The Steem News @ 2 March 2020 - Special Edition - Steem Makes Blockchain History...
Today Steem wrote itself into the blockchain history books...
Justin Sun, Tron and Steemit Inc executed a bulk replacement of the top 20 witnesses via a mass power up of exchange backed STEEM.
With the top witness spots secured a new fork was pushed through to reverse the 'freezing' of the Steemit accounts enacted in the recent Soft Fork.
Subsequently three long standing members of staff resigned from Steemit Inc.
STOP PRESS - STOP PRESS - STOP PRESS
@justinsunsteemit has just updated the community on Twitter that today's actions were to protect Steem against "malicious hackers who had illegally frozen 65 million STEEM" [the Soft Fork]...
#STEEM has successfully defeated the hackers & all funds are super #SAFU. @SteemNetwork and @steemit
community is now stronger than ever since we united & solved the difficulties! Full details below...
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234690483298820097
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234690574977884161
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234690739885314048
Such actions are against every aspect of the core value of humanity & decentralization & sanctity of private property. We needed to act immediately to safeguard the #STEEM blockchain & ecosystem when we still had the chance....
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234690849012736001
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234691081243000832
We will commit to withdrawing the votes ASAP once we're sure malicious hackers can’t sabotage #STEEM anymore & will give the voting rights back to the community. All exchanges’ votes will be withdrawn soon. Shoutout to all the exchanges & parties who helped us save STEEM!
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234691293399306242
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234691416812486657
Misleading comments re us collaborating w/ exchanges on a hostile takeover is false. Our intention was never to take over the network & all parties' votes will be withdrawn. We wanted to protect the sanctity of private property & the interests of all from malicious hackers.
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234691576774791168
https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1234691750213455872
My deepest apologies to the community, all the exchanges, & various parties involved for this disturbing hack incident. Thanks for your support to @steemit and @SteemNetwork. Always STEEM ON!
Hard Fork 22.5
On the morning of 2 March Steemit Inc / the Tron Foundation launched Hard Fork 22.5 to unfreeze the Steemit Inc accounts that had been frozen by the witnesses in the recent Soft Fork...
Soft Fork 22.2 was maliciously structured, intending to freeze a handful of very targeted accounts and taking away their rights and possession to their owned asset, and may be deemed illegal and criminal.
On March 2, 2020, Steemit regained the staked accounts, so as to course correct the hostile behavior led by a small group of people, and resume the order of the community.
This was achieved by using 42 million Steem from three exchanges Poloniex (owned by Tron), Huobi and Binance which was powered up and proxied to the @dev365 account. That account then voted in 20 brand new witnesses to take the top slots from the existing witnesses.
The 'Open Letter to the Community' published on the @steemitblog account went on to detail its 'Commitment to the Community'...
- The Steem blockchain will not be abandoned or merged to TRON unless the community decides so.
- Deploy in the next Hard Fork as soon as possible to reduce power down time to 1-3 days in alignment to other mainstream blockchains, while open for discussion for better economic implications.
- For the next 4-6 weeks, the Steemit team will be using the voting rights to resume the order of the community while having an open channel for meeting community members and Witnesses. The goal is to protect the Steem blockchain from bad actors, add transparency, and receive community suggestions and advice.
- After the 4-6 weeks period, the Steemit team will give the governance back to the community when it’s back in order and mutual agreement...
For reference the current witness list can be seen here...
It is understood, but not confirmed that the Tron meeting with the Witnesses on 4 March, and the open Town Hall meeting on 6 March are still scheduled to go ahead.
Reaction from the Exchanges
A key element of what took place was the role of the exchanges that provided the Steem Power to vote in the 20 new witnesses.
In response to this the Steem Community launched an intense Twitter campaign to persuade the exchanges to withdraw their proxy support.
Changpeng Zhao (CZ) CEO of Binance was the first to respond with a number of increasingly hopeful Tweets until at around 3am on 3 March the Binance votes were withdrawn narrowing the gap between the new top 20 witnesses and @yabapmatt at #21. CZ claimed it was a "rubber stamping, oversight"...
At the time of writing @HuobiGlobal was still being lobbied on Twitter.
Reaction from Steemit Inc
There has been no further official communication from the Steemit Inc team, however later on 2 March three long standing employeees resigned.
Andrew Levine @andrarchy, Head of Communications...
Michael Vandeberg @vandeberg, Senior Blockchain Engineer...
Steve Gerbino @gerbino, Blockchain Engineer...
Reaction from the Community
There was unsurprisingly a very strong, and primarily hostile, response from the witnesses and the whole community.
Some witnesses have disabled their Apps and dApps such as SteemAuto, dPoll, and also @roelandp's SteemWallet...
And @therealwolf SteemApps.com and Smartsteem.com...
Many members of the community have expressed their disbelief, dismay, sadness, anger...
- @lukestokes - Your stake in Steem on centralized exchanges was just used to take over the Steem Blockchain
- @ura-soul - @ura-soul Witness Update - Anarchy vs. Empire: TRON Replaces Top Witnesses and Takes Over the STEEM Blockchain
And even Vitalik Buterin has got involved...
Coverage in the Crypto Media
The events of today are already getting a lot of coverage in the crypto media...
KEY DATA [ from CoinMarketCap & @arcange ]
| Steem price | US$ 0.181 | 03 Mar '20 1.05am UTC |
| CoinMarketCap Ranking | #78 | 03 Mar '20 1.05am UTC |
| FCAS Score | 753 / A | 03 Mar '20 1.05am UTC |
| SBD price | US$ 0.815 | 03 Mar '20 1.05am UTC |
| No. of Whales | 37 | 29 Feb '20 |
| No. of Orcas | 364 | 29 Feb '20 |
| No. of Dolphins | 2218 | 29 Feb '20 |
| No. of Minnows | 9314 | 29 Feb '20 |
| Alexa rank (steemit.com) | #15,815 | 03 Mar '20 1.03am UTC |
| Unique visitors (steemit.com) | 204,131 / day | 03 Mar '20 1.03am UTC |
| Page views (steemit.com) | 469,502 / day | 03 Mar '20 1.03am UTC |
Follow @penguinpablo, @steem-data & @steemdapps for more statistics.
This is #274 (02 Mar '20) of this daily news service.
[ graphics & images by @pennsif ]
Wow. Just wow.
I was one of the folks who was somewhat against the soft fork that occurred and voiced it across multiple discussions. I shifted my votes to folks like @timcliff and @blockbrothers for their resistance to freezing the stake. After reading that bullshit Twitter thread by Justin Sun I can only say I was wrong.
Should we somehow wrest control back at any point I will fully back witnesses willing and ready to burn Steemit Inc's stake right off the chain.
It will definitely be interesting to see where this goes...
We appreciate you vote for us @blockbrothers
Hi @bryan-imhoff,
My position on the softfork was not that I was 100% against it. I did see the risk of Tron and was opposed to them using their stake for witness voting.
I presented my position here:
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@timcliff/witness-update-running-my-own-softfork-20-3
Happy to discuss further if you have any questions or concerns.
#SteemResistance ! We are showing to the CryptoWorld you shouldn't mess with our community. We are thousands and have a big social impact. Don't trust our low CoinMarketCap Ranking, we are worth much more !
Brand Awareness for Steem has definitely mooned 😀
Indeed 😂! Thank you 🙏 Justin
Well that' a can or worms...
Posted via Steemleo
A very big can with a lot of worms!
People goin totally nuts out there man. Funny and sad and I'm out of popcorn.
You've been quite eager to rub it in today. Maybe I'm not reading your tone correctly, these things happen. I think you sound kind of snotty today.
I think Elon Musk said something like, "It's better to be an optimist and wrong than to be a pessimist and right."
I told ya so! I told ya so! I told ya so! I told ya so! Is fucking annoying.
Now, I'm not angry and for the most part, I feel there's enough drama here as it is. I would PREFER and SUGGEST that even though we might not all see eye to eye here today, I think it's best we maintain some sort of mutual respect for one another.
Pardon me. Maybe I've just seen enough, things snowballed, and it hit you, instead of someone else who's being the same way. I saw a dude earlier LAUGHING. Long time steemian. Laughing, about all this. I told ya so.
Just chill out. What good are we if there's a huge wall between us?
It's been a rough day, for a lot of people.
The shelves are being cleared in the UK because of Corona Virus, hope they can restock soon...
Withdrawing exchange votes will have no significance he has his 75 million Steem back and will use it, so he has control of the top witnesses in his pocket. At the town hall meetings the most the witnesses can aspire to is to be able to regain their positions but be at Sun's beck and call. Actually I was sure this would happen at these meetings. Then again perhaps I am wrong and the ex top witnesses put up a fight, maybe they surprise me..
Excellent coverage on this recent development. It is nice to see Binance backing off and unvoted the "puppet witnesses". Using customers' funds on exchange is a complete breach of trust.
@tipu curate
Thank you.
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 5/10 - need recharge?)
Thank you very much for covering everything for us. Your posts have become my place to go when I need to know what happens on steem.
Glad you find the posts helpful.
Dear @pennsif
It seem that project.hope was one of very few communities which joined your contest called "community of the week".
However till today results of this contest has not been announced and it feels like my efforts to join that contest were pointless :(
Could I ask you for some update please? Right now several people from our hive have been asking me if I know who won and if I'm in touch with you - and I'm not sure what to think and what to tell them, since I kind of feel ignored (I wrote to you on steemit and discord and I didn't receive any reply). Not cool :(
Yours, Piotr
Hi Piotr, as you may have noticed there were some major events on Steem yesterday that were something of a distraction...
Indeed I noticed. What's your opinion on current issue @pennsif
Witnesses and Justin exchanged blows. I wonder if witnesses will use their opportunity (since they clearly won this round of fight) to escalate conflict or will they try to re-start dialogue with Justin.
Any idea?
Yours, Piotr
Hopefully a positive outcome can be achieved soon, so we can get back to building Communities.