Thanks for accepting my invitation and providing your feedback!

At the time of the soft fork, a supermajority of top 20 witnesses (19/20) were running it on their nodes. Many more backup witnesses were running it too. These witnesses are approved by Steem stakeholders, the community. Much like a stake-based republic, witnesses are given a collective authority divided between 20 individuals or organizations. That is not unilateral.

I know the decision was a hard one for many, including myself even as a witness not in the top 20. In fact my initial reaction to being invited to discuss this was something along the lines of "What the fuck are they doing?" However, as I saw the things I've presented in this post as part of the broader picture, I saw why that difficult decision had been made by so many different people.

Whether the possibility of Justin Sun/TRON Foundation using the Steemit Inc. stake to shut down Steem is blown out of proportion is a matter of differing opinion. The signals of imminent deprecation I see in their communications don't make me optimistic. If you don't like the centralized governance of TRON, I'm sure you wouldn't like to see it on Steem either. The soft fork was a preemptive action to keep the governance of Steem decentralized for the moment, so that the Steem community of witnesses and stakeholders can discuss the future of Steem with the buyer of Steemit Inc. on equal terms.