Tron and Steemit Join Forces
Hello Steemians, as many of you know, last Friday TRON Foundation announced that it had completed a strategic partnership with Steemit Inc. We are super excited about the partnership and we would like to respond to some of the concerns of the community.
Since the announcement of the partnership, these two teams have been working hard to connect with one another and sync up about our respective roadmaps.
Developing a Joint Roadmap
The TRON and Steemit Teams are planning to work together to develop an engineering roadmap that ultimately enables the TRON and Steem ecosystems to form a mutually beneficial connection. There are many ways of accomplishing this which deliver incredible value to both the TRON and Steem stakeholders, and we look forward to exploring these possibilities with TRON’s engineering team.
The Steemit Team is Safe
As some of you may know, it wasn’t that long ago (just over a year) that Steemit Inc. faced an existential threat. Since that time we have been able to tighten our belts while shipping products like MIRA and Hivemind, however, we are still a long way off from using ad revenue to fund operations. Now that TRON has partnered with Steemit Inc., our future is more secure than ever.
Delivering on Our Promises
@justinsunsteemit and his team have made it clear that the most important thing to them is that we deliver on our previous promises. Shipping communities, improving the user experience on steemit.com, and streamlining the sign up process are our top priorities as we work with the TRON Team to develop a longer term roadmap. Once the two teams are able to come to a consensus on the roadmap, that information will be shared with the community.
Win-Win
We believe that this partnership represents a massive opportunity for the Steem community and we are committed to working with the TRON Team to maximize that opportunity. If we can combine TRON’s resources, engineering talent, and industry-leading platform, with our amazing community, 3rd party applications, and unrivaled technology, we are confident that we can dramatically accelerate the adoption of decentralized systems.
We look forward to continuing our work with you, the Steem community, to accomplish our mission of onboarding the masses to the blockchain.
The Steemit Team
whats going on. I want to see my following user's post.
if you are on mobile, you may have to manually enter steemit.com/@supergiant/feed
on desktop “my friends” looks like is the new feed.
thanks for your help
Thanks, Geek Girl.
Have there been any discussions with the Tron team about the will of the witnesses and the token holders they represent? There have been many concerning posts from the Tron marketing team (including Poloniex) describing a token swap of “old Steem” tokens to Tron based tokens. I hope it has been made very clear to the Tron team that the witnesses are ready to support the chain as it is now because that is the job we are elected to do. If the token holders want a change, we’ll listen, state our positions, and they will vote accordingly.
That said, I think the potential for new marketing, promotion, resources, and development could be fantastic for both communities. I hope they join together for mutual benefit while respecting the many years of work and commitment that got us here.
As a witness, I look forward to connecting with the Tron team and discussing the history of this community and what expectations we are facilitating.
They could be thinking of some kind of Pegged-Steem on Tron.
Luke, you are thinking win-win, AKA mutual benefit, and I agree, and I hope they don't try to do what Facebook does. I'm not saying they can. I'm just speaking theoretically to an extent, meaning they could try. I don't know one way or another. I'm just thinking hypothetically, long-term speaking, as I'm concerned with slippery slopes, AKA the ability for good things to declines towards potential risks, problems, relating to censorship. The only thing more critical than censorship might be in regards to the mechanism behind voting for witnesses, who gets to vote, the weight of the votes, the whole system, which could be dangerous if Tron were to have too much power over voting for witnesses. Well, I'm not sure how it works. So, I can't say Tron has too much power. I'm just saying that if they do, then that can be dangerous. But then again, maybe not dangerous. But the possibility is still there.
I personally see absolutely nothing beneficial TRON may offer me except money to fund you guys..
I find TRON to be a centralized piece of shit blockchain that is almost completely controlled by Justin and Binance. (Kinda kills the point of a blockchain, doesnt it.)
If you get funded to continue working on STEEM, im happy with that.
My biggest fears of Justin attempting a powerplay to become a "De facto" owner of the chain still remains and i think that should be addressed before anything else.
We need to put in safeguards in place.
We need to keep Steem decentralized and this purchase by Justin clearly shows how vulnerable we really are.
It's baked in the cake.
Proof of stake bites us in the ass.
Well, not really. The last 2-3 years of inflation really pulled us out of being just like TRON and as time goes on we will become more and more decentralized due to distribution.
Right now Dolphins+Orcas outweigh Justins stake here. That wasnt the case few years ago. Stinc used to have 50%+ stake in Steem.
I know what you mean an I'm well aware of this. But now when we're kind of in the spotlight the things can change overnight. A couple of big investors can clean out the exchanges and our distribution is skewed again.
Considering your concerns, I hope you will advocate for changing witness votes to reflect how DPoS should actually work. Presently 1 Steem = 30 witness votes, which multiplies the advantage large stakeholders have 30x.
It is proposed that 1 Steem = 1 witness vote. This is how the community of stakeholders should effect governance via DPoS.
Thanks!
Id like to see multiple options be presented and scenarios played out to see which option is the best.
I resort to sound principle when considering things, and I think you tend to as well, which is why we agree so often. DPoS is based on stake creating and resulting from greater skin in the game, and stake should therefore be an accurate representation of governance, which 1 Steem = 1 vote is.
It isn't a matter of how it 'should' work. The current system is an approximation of approval voting (in fact, under true approval voting the number of votes would be unlimited, but this was changed not for any governance reason but due to an exploit concerning backup witnesses).
Approval voting has the property of electing the witnesses which are approved by the broadest and maximum amount of voting stake. Under most conditions this would be good, as it sets the maximum threshold for an attacker to come in with a narrow amount of stake and elect witnesses contrary to the broader consensus.
In this case, what people are trying to accomplish is not to represent the broadest and maximum amount of stake, but in fact handicap the largest stakeholder (who in fact has an absolute majority relative to actively voting stake). In a sense, this is exactly the opposite of what good, secure, governance would do.
That being said, it may be a reasonable tradeoff (lower security for less majority control) to limit the influence of the largest stakeholder in this specific situation.
Presently the witness voting system multiplies the advantage of substantial stakeholders 30x over lesser staked voters.
Given Steem's situation has evolved from when the founders held the stake they mined, and now that stake is no longer in the hands of the founders, it's best to remove the mechanism that allowed them to exercise instant governance of Steem at their sole option, which is what the 30x votepower did.
Theoretically the community could band together and prevent that stake from completely effecting control of consensus witnesses, sooner or later. In reality one stakeholder will be focused on a purpose, while hundreds or thousands will be diverse instead, and will be very unlikely to focus enough to successfully oppose that stake if it is deployed malevolently.
Tron could sell to Goolag, and then we'd end.
Representing stake 30x does not increase the range of stake represented. It simply increases the advantage large stakeholders have over lesser stakeholders by 30x.
It's a vast increase in security - not a decrease - to change witness voting to 1 Steem = 1 vote.
No it doesn't. Everyone has the same 30 votes, both big and small alike. Both stakes are multiplied to the extent that all 30 votes are used.
1 SP = 30 SP worth of votes
1 million SP = 30 million SP worth of votes.
There is no systematic multiplication of larger stake over smaller here.
What multiple votes (approaching the original full approval voting with unlimited votes) does do, among other things, mostly good, is a better job of translating the choices of the majority of stake into a full set of witnesses acceptable to the largest share of stake, and protected against smaller share attackers.
I don't necessarily disagree with your point here, but realize that what you are proposing is enabling a sort of "attack" where the minority stake (about 40%) is given increased power, because in this case we've decided that the majority (about 60%) happens to no longer be owned by founders, and that is "no good".
That certainly 'feels' like a good thing in this particular situation, but it wouldn't feel like a good thing if the 40% were in the hands of someone trying to cause damage and the 60% were in "good" hands. The existing system is more secure because it would keeps that from happening; the proposed one would not.
Again, this could be an acceptable, even perhaps desirable, tradeoff, but don't fail to recognize it for what it is.
You can say what you want to, but the example you pose proves my point. The holder of 1 Million SP gained 29 Million, while the holder of 1 SP gained 29, a difference of 28,999,971 in favor of the larger stakeholder. The 30x increase in SP of larger stakeholders dramatically increases their influence over the witnesses, and I reckon the founders did this in order to be able to attain instant total control of Steem governance at their sole option, which the founder's stake enabled.
It enables that control still, but the founders no longer possess it.
If removing the back door to total control over Steem, and the massive grant of power to larger stakeholders over lesser, is considered an 'attack' then so is surgery for cancer.
There is no reason to continue practices that benefited the founders when those founders are no longer here.
Honestly that is a silly argument. In any system of votes if you multiply everyone's votes by 2 or 10 or 1/2 or a million, everyone still has the same share of the votes.
The multiplication does not do what you claim.
There are good reasons for approval-type voting in this context which have nothing to do with the founders wanting to have had complete control. In fact, originally the founders had a much larger share than Tron has now, and probably would have had complete control even under the system you propose.
What you are trying to do is give more influence to a distinct minority stake. That's laudable in some sense, but you can't avoid recognizing that weakens the security of the chain, which relies on: a) the majority being honest, and b) maximizing the threshold that a dishonest minority much reach in order to gain influence.
I disagree that this is equitable, because witness votes are measured in Steem voted them. While proportions may remain relatively the same, in real terms the larger stakes effect greater influence over the witnesses. 30M votes greatly outweighs 3M votes in an election, and it doesn't matter at all that they are proportionately the same to the actual stake of the voters. In real votes they are dramatically divergent, and that's how witness votes are counted.
But you know that.
Well, what I am seeking to do is to eliminate the massive over representation of substantial stakeholders to influence the witnesses by multiplying their VP 30 fold. They already have most of the stake. Letting them vote it 30 times increases their influence, which is already greater than all the redfish and minnows together, 30 fold more. Doing that does increase the influence of the majority of voters, so despite phrasing it pejoratively as if it were undue granting of privilege, it is technically increasing the influence of the majority of voters, by reducing the undue influence that has previously been granted whales, so that the founder's stake could exercise instant at will control of the governance of the chain. While the founder's stake was not deployed, the whales enjoyed 30x the influence on the witnesses their stakes merited over redfish, minnows, and dolphins.
What is necessary to improve security of the witnesses with the founders stake in the wild now, is to eliminate that disproportionate influence allowing that massive stake to vote 30 times. The witnesses aren't voted proportionately, but actually. The Steem backing them is what counts. Larger stakes voting once wield 30x less Steem in real terms than they do voting 30x.
But you know that.
This is no justification for granting large stakeholders 30x more votes. That's a ludicrous argument, because whales and orcas alone wield more stake than all redfish, minnows, and dolphins combined. Those lesser stakeholders, the majority of the voters, aren't the threat to the security of the chain.
It's the whales that are the minority with a majority stake that is a threat to the security of the chain, and particularly the one stakeholder with ~1/3 of extant stake, because 30x over representation grants them inordinate power to influence the witnesses.
Do not misrepresent these facts any longer. It is facile to see through your mischaracterization.
Thanks for the update, it was about time.
I will make a short recap of your post (reflecting, obviously, what I understood from it):
Not very reassuring, but at least not catastrophic.
Since I don't see any mentions of SMT, I take it that this is not a priority anymore. Probably a new path, involving TRON tokens, will be approached.
I also don't see, as @netuoso stated, nothing about a specific governance commitment, apart from written promises. These might be useful, to a certain extent - I don't dismiss them entirely, on the contrary, thank you for them - but, as both the Steemit Inc. team and the STEEM community know, blocks can't be signed with written promises. It takes a lot more than that, from cryptographic signatures embedded in a specific software, deployed on machines linked in a network, all this supported with time, money and skills. You can also read the last part simply by saying out loud "witnesses".
Without witnesses, there wouldn't have been any strategic partnership. Without content contributors and curators, there wouldn't have been any strategic partnership.
I'm not feeling taken out from the game, but I certainly, as witness, don't feel like I'm a part of it anymore. On the contrary, seems like the entire concept of STEEM witnesses is quite weakened by this "strategic move".
Would appreciate any answer you have to these concerns.
(upvoted for visibility)
Yeah, I'm just gonna leave this here. I just hope that he won't be using his stake on Steem like he does with TRX. Call me Elmer FUD but this doesn't exaclty install with confidence.
https://steempeak.com/tron/@anthonyadavisii/that-s-not-a-good-look-justin-word-2-my-naysayer-s
I didn't know there was a Tron community. How is it doing? If it is not doing well, then we should be talking about that on the assumption that this boat could sink as well.
Thanks for selling out to the biggest clown in the crypto space
Is Steem going to be phased out?
What about SMTs? Are they still happening?
I assume that you knew that Sun said yes in AMA.
BTW, maybe you can get people pass the Steem Torch to Sun and see how it goes.
I fear that it will turn it off.
exactly my question. I also miss the SMTs here, given that we are waiting for quite some time for them.
Will there be any changes or benefits for Steem Power hodlers??
It seems that the benefits will be for Tron holders only.
"It seems that the benefits will be for Tron holders only."
As well it should be! Steemit's management and Witnesses fucked up Steemit to the point that it nearly went bankrupt last year, and yet they made no positive changes to right the sinking ship, other than get rid of 70% of the crew. @Ned thus decided to throw in the towel and sell off Steemit and Steem assets to Justin Sun/Tron for what ever he could get for them, and I suspect that was not much!
Steemit and Steem, for what they are worth, now belong to Justin Sun to do with as he pleases. What he does, whether that is to make vast changes, maintain the status quo (which I seriously doubt), or simply shut it down, is entirely up to him and no one else. I can be almost certain that most if not all Steemit witnesses will be gone, and perhaps even their Steem investments included, or at least have them exchanged for Tron's. This writing has been on the wall for over a year now, yet the vast majority of members were too naive to see it, and the rest were too busy milking the system and their fellow members for all they were worth. It's now time to pay the piper.
Nice. People don't want to hear this but I agree with your observation.
Prison I hope for fraud and theft from the rest of the Steemit members.