TRON vs. STEEM: Is The STEEM Community Already Speaking?
I've been trying to make the rounds of thought here on the Blockchain and gauge just where sentiment is at.
If you take a look at trending on STEEM right now, you will find that something relating to TRON vs. STEEM is pretty much dominating it.
No surprises there, really, and given the circumstances, it would be shocking if those posts weren't trending.
Among those TRON vs. STEEM posts are appeals, many from witnesses themselves, that everyone should be voting for "human" witnesses, as opposed to the 20-in-all witness imposed by TRON and kept there by whichever of the crypto exchanges are still helping out (Poloniex for sure since Justin Sun basically owns it, Huobi and Binance).
Despite those many appeals, however (okay, some of them sound a little more demanding than that), the STEEM blockchain remains deadlocked as far as witnesses and consensus goes. At the time of this writing, STEEM human witnesses hold spots 1-9 and 19, while TRON's one witness to rule them all has 10-18 and 20 (plus 21).
I'm going to make an observation. Perhaps someone has already made it, and I just haven't seen it yet, so I'm not going to claim it as original thought. I will just push it as far as my double dolphin voice in the middle of a crisis can project it.
The STEEM Community Is Speaking
And to me, it's increasingly loud and clear.
We each have 30 votes to give, yet, we don't have 30 human witnesses atop STEEM. The SP is clearly there, given that the top 7 now have accumulated between 170,000-180,000 (MV), which for now is at least 11,000 (MV) above the Tron-a-tron's first witness.
Why is that? Clearly, the SP is there. Why is it happening?
Could It Be The Community At Large Wants A Deadlock?
It seems clear what the witnesses and quite a few others want—get back control of the blockchain. It's also clear what TRON and the exchanges want—basically, the same thing. Each group wants control to do what they want to do with it.
And yet, here we are, at less than a supermajority for either human witnesses or the digital version. TRON will try to move more of itself up the ranks, and then STEEM counters, yet never really fully bringing the other witnesses up.
Maybe that's purely coincidental. A strategic allocation of SP to fend off TRON and nothing more.
Or maybe it's more than that.
I've basically been asking myself a question as this battle prolongs.
While no one has total control of the blockchain, what has been happening with quite a bit of regularity (although not much productivity—yet)?
Talking, Maybe?
Well, so far, there's been at least three, maybe more conferences (you can call them townhalls if you like) between either Sun or a representative of TRON, and witnesses (and maybe some other folks).
As the stalemate continues, we've been hearing from different corners of STEEM with proposals/demands/whatever you would like to call them, as well as from Binance, TRON and Sun.
In the period between the acquisition of Steemit Inc. to the point the softfork was imposed, there was only one set of talks (that I know of) scheduled, and that was between the TRON team and what was the Steemit team. After the soft fork, we got promises for a meeting with witnesses and a townhall with whoever wanted to join.
While the Steemit meeting did occur, it was overshadowed by the softfork, and word of it didn't really make the rounds as far as I can tell because the softfork essentially took over.
The meetings TRON/Sun asked for with the witnesses got pushed up and have continued, but only after the deadlock began. In the brief period of time before that, Sun was calling witnesses hackers (didn't that used to be cool though?) and a roadmap was published which, among other things, included a very brief power down period, three days, which even to those from the community proposing a decrease from the current 13 weeks sounded excessive.
In A Nutshell
I could be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.
I think the community is speaking with the deadlock. I think the community wants talks between Sun/TRON and itself, through whatever consensus eventually emerges.
I think different groups, witnesses and prominent individuals will play a role, and perhaps do most of the back and forth, but in the end, it is the community that has facilitated these talks.
Not by voting up all human witnesses, but by not voting up all 20-plus one.
Things have been happening quickly, so who knows how long the deadlock will last, or who will make the next move. I tend to have lousy timing with things like this, so something may already be in motion.
We shall see what we do with the time we have.
Image from steemd.com
It shows the power of community and how we can band together with a common purpose.
The community is doing more than speak, it is screaming.
Posted via Steemleo
Hey, @taskmaster4450le.
Well, I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks so—that we're actually saying something with the deadlock. :)
I've been voting for the community witnesses on Hive.
If they are still on steem and contributing with a tool of sorts, I will support them here.
If they are just milking ignore.
If they are harming Steem, I'm starting to unvote them on Hive as well.
I understand making a choice to move on, but I do not understand having a need to tear down the place on the way out.
Hey, @whatsup.
I agree. There's really not much of a reason for them or anyone else to damage STEEM. In fact, I would think the opposite would be true until they are completely gone. Then, after that, it would seem to make most sense to do what you can for HIVE and forget about STEEM all together.
And it would make more sense to just quietly go because if/when Justin Sun/TRON assimilates/discards STEEM, then the "Told you so" can be much larger than if they're ruining it on the way out.
The only way any of what they're doing make sense is if they're concerned/worried/afraid that STEEM might actually do something. :)
I guess there doesn't need to be logic behind any of it, since it's not any I can follow. :)
I think the only portion of the community trying (and succeeding) at creating a deadlock is the large voting block of the Korean community. But that overall speaks to the uphill battle that organic witness voting has versus the Tron sock puppets. The spread of voting on genuine Steem witnesses is much larger because it behaves like an American political election where a third party candidate can draw votes from one side or the other, possibly swaying the election in favor of the opponent most against their own views. If everyone voted on 19 more witnesses at the same levels Blocktrades is getting, the Steem community would reclaim every spot, but some folks remain true to voting on a wider variety of original witnesses. The “Tron 20” has the advantage that it can move in lockstep as they’re really just one account with a small handful of voters.
Hey, @bryan-imhoff.
Very true about the Tron 20. I guess I was noting that as they start to move, it's countered to some degree by whoever is voting up the human witnesses.
It's true, too, there is a wider spread being voted on than just the previous 20 witnesses. The question would be why do that, when it seems obvious that STEEM is in a predicament it's at least never been before that I know of, and it's such that the blockchain could cease to exist, or be forked, sooner than it might carry on as is.
The Koreans definitely have some pull here. I didn't realize it was that large.
I believe that as a proxy voting block several large Korean accounts control 6-7 million Steem Power. Just enough that they can swing the overall deadlock in interesting ways. I believe Sun is working to retake the top 20, but won't show his hand until he has a hard fork prepared to launch instantly. I don't think his development team is capable of delivering a safe fork in the near term, so my biggest fear is a bug that halts the chain for days if not weeks.
Okay. Proxy voting. I wasn't thinking along those lines since I don't do it but it makes definite sense.
No doubt Sun wants to retake the top 20—he needs to figure out a way to save face. He has all the markings of a win at all costs kind of guy. I think we're seeing that play out.
A bug halting the chain would not be good, but it wouldn't do him any favors, either. Without the STEEM engineers at Steemit, I wonder just how quickly they can even come up with something like that. If Binance actually does start a power down, maybe that can be diffused a little bit, too.
Howdy sir Glen! I've been offline most of the last couple of days, has anything changed? The last I knew, things were in a stalemate situation.
Hey, @janton.
Relative to other times you could have been offline, the last few days was relatively tame. As far as I know, other than some people close to the situation or who were privy to the decision making the former consensus witnesses did deciding they should give "their side of the story", not much has been going on around here.
Which for a few days wasn't so bad. Now, it's kind of getting old, in the sense that while talks have taken place, we're not getting very far with any of it. However, Binance and Houbi, two of the exchanges that helped in the TRON 20-in-one witness being voted in are powering down, but Poloniex, which Sun is heavily involved with, has not started as far as I know and is still voting up the TRON witness bot.
The Korean Community proxy vote is basically keeping balance as far as witnesses are concerned while they seek to get their own set of demands heard. Outside of them, those voting up the 'human' witnesses seem to be either for a fork or resigned to it, since they don't want to give up free upvotes or have power downs at less than three weeks, which seems to be what Sun and the Koreans want.
So, not sure who is going to budge first.
Howdy sir Glen! Well it sounds like this stalemate could go on for a long time, that would be really strange but they say the press about the whole situation is helping Steem because alot of people had never heard of us before!
How's your work looking, same old same old? Which in your case is actually something different every day! lol.
I think a partial problem of not all 21 is that the people don't believe either side. We have both side making demands, the witnesses will cave in on the shorter power down cycle, SMT's will cease to be a reality, and someone will try to fork the chain. Why would the witnesses cave to the shorter power down cycle you ask? Simple prior to the sell of steemit, steemit blog told those desiring the shorter power down cycle no, that it would cause to many problems with the SMT hard fork, and that after the SMT hard fork went through they might entertain and re-look at it. The desire and want for the shorter power down cycle is there, and that is what they will give Justin Sun, and then turn around and tell everyone how great they are at being witnesses for saving our block chain. Steemitblog post: https://steempeak.com/steemit/@steemitblog/steemit-power-down-proposal.
I myself do not trust either side.
Hey, @bashadow.
I've pretty much given it as foregone conclusion that the four week power down proposal is going to happen, now sooner than later. From what I've read elsewhere on STEEM, it would cause problems with other systems if it went below a week to say three days like Sun has asked for.
The thing is, we don't know who's left to even help the TRON engineers actually code anything. So, the fact they weren't ready with a fork when they took over (after a week of stalling) I hope means that it's a little more complicated than a couple of lines of STEEM code. :)
As far as trusting either side, I've been finding myself, with you as an exception, and maybe a handful of others, wondering why there aren't a lot more folks somewhere in the middle.
Thus, my thought that the answer lies in the witness voting. And probably the Korean voting block I'm hearing more about. :)
The witnesses took their positions in the top 21 to mean that they had a blank check to work with. I didn't give any witness a blank check, and in reality, I was only voting for a few top witnesses anyway. So, to say I can trust them with a direction at this point (when I've been told by a couple of different sources that there really hasn't been a plan beyond the softfork) is a hard thing to do.
As for Sun, he's proving the rumors about him to be true, and then some. It's becoming more and more like the cure is worse than the illness scenario. Yet, there is good that can come out of talking, even if it eventually leads nowhere as far as Sun is concerned. There are more and more people taking notice, and I'm hoping that is a good thing.
No real hard fork has gone off with out hic-ups and glitches, and with out down time, and that was with the people that built the thing working the Hard Fork. We will have to wait and see, I think it is a shame that SMT's are pretty much out the door now, but even after Justin Sun gets his funds unlocked he still owns steemit and is not likely to allow a fork that would be in completion to his coins system. I just hope one day other developers are allowed to present hard forks. We really need as a community to break the chains of centralization.