STEEM/TRON De-escalating and Thoughts on Future Governence
Well... let's get the first bit out of the way. I think the position that we are in is the result of mistakes on both the STEEM and TRON sides, resulting in a soft fork from the STEEM side and a witness takeover on the TRON side. Both sides and reasons (and lack of information and a touch of hastiness...) to perform their actions. However, at this point, it doesn't really matter who wears the blame for what... it is more important to extricate ourselves from this impasse in a way that is acceptable for both sides.
So, the current situation appears to be that there are 7 STEEM witnesses and 13 TRON witnesses in the top 20... which is a good position to start talks (assuming that there are no hasty and ill-intended moves from either side, not that I would be naive enough to think that both sides are preparing for the worst!). This means that neither side can (without any surprise moves...) unilaterally force through a change without the consent of the other side. So, this means that it should be possible to talk through to a resolution and de-escalation that is acceptable to both teams.
Of course, this means that there needs to be no sudden moves that freak either side out! This reminds me of the end of the King Arthur story where two sides accidentally start fighting due to a misunderstanding when a startled knight draws a sword to kill a snake!
I talk a bit about each of the sides (3....) and some Governance suggestions at the end of the post!
The Power Balance
Exchanges
On the STEEM side of things, there appears to be some will for "punishing" the exchanges that staked STEEM tokens and voted in the TRON witnesses. This might be a strategy that will backfire... after all, the exchanges are still staked up, and the status quo does rely on them not returning to active voting. They are NOT going to be keen to support a resolution that involves their "rights" being infringed.
The STEEM side really needs to be careful on this matter... we NEED the exchanges to stay neutral, and antagonising them (or hunting for on-chain retribution) will cause them to be more inclined to the TRON side, regardless of the consequences. Which will severely damage any negotiating position for the STEEM side, as it means that TRON can unilaterally force through changes with the support of the exchanges. I believe that the exchanges are mostly interested only in freeing their stake as soon as possible.
TRON
STEEM wants to ensure that the TRON stake is not used for governance... and the easiest way (if TRON agrees...) is to bind the account to a non-voting stake, whilst allow the free movement of STEEM into and out of the account. This is interesting in theory... but in the end it is flawed. Firstly, I don't think that TRON would willingly bind itself like this... and more importantly, it is easily circumvented by moving the tokens and then voting with different accounts. This would be a trick that could be played once... but to devastating effect.
In the "Governance Suggestions" below, I suggest a different option...
Like it or not, the TRON team is around... and we need to have a better way of working together that doesn't involve binding one of the strongest accounts. After all, we might need them in the future if we face an outside attacker!
STEEM
... hmmm, the STEEM side. What does STEEM every want... we are a herd of cats at best! There are so many grandiose ideas and opinions (of which this post is one of many....). I can't speak for anyone, but I would like to see a Governance system that is stable yet flexible.
However, I do think that the STEEM community would like to see the original steemit stake (also in other accounts like @misterdelegation) to continue to support projects and development. In some ways, it has done in the past (via the delegations)... and in others, perhaps not. However, it would be foolish (and non-profitable) to find that the projects which the Steemit account (via it's delegations) are suddenly defunded... in fact, in some cases, this could open the gates to unchecked bad actors harvesting the reward pool.
Governance Suggestions
Too many votes!
My first suggestion for governance is a change to the 30 votes that each account can make. As we have seen in this last week... this opens up the way for large accounts to hijack the governance system. Luckily for us this time, the takeover ONLY reversed the soft-fork and nothing more... it could have been much worse!
If this number was lower (10 or less...) it would require much more STEEM to completely take over the whole of the consensus spots. However, it would also mean that we wouldn't need to bind the steemit and exchange accounts, as they could have representatives in the top 20 witnesses (of course, this means that some of the "old" ones would lose their spots...)... but they would be matched by community ones as well.
This would also give the exchanges and TRON a veto vote on changes (as there wouldn't be enough witnesses to force through a change...), whilst also allowing the community to have their representatives resist a unilateral change from the big guys.
Of course, in this case... things start to resemble a bit the EOS governance... which might not be a great thing either....
Encouraging Voting
Well... I am from a country that has compulsory voting... so this idea is not so abhorrent to me as it is to people from other places! Perhaps it could be an idea that Resource Credits could be tied to a minimum participation in voting... so, you have a minimum amount of RC, which after casting a minimum (1?) witness vote or proxy you unlock the full RC potential of your staked STEEM. This would at least ensure that people knew HOW to cast a vote and AWARE that the chain is governed by witnesses!
Now, if the steemit/exchange accounts are NOT bound and there is still the 30 votes per account in play... this isn't really going to work that well. The exchanges and steemit will need full RC to work, but their stake will overwhelm everyone else if the other changes are not already in place.
Conclusion
So, now that the crazy fireworks are over... it is time for cooler heads to prevail. Stuff happened on both sides that had unintended consequences... but in the end, we are going to have to work together. The current governance model is flawed, but we need to find a way to fix that without relying on off-chain trust.... binding is one such way, but I think in the end it is ineffective.
Anyway, these thoughts are my two cents worth (perhaps only just one cent...)... but maybe it lays the seeds of thought for someone in a more influential position!
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