Another goodbye...
Hi Steem,
I haven't been active for quite some time now, just delegating some of my stake to various initiatives, and the news of Steemit being sold to Justin Sun was the impulse for me to decide to leave the community. I intended to write a nice and long goodbye post, outlining that actions like 0.22.2 were the symptoms of true decentralization starting to appear and take shape, but then the hostile takeover happened and I have to admit I don't feel like writing the same thing anymore, and am left with a sour taste in my mouth.
It is not only the fact that Steemit was sold without notice, or the way that the community has been completely disregarded in this process, but what it entails and implies about decentralization and censorship resistance of the DPoS consensus algorithm (and indirectly, others) that is preoccupying me at the moment.
The fantastic people that made the community of Steem are not dead, even though they might be homeless for now, but I have no doubt that they will find a new home somewhere, sometime. We are still at the beginning of this technology and haven't really seen yet all of the technological and social changes it will bring with it.
I came into this project, and crypto in general, because I had been convinced after reading the bitcoin whitepaper that it was possible to build technological tools--based on incorruptible mathematics--to free ourselves from the tyranny of the preexisting economic order that had so much money it could buy anything it wanted and even position itself above the law, without consequences.
I thought Steem was well on its way to achieve independence, resilience and anti-fragility but I guess I (as many other people) have been proven wrong, the devs have been sold and bought (respect goes to those people with integrity that resigned) and the blockchain taken over by chinese capital while completely shitting over the community that brought its value to the chain in the first place. Steemit might continue to exist as a bastardized, centralized version, and it might even grow further (facebook got where it is now without any hint of decentralization nor respect for user's rights), but in my heart it will only ever be a shadow of its former self. Yesterday was the day that Steem died for me.
The important things in life
Even though my main feelings and those of a part of the community right now revolve around rage, contempt, bitterness and sadness facing this treason, treachery and possible financial loss, this is not what I would advise to take away from all of this. Dan repeatedly said that this was all an experiment, and so it was. During all those years I learned a huge freakin' lot about peer-to-peer networks, economics, consensus algorithms in byzantine distributed systems and last but not least, I saw and experienced the birth of a new community of like-minded people from all over the world gathering together to freely associate and try to build something better for the future, where people are empowered and not baited in a corporate-controlled network. The SteemFest I attended was a blast, and one of my most peculiar and intense moments of life. The breadth and diversity of backgrounds of people that attended, which was but a mere reflection of what was happening online, was astounding. In a way, it was also liberating to witness what people can achieve out of their own volition, and if we set our minds and hearts to a common goal, there can literally be no boundaries that cannot be crossed.
I for myself will take some time away from the crypto world to travel with my family and reflect on everything that happened, try to understand what happened, learn from our mistakes and what we did right, and try to devise new ways to achieve decentralization and trustlessness, and figure out how to build systems and networks that achieve censorship resistance and foment respectful and constructive building of our future.
Finally, I want to send a hearfelt thank you to everyone that participated in this adventure, those with whom I agreed and those with whom I disagreed, you can all be proud of what you did. I will not name anyone, because I would invariably forget some of you, but you know who you are! The last 4 years with all of you have been absolutely incredible and Steem will always have a little special place in my heart. Thank you, thank you, thank you, and I hope I'll see some of you in the future under brighter circumstances.
Till then,
Wackou.
PS: this post ended up much longer than I thought it would be and feels more like a braindump of hodge-podge thoughts than the structured post I intended to write in the first place, but I had to say it. Thanks for reading anyway ;)
Before you leave, I would like to thank you for what you did in particulary for @francosteemvotes and the French community, by delegating your stack. It was really helpful ! Hope we will see you again in another place !
Thanks, really glad I could help :)
I know you’ve been here since the early days. A committed Steemian. I respect your decision but I would suggest not to leave yet. We are only 11mil SP short from sneaking back our previous top witness back in the top 20. All it takes is a final massive effort and spread the word so that every single user casts their witness votes or proxy them
thanks for your message, I have to say you have been one of the steemians I've enjoyed reading the most lately, thanks to your positive energy and determination.
However, my decision is final. The reason I originally came to Steem was because I wanted to help build a decentralized social network, not just another social network, even one that paid its users. The beauty of it was the symbiosis between the nerdy types that build complicated stuff (like me!) and all the cool people that thrive on social networks.
Now, the dev team is gone (or at least vanderberg, but he was the architect of steem after dan left) and even if (and that's not even a given) the community manages to get their witnesses in control again, the chain is still vulnerable to a takeover as has just happened (let's not kid ourselves, cz knew perfectly well what he was doing and he would do it again provided justin pays him enough, which we know he has the pockets for).
As far as I can see, DPoS as implemented in Steem is flawed in that respect, and I don't see an easy fix. It might be that a modified version of DPoS could do (doubt it) or that one with a different initial distribution could do (doubt it as well, if you're that dependent on initial conditions then you're not resilient/anti-fragile), it might be that another consensus algorithm might be more appropriate at the cost of performance/latency, it might be that what we want still hasn't been invented. I think there is a lot to learn from what happened, and I'll be reading and watching from the sidelines how this world evolves, until I find again a project that teases my brain and my ideals the same way that Steem did when it was created.
Cheers!
Even tho I didn't have the chance to interact with you as much as I wanted to, seeing all these positive comments regarding your contribution around here I know you'll be missed a lot.
blushing...
Thanks for everything.
Good luck ;)
Sorry to see you go. As a mere user, I'm wondering what next?
Sorry to see you
Go. As a mere user, I'm
Wondering what next?
- leoplaw
I'm a bot. I detect haiku.
Steem/steemit is not dead (just zombie!), it will continue to exist and content creators will continue to create content for it, even though some of them might leave. It might even grow and attract a lot of users under the control of justin sun (unlikely, but possible). However the semblance of decentralization that was here while working our way towards real decentralization is now completely shattered, and this platform is nothing more than a centrally-controlled reddit clone.
See the outages on the site from the past few days? That's a direct consequence of the takeover...
Too bad we never had the chance to meet in person. Maybe somewhere, at some point :)
Good luck with your new projects!
Indeed! I think we could have had endless discussions about steem or scientific topics in general ;)
Thanks, and good luck to you too!
Definitely :)
"Yesterday was the day that Steem died for me."
Heavy words, but they surely strike a chord with the general feeling at the moment.
I hope we meet again in some decentralized trustless part of the internet where lessons learned have been applied and we see our community reshape and grow to new heights. Until that time,
Adieu.
Merci pour ton soutien aux différents groupes de curation fr, durant ces longs mois ! Même si je ne croyais déjà plus en Steem lorsque tu l'as offert, je suis très reconnaissante du geste, qui a permis à pas mal de monde de tenir bon.
Je te souhaite plein de bonnes choses à toi et tes proches. Et en espérant se croiser au détour d'un autre projet tout aussi prometteur :) !
Merci à toi aussi! C'était cool de pouvoir aider un peu tout ce petit monde francophone :)
A plus j'espère!
This is a minor hiccough. Don't go far or for long :)
I'm very sad you're leaving our community, the recent events have been hard on everyone. I thank you for your unconditional support for me in the last 3 years. I wish you happiness and good time with your family and time off from crypto. Hopefully you'll come back to us in the future where STEEM would be bigger and stronger.
Thank you for the kind words, it does mean a lot. I've also been very happy and honored to work with you over the past years, and even though I'm more of a ninja guy, it was nice having a pirate amongst us ;)
I might be believing that on a technical level there are fundamental design flaws in the consensus system that need to be fixed, but one thing for sure is that the community of people running the network nodes and interacting with the blockchain in anyway will not die anytime soon, as can be witnessed currently (pun intended!). And if the worst would happen and the chain would fall completely into evil hands, the community can always move to a new chain or fork of the existing one (easier said than done, but still possible). So I am not leaving with sadness right now, but rather with pride to have been part of this awesome community. The current fight is history in the making, regardless of the outcome.
I will definitely come back to crypto at some point in the future, bigger and stronger as well. Steem on!
A great post for a great contributor! Bravo. I wish you all the best in your next adventure ;)