Go fork yourself...a parable of self love
Alice, being the curious programmer that she is, decides to write some code on her own computer which is somewhat like a Steem blockchain node, except that certain accounts are no longer recognized.
She runs this node for a while and all is well until, soon enough, one of those unrecognized accounts performs an operation and her node rejects that block as well as any blocks thereafter. Other nodes sending those blocks are recognized as invalid or malicious and are disconnected.
As it turns out, Alice is a witness on the network and has configured her node to require a minimum participation of zero. As such, her witness continues to sign blocks, and the other witness accounts present on her computer continue to miss blocks until the blockchain code eventually disables them. Alice is able to vote in her own group of 20 top witness accounts and her node functions perfectly (except, of course, that no one else is using it). Perhaps Alice uses this node for experimental or development purposes or, you know, "self amusement". It doesn't matter which.
One day, Alice is talking to her friend Bob and telling him about this node of hers when it occurs to Bob, "You know, I have an account on that node, since I had an account on Steem [not one of the ones Alice disabled]. It would be fun if you gave me your modified version of the code, I connected my node to your node and we could then amuse each other." So they did.
Soon, Alice and Bob invited their friend Charlie to join the party and things really got going. In time, half of Steem's users joined up, and soon thereafter more than half. Eventually, nearly all of Steem's users were connected to each other using Alice's modifications, all were happy and and all sorts of varied amusement took place. So much so, in fact, that the old blockchain fell into disuse. Still there, of course, as it is nearly impossible to fully destroy a blockchain, but no one much cared about it any more.
Theft? Piracy? Heist? Hackers? Violating property rights?
You decide.
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ǝɹǝɥ sɐʍ ɹoʇɐɹnƆ pɐW ǝɥ┴
Sounds like free will and individual choice to me.
There's absolutely no problem with this under the condition that Alice does not try to call her forked chain "Steem". None of this mess would have happened if the conversation was - "hey, who wants to create a Steem fork that removes the Steemit stake called SteemCash, or SteemSV, or SteemNotIt and see if people like that better!"
Posted using Steeve, an AI-powered Steem interface
(BTW, this story isn't about "this mess". I probably should not have even used the name Steem in the post.)
As far as what chains are called this really isn't determined until after the fact. In the case of Ethereum "forking out" the "DAO Hacker", the chain with the modified consensus rules became ETH and the chain with unmodified consensus rules became ETC, but things could have gone the other way, too. Programmers like Alice don't get caught up in political/marketing debates over things like names.
You can use whatever names you want but this story is obviously related to the current events happening on the Steem blockchain.
That's fine for Alice, but in reality names are very important. What's going on in Steem right now is really more about people and reactions than anything technical, and at the end of the day it all really comes down to the naming. Steemit only felt threatened because they thought their stake might be forked out of the Steem blockchain. If the "Alice" in this case had simply said she would call her fork something different than Steem, there would be no threat, and no "mess".
I know your story isn't "about" this, I was just pointing out how it relates to the current situation on Steem and how things could have gone differently by just presenting the same thing in a different way.
Related in a sense, but really only because of the topic of forking. Clearly this post is about forking, that's in the title. Pretty much everything else in the post is different.
No doubt that is often the case.
Seems like Alice is in some sort of wonderland where everyone is happy and bliss.
That place can never prosper because there is no drama and would be boring.
lol
True true XD
At least one person around here understands crypto
A: Alice
B: Bob
C: Charlie
D: Darlene
E: Everyone?
This, my fellow Steemians, is a lesson in what we call consensus...
😎
Nice Post, "Smoooove"
Very smooth, smooth.
This Knight is more than happy to party with Alice, Bob, Charlie and anyone else for that matter. The more the merrier really.
In truth, any party is better than the present one - this feels more like a wake than a party.
SirKnight.
No. No. No. No. No.
Since the code is open source and anyone running Alice’s code is doing so under their own free will, I don’t see how anyone could claim any sort of violation. In fact, claiming that Alice is committing some criminal or unethical act is the only problem I see here.
If others don’t like Alice’s code, then they don’t have to run it. This is a pretty black and white scenario. Free will and free association trump empty rhetoric and emotional attachment.
SteemCash is the real Steem.
SteemCash is the real Steem.
SteemCash is the real Steem.
Who knows, maybe. This is a parable not intended to be any sort of real situation, which fork is the "real Steem" not even remotely at the core of its message, and it really has little to nothing to do with Steem specifically. Replace Steem with another hypothetical coin called Dream. Same story, same message.
It is possible for Dream to outcompete Steem, but it will take much more than forking out some founder coins to do that. It would require better game theory, better product, marketing, exchanges, etc etc.
If Dream is only about removing founder reward, then I think its not only completely pointless (see other shitcoins that did that and how it worked for them), but also harmful for Steem itself, as such move would create community divisions, breed trolls and take advantage of newbies.
I'm still not being clear. This post has nothing to do with Steem specifically. My comment about Dream meant just go ahead and replace Steem with Dream in the post; it changes nothing. I did not mean to imply that Dream is a Steem fork. I probably should never have used the name "Steem" in the original post as it confuses things.
On the matter of outcompeting and generally competing, I agree with you of course. You've been around Steem for a long time, as have I. I'm sure we are both well aware of many of the obvious areas needing improvement.
Some repercussions would inevitably ensue, involving things like exchanges, investors, and maybe even the SEC, who might be interested.
Nice comfy story, bro!