TRON Foundation strikes back

What happened?

After the majority of the Top 20 witnesses had performed a soft-fork some days ago, which basically froze the Steemit funds, the TRON foundation and its new subsidiary Steemit Inc have now struck back. With the help of exchanges such as Binance and Poloniex, which have powered up huge amounts of Steem - most likely customer funds - specifically for this move, a new regime of witnesses was elected. In due course, these new witnesses performed another soft fork (0.22.5), which apparently reversed the changes of soft for 0.22.2 - though I must say that I cannot really say if it has implemented other changes as well.

What does this mean?

For now, Steem has been fully centralized. The new witnesses are all accounts with a reputation of 25, so it seems like these are all just sock puppet accounts managed by the TRON foundation. Now that the Steemit account is able to use its funds again, they have the power to dominate the witness votes - even without the exchanges.

What is next?

No question, the overall development is extremely bad. It hardly could have been worse. While I do understand the basic motivation behind the decision of the witnesses to freeze the accounts of the @steemit account, in hindsight it has only led to an escalation of the conflict. The witness should have listened to Sun Tzu's advice before become aggressive against Justin Sun and the TRON Foundation:

"Every Battle is Won or Lost Before it is Ever Fought" - Sun Tzu, The Art of War

In this case this means that you should have planned for all eventualities, including this scenario which has now become reality.

Is there a solution to the conflict?

Even though it might seem unlikely in the end, I still think that it is in everybody's interest to come to a solution top resolve the current conflict. Let's hope that Justin Sun has studied Sun Tzu better than the former top witnesses:

“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Let's hope for the best....
Tim