What Does Decentralization Mean To Me?
Hello everyone in the steem world. I know that some of you know me and have seen me talking on the pal discord. If you have you will know that I have been defending @justinsunsteemit a little. I wanted to make this post after seeing @theycallmedan put out this post asking for us to talk about decentralization. I am not going to be taking one side here and just telling you my thoughts on what he is getting at asking this question.
What Does Decentralization Mean To Me?
I am going to try and answer each question that was put in the post. I am also going to add a bit more on the issues that are going on here. I will start with it. What do you think are the fundamental building blocks of blockchain? One of the things that I think is very important about blockchain is that is is an open ledger that one person or small group can change. This is what can make it so safe from ever being taken away from you. No government can get it from you without your keys. In a real push yes they might get it. But this gives many people of the world a way to protect themselves from hyperinflation. This takes a lot of power away from men that would take over a ruin a country. Living in the USA I have not had to face things like that yet I know it happens to people. Rich or just doing well one day and the next the money you own has no or little value. Blockchain can also be used to track goods and improve supply lines. But I don't feel that is what they were made for.
Next, he wants to know about this What does decentralization mean to you, is it important, why? Decentralization is the idea that no one person can control an assist or ledger. That the code that drives the crypto can't just be changed and bam everything is different. This is important because without it people could take away all the best parts of the blockchain. For that reason it is important. If the servers controlling the code are not decentralized your chain just isn't safe. It is almost as simple as the saying "never put all your eggs in one basket". There are other ways to protect the code but without many people running a node and working together with the system it just doesn't work.
Now that I showed you what I think about those questions I am not going to go a bit father and apply them to steem. Proof of brain is a great idea. It has given us a place to come and post and have a chance to turn our hard work into money. Or just to have fun and earn a bit of side money doing that. Steem can be fast and free. It can open up so many different apps and frontends. It can do so many amazing things. But it fails in so many basic ones. I am not an expert about every part of how the system works but I will try and tell you why Decentralized governance hasn't been working. Who are the witness? What do they do? A very casual user has no idea. Even someone like me who is here every day didn't spend a lot of time looking into it. Sure I knew that they rain a node that processed the transactions. I am aware that some of them run a dapp or a few web pages that promote steem or a front end you can use to post on the steem chain. I have learned more about all of them. The issue is I had to hunt that info out. I have to be in tons of discords. It is hard. So when I was told that Justin was trying to take over steem I went to their aid right away. But now I have backed off.
Once I found out that 22.2 did indeed freeze all the steem Justin had bought I removed all the votes I had given them. They didn't miss my vote but if you read my first post I could not support people taking away access to someone's funds. I was also upset that so many seemed to act like they had done nothing wrong. That there was no reason for Justin to have put 20 witnesses in place to change us to 22.5. That he was going to soft fork us or hard fork us into this or that. It was a mess. It was also a mess because there wasn't one clear message from them. It seemed like there were 3 or 4 groups of thought. Some never wanted to do, some thought it was a mistake now, others thought it was justified and a few thought they should have just nulled his sake. Even today for someone that has spent a lot of time chatting about it I am not sure of what they are willing to do to get anything done or what they will do if they get power back. This is the major issue with decentralized governance it is slow, there is lots of fighting, on and someone with a lot of stake can tip the scales with 30 votes. That is right we have a top 20 and you get 30 votes. I can kind of see the theory of it. Yet how anyone didn't see how easy it would be to take this over is beyond me. I am going to move one because this getting a bit long.
The story as I understand it today is this. Justin buys steem inc and there stake as a legal claim to it in the real world. Story leaks that he has done this so a fast AMA happens. Justin says no token swap and then announces a token swap and maybe went back and forth a few times. Top 20 got nervous froze his stake. I am not sure on how many of the top 20 approved of 22.2. Just calls them hackers as he thinks his funds are getting taken. Makes a plan with exchanges to take over the top 20 to free up his funds. Old top 20 freak out, call to arms and get anywhere from 10 to 11 spots back in the top 20. Right now they hold 8. Now a hostile take over fight goes on and Justin gets blasted on Twitter. It does appear Justin tricked a few exchanges but I take that with a grain of salt. How do you trick someone into voting for witness? Justin seems to want them to promise to not freeze anyone funds again before he will remove his witness, The old top 20 seems to not want to do anything until the so-called "sock puppets witness" are gone. I might be behind any new updates. If so let me know.
So what will happen next? I can't be sure but in that story, I don't see anyone that is without blame. I hope for a deal with Justin because I think he can make steemit.com what it should be. I also think now the community has proved we don't want a token swap. That isn't talked about much. If you want to know what Justin can bring go check out Facebook, or twitter. Look how clean the work and how fast they are. Look how they let you chat and customize so much more. I have been on steem for 1.5 years now. It has been around for longer. Yet I have not seen steemit.com get better in any major way. Steempeak.com is doing better and I know there are a few more that are doing better. But none of them has the funding that Tron can bring to development. None of them has the PR team. None of those sites have to lead to a big jump in users and we need more users. We also need users that are willing to invest and stake. I would like to ask the top 20 to resist the fork. I know the idea that it works for other projects. But steem is not just a coin it is a community. If you break the community you are going to end up with 2 chains with even fewer users. So get Justin to make steemit.com work as it should. Get it to be a top tier social media site. With mobile apps that work great. Get rid of the learning curve of posting here. Prove to people they can use this site for any reason and get rewards for it. Don't force him out over a Ninja stake that might have last got you person that could push steem to a new level unless one of you is ready to fill that position. Because that stake is Justin's or it's null on the new chain. and Null doesn't help with anything.
A great post, I think its time for people to stop beating their chests with false bravado and find a way forward that works for everyone
Thanks for reading it. I agree for sure.
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I think there are definite ways forward, but in this saga,but before I get into that,I want to touch a little bit on the blockchain.
The main advantage on the blockchain is integrity of the data. Once a piece of data is on the chain,it cannot be changed or altered. It is there forever and anything added afterwards is built on it. So all of the facts concerning statements made by Steemit.com concerning the "ninja mined stake" are recorded on the blockchain and are unchangeable statements attributed to that entity. A change in ownership doesn't change the entity.
One thing I think everybody needs to realize, both Steemians and Justin's team, is that there is no such thing as a top 20. It is a fluid and ever changing group. Any proposals made should be addressed to the community at large. That is decentralization.
Decentralization is a tradeoff between efficiency and freedom. That being said, there are many instances in which decentralization offers more efficiency than centralization. Under a decentralized system, one can create a solution without approval from a central authority. The solution can then be adopted by individuals or not.
The problem I see with the current situation is that Justin seems to want guarantees and the people with whom he is speaking can't give it to him. Justin needs to present a plan to the rest of the Steemians including witnesses and non-witnesses. He is limited in his capacity to do this because he has a very very limited understanding of the Steem blockchain.
Here would be my way forward:
Beginning with pre-soft fork, turn witness voting off for all steemit inc accounts. Allow transference of steemit inc stake in accordance with a time table which prevents the dumping of liquid Steem on the market. Keep the powerdown time the same (this is in everybody's best interest).
During the time in between when the stake could be moved, people can convince Justin along with any other stakeholders as to why it is in their best interest to use their stake to support various initiatives.
I get what your saying about the top 20 and the “ninja minded stake” I am just not so sure the legal world would say it couldn’t be sold because it was. That deal had many lawyers working on it. That is why I want us to just move past this idea that Justin doesn’t own it. The chance that someone here is going to be able to prove that stake could never be sold or used to vote is going to be very hard. I get it Ned said he wouldn’t. But Justin is not Ned and not one is showing me signed papers. Also this idea their isn’t a top 20 is true and not true. Staked voting with many whales and the fact that many users don’t vote makes it hard to see them change. It does but it isn’t super liquid like you are saying.
Justin wants the current top 20 to say they won’t freeze funds again. He is asking for the people who did it to say they won’t again. Or at least that is what he asked.
As to your way forward. Don’t think it will work. There seems to be a lot of people who think Justin is okay with losing his voting power. To me he has made it clear he doesn’t want to. In his mind the big vote he has should not be used for normal governance. But he wants it there as a veto or a way to deal with witness that have left or don’t engage during a hard fork talk. He would I. Theory just move up the guys in the next spots up past the missing person. He also doesn’t want to just sell it. He might if we can’t move forward but your ask puts all the power to make changes back into the guys that froze his funds once already. I don’t see why he is expected to trust him at this point.
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It wasn't that Justin didn't own it, but that Steemit Inc. has obligations for it. The promise wasn't made by the individual @Ned, it was made by Steemit Inc. When a business is purchased, all obligations come with it. He can't have the Stake without the liability.
So what would your presentation be to the community?
What you are presenting wrt to the voting rights is centralized power. Many investors (practically all of them) invested in Steem stake with the understanding of that promise. Reneging on that will basically kill Steem as all the biggest stakeholders will leave. At that point, Justin will likely move ahead with his stated goals of moving Steem to tron and killing the blockchain.
The witnesses are liquid in terms of this: Justin could remove his sock accounts in an instance and then re-install them in the following instant. The centralized system you you gave is an example of this.
You get that is the way this place will always be with staked voting and 30 votes? I mean even today the top witness only has 20k accounts voting for him. It is hard to say how many users are on steem but I don’t think that is close to all of us if it is then wow we are a small group. Steem INC did not make those promises forever imo. So when a new owner comes in he can stake how he plans to use that stake. At that point you can fork if you want and have the support and skills to do that. Or if your a normal smaller user like me then you stick with what the top guys want. Just like I have had to do for the last few hard forks. I don’t see it all that different.
The community needs to make a decision first. Do you understand the Steemit INC stake belongs to Justin Sun and he has the right to stake how he will use the stake he bought?
If the answer is no. And you feel you can put conditions on his stake based on statements of the former CEO and people at the company. Then all you can do is fight. You won’t have my support but maybe you can win.
If you can say yes then the way forward is to state that you agree to not freeze the Steem INC stake. To listen to Justin’s plans and then vote on his ideas. You can voice anything you would like to see him do with the stake. If enough of the top stakes do something like this Justin should then remove his witness. At that point whoever is in the top 30 should start to work with steemit INC towards HF 23. We should set up votes for the different ideas that have been put forward. Witness should come out in support or against HF 23 and we should stake that Justin can’t vote on this. Then we got which way the community wants. That is what I would say is the way out of this.
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@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 10/15 - need recharge?)
Thanks for that
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