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Town Hall Meeting With Justin Sun: Why the Top 20 Witnesses Should Be Cautious

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However, if Sun is pushed out of the Steem blockchain in a fashion that smacks of a palace coup, I bet that Sun will fight back with the entire influence he has within the crypto community.


Following the staggering implications of Soft Fork 0.22.2 which was executed on February 23rd 2020, @Justinsunsteemit will be hosting a town hall meeting with the top 50 witnesses of the Steem blockchain on March 6th 2020.

However, you'll notice that this article is addressed to the top 20 witnesses. It's no mistake. This is because the rest of the witnesses outside of the top 20 are back up witnesses who do not have enough stake to compete for the top spot.

Perhaps you don't need me to tell you that the Town Hall meeting is coming on the heels of the recent soft fork that saw the stake of Steemit Inc, now owned by @Justinsunsteemit, frozen over fears that Sun could vote and hijack the blockchain by displacing the top 20 witnesses through his hefty stake, which is estimated at 70 million Steem power.

One of the top witnesses whom I respect a lot, @therealwolf summarized his reason for supporting the soft fork in a post. He wrote:

The goal is to find a mutual compatible solution with Steemit Inc on how the stake can be used to benefit Steem, without explicitely having to trust "words". Because, as we've seen now, words can easily be broken, code can not.

While I do not agree with those criticizing the move of the witnesses for daring to protect the Steem blockchain, I believe that the witnesses, especially the top 20 witnesses, need to be cautious during the forthcoming town hall meeting with Sun. I say this for two major reasons. First, Sun is bruised already and could become ruthless. Second, the back up witnesses could be a willing tool in the hands of Sun.

Now to the first point. Sun is going into that town hall meeting as an aggrieved man, even though his open letter and body language suggested otherwise. Here is a man who was rumoured to have purchased Steemit Inc for a whopping $10 million. If you were Sun, would you be smiling now that your investment is at risk, locked up? Certainly not.

So I am suspecting, on reasonable grounds, that Sun will be going into that meeting to negotiate with the witnesses to immediately reverse the soft fork, unfreeze his stake (Ninja-mined or not) with some assurances that he would not use the stake in a way that will 'harm' the community, including voting for witnesses.

Also, Sun will use the meeting as an opportunity for him to discuss the roadmap for Steemit and Steem under his watch. Hopefully, the highly controversial token swap will be discussed and he would provide answers on whether or not those moves are to be taken seriously or not.

Here is where the top 20 witnesses have to be very careful and that takes me to the second point. If the top 20 witnesses (18/20 of them supporting the recent soft fork) decide to play hard to get, insist on not unfreezing the stake of Steemit Inc and consequently endangering the investment of @Justinsunsteemit, the other back up witnesses who were also invited to the town hall meeting could turn their loyalty to Sun, knowing that by so doing they clearly improve their chances of coming into the top 20 spot if they are in the good books of Sun.

Also, in the event that the top 20 witnesses blatantly refuse to unfreeze the stake of Sun, instead of losing his stake completely, Sun has all it takes to lobby and probably even buy more Steem in order to take over the governance of Steem and install witnesses that will key into his new vision. By then, negotiations will be too late and what the witnesses have always feared, the destabilization of the Steem blockchain, would have happen eventually.

Yesterday, I read a post from @blocktrades wherein he advanced his views on the legality of hard forks. In that post, he indirectly suggested that hard forks are legal since most codes are not copyrighted. He goes further to suggest that anyone who is outforked from a chain, is legally free to start a new chain. And he is right.

However, if Sun is pushed out of the Steem blockchain in a fashion that smacks of a palace coup, I bet that Sun will fight back with the entire influence he has within the crypto community. A parallel Steem chain could even lead to the delisting of the original Steem across many prominent exchanges, making Sun's version of Steem the legitimate coin.

Therefore, I am appealing to the top 20 witnesses that even though I acknowledge that they are fighting to defend the integrity of the Steem blockchain, they must not be guilty of wrongful deeds, must not be guilty of rigidities that will result to the splitting of the Steem blockchain.

Until I come your way again, I wish you a full Steem ahead.