Hi Everyone,

It has been a crazy few weeks and an even crazier few days. I woke up on Monday to find Steem had been completely taken over. We had 20 new witnesses; well most likely just one person with 20 accounts as witnesses. Steemit put out a blog explaining what was happening. They made some extraordinary claims, such as:

Soft Fork 22.2 was maliciously structured, intending to freeze a handful of very targeted accounts and taking away their rights and possession to their owned asset, and may be deemed illegal and criminal (Steemitblog)

Based on what I understand

Possession was not removed from any account. A few rights were removed from certain large Steemit accounts to prevent the Steem being used to vote on witnesses or content. These accounts were also prevented from powering down. This was done to prevent funds from being transferred to other accounts that could vote on witnesses or content. Functions such as delegation existed and these accounts would still earn interest. These accounts could also be sold directly to someone else. The ‘Softfork’ post explains these actions in detail.

Many would argue these restrictions should have been done earlier to prevent Steemit’s massive quantity of Steem being used to control the Steem blockchain. Steemit made commitments that their Steem would not be used to control the blockchain. In hindsight, we could argue that Steemit should have had different accounts for different purposes. For example, there could have been a working capital account, which automatically power downed over the course of the year and obtained a fixed budget from the main account. I believe the top witnesses were satisfied with the unofficial arrangements they had with Steemit.

When Steemit was sold to Justin Sun. It was unclear if such arrangements still existed. Justin and Ned Scott (previous Steemit owner) conducted an ‘Ask Me Anything’ session, which was more like an ‘Answer You Nothing’ session. In addition to that, Justin or someone in his team was pumping out information (Tweets and a video, I believe all have been deleted) in a manner which gave the impression that he had bought the Steem Blockchain rather than Steemit. It was mentioned several times that he planned to move Steem to Tron instead of just Steemit, which was what he bought. His actions were creating the impression that he was going to use his stake to gain control of the Steem Blockchain. The softfork was deemed necessary to prevent this from happening.

Shortly after the softfork, Justin posted about meeting with witnesses and working together. He briefly mentioned the softfork but did not appear offended by such action. However, we were soon to find out that he had other intentions.

Who are these guys???

Fast-forward to Monday, we suddenly have 20 new witnesses installed by Steemit. The softfork should have prevented this happening. However, it appears that Steemit and Tron approached exchanges to help them gain control of the Steem Blockchain. Poloniex, Binance, and Huobi came to their rescue. These three exchanges powered up their clients Steem and used a new Steemit account (@dev365) as a voting proxy. This account then replaced the existing 20 witnesses with a new 20, which are controlled by Steemit. This was sufficient to return voting rights to the Steemit accounts. The Steemit accounts then voted for the same 20 accounts; these accounts were backed by more than twice the amount of Steem of the next highest witness.

This is highly unethical

Less than a day later both Binance and Huobi removed @dev365 as their voting proxy. These two accounts combined hold about 40 Million Steem Power. The new witnesses were still backed by far more Steem Power than the previous Steem witnesses. The community responded incredibly quickly. In a few hours, the previous top witnesses were within reach of the new 20.

Almost back in the game

Inching closer

One Witness back

About half a day later, @yabapmatt (previous top 20 witness) entered the top 20, not long after that it, he was joined by @roelandp. Over the next few hours, more and more of the previous top witnesses regained their place in the top 20. When I woke up on Wednesday, 10 of the previous witnesses had regained their places in the top 20.

This is looking good

This is looking even better

The Steem community acted promptly. Many people started to use all their votes for the first time. Others, including myself reshuffled our own votes to give the highest ranked witnesses the best chance of getting into the top 20. The amount of stake backing the top witnesses almost doubled from just 2 days earlier.

This is not so good

Back to just 3 witnesses

The drama was not over yet. An account (@proxy.token) representing a large portion of the Korean Community decided to support the new Steemit witnesses. The account was responsible for almost 6.5 Million Steem Power. When it was used, it knocked 7 of the 10 original Steem Witnesses out of the top 20. This is significant, as a Hardfork requires consensus from at least 17 of the 20 top witnesses. At this point, the active community was close to depleting its available stake to continue supporting witnesses.

There is some love for the originals

A few hours later, it appeared that @proxy.token reconsidered and decided to support 7 of the original witnesses. @proxy.token had a few questions for the top witnesses; I assume votes were given based on their responses. The 7 supported witnesses are now back in the top 20.

Seven will do for now

Take a look at the number of votes each witness has? It is clear where the community stands.

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Meanwhile on Twitter, Justin Sun claims to have defeated hackers and secured the Steem Blockchain.

#STEEM has successfully defeated the hackers & all funds are super #SAFU. @SteemNetwork and @steemit community is now stronger than ever since we united & solved the difficulties! Full details below (Justin Sun).

I think his celebration was a little premature. He did not anticipate the strength and commitment of the Steem community. Likewise, we should not celebrate too early either. The exchanges that previously intervened are still powered up and could still attempt to intervene. Poloniex are still supporting the Steemit witnesses with over 2 Million Steem Power of stake.

In addition to the emergence of the original witnesses, several key Steemit employees tendered their resignations. These include @roadscape, @andrarchy, @gerbino, and @vandeberg. I hope, in some capacity, these former Steemit employees continue to do great things for Steem. The future of Steemit is very unclear. Whatever it becomes, it is likely to be quite different to the Steemit we have known for the past three years.

So what’s next?

At the moment, almost anything seems possible. The Steem community is amazing. The Steemit team excluding Justin and Ned have done a good job. The recent release of communities is a great milestone for Steem. Communities are also available on SteemPeak, if access to them becomes more difficult on Steemit. I am not sure what will happen to Smart Media Tokens (SMTs). Maybe these can be funded through the Steem Proposal System (SPS).

This has been one of the most difficult times in the history of Steem. The community has really stepped up to support the ecosystem and the fundamental beliefs that most of us share. Let us continue to strive to make Steem the greatest blockchain and ecosystem. Let us also strive to increase the level of decentralisation so that we will never have to fight such a battle again.

More posts

If you want to read any of my other posts, you can click on the links below. These links will lead you to posts containing my collection of works. These posts will be updated frequently.

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Guide to the Steem Ecosystem (Udemy Course)

I have launched my Udemy course ‘Guide to the Steem Ecosystem’. This course takes you on journey through the Steem Ecosystem. The course consists of 6 sections. These sections are as follows:

• Getting Started
• Navigating Steem Frontends
• Becoming a Steem User
• Behind the Scenes
• The Wonders of the Steem Ecosystem
• Additional Content (SteemFest 4, SMTs, Communities, etc.)

The course contains 56 video lectures (about 13.5 hours of viewing), 56 multiple-choice questions (10 to 12 at the end of each section), and 59 downloadable resources (presentation slides and additional material such as white and blue papers). The course is free-of-charge. Click the link above to access the course.

I also have an economics course, titled Economics is for Everyone, which contains about 4 hours of video content.

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Steem - The Future of DApps