themselves a huge chunk before they opened the doors. And this point has been raised, but mostly ignored because they left the huge pile in the corner and ignored it.
Unfortunately, we have been yelling at steemit to be more forthcoming in communication with the community for more than a year, and not much has come from it. So, what is the expectations that they would now listen and communicate? Most people are rightfully jaded.
My biggest problem with freezing an account is that, once done, it can be repeated. And thus, we lose a lot of credibility. It may be better to take the massive hit of the coming sell off, and if we survive the tsunami, we will be on a much better footing.
Excellent comment @builderofcastles
That's indeed very sad truth :(
Indeed. My trust towards safety of my resources on blockchain would die right away.
yours
Piotr
Thanks for sharing this. What will be will be! - at least there is nothing we can do for most of the Steemains, even the witnesses.
It is interesting to see, that steemit just needs to say jump.. And all those T20 witnesses jump in the air, while asking"look at us, should we jump higher? "
This is more about the principle of the blockchain immutability. If Steemit forked and tampered with accounts in the past (check this comment about HF9), it doesn't mean we should imitate them, we're better than that. They're already walking on thin ice, any more shenanigans won't go unnoticed. If we can't guarantee immutability, then we turn into monsters like Facebook and Twitter.
Well said
Dear @isnochys
Is that really your impression?
_
IMHO you guys and @ned should meet to resolve this issue and find solutions. I guess meeting in real life can make it work faster.
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Well said, @drakos! Glad to have your level headedness in the top 20. 🖒
Well this is an invincibile side to steem.inc show of centralization