My Thoughts: Witnesses meeting with Tron Representative Roy Liu (Full Recording)
So, my first initial thoughts on the 2nd meeting between the Tron and Steem teams. I'm one hour in... I will write more when I get through the rest... I have to get to work!
First up, it is great that there is some negotiation going on... which will hopefully allow cooler heads to prevail!
Overview
At the moment, STEEM has reclaimed around 10 of the consensus witnesses. However, my analysis of this situation is despite the fact that the STEEM community appears to be winning and gaining ground, we are overextended (meanwhile, there are third parties that are now uncommitted) and not really in a position to make unconditional demands, especially ones that spook third parties to throw their weight behind the TRON team.
I think that a conclusion of this dilemma will require a compromise between the TRON and STEEM positions, we won't (shouldn't) return the old status quo as we need to accommodate the new dynamics with a new Steemit leadership team. It would be naive to think that everything is the same with a different "Ned".
Tron Votes and Witnesses
I realise that the sock puppets of the TRON team come as a huge affront to the STEEM side... however, we need to realise that this is their ONLY insurance against bad intent from the STEEM side. We CAN'T demand that they remove them unconditionally... we wouldn't accept that as a starting point (that we remove all our STEEM witnesses...) based on the "trust" that the TRON team will do the right thing.
It may be that they could remove them, as progress is made that is acceptable to them... but they shouldn't be expected to remove them immediately.
Exchanges
Yes, they should power down immediately to regain their liquidity... it is strange that they aren't doing this, but I think this is mostly due to the distrust that they have in the situation.
What they did was shitty, however pursuing retribution or idealistic goals upon them is going to push them away from our side. At the moment, they are neutral... we NEED them to stay neutral. Again, we are overextending our hand if we pursue them... we are stretched and we are "just" getting 10 witnesses in the consensus positions.... WHILE the exchanges stay neutral. If we look like we are going to "punish" them, then we will lose.
The best thing here is that the exchanges should power down... and we should stop talking about punishing them. The horrible PR for them was retribution enough.
Hard Forking
Yep... I agree with the witnesses here. It is a pretty slow process... past experience has shown that these things don't go as smoothly as planned! It probably isn't the fastest way to get the exchange funds back!
Lack of TRON knowledge about STEEM
Yes... it is weird that they don't know more about the STEEM ecosystem (like the SPS and how the STEEM blockchain works...)... however, I think that they were going to learn that on the fly as they settled in. Although we think these things are big deals on STEEM, for a giant like the TRON foundation, these things are tiny... we need to get some perspective on this. They are important things to know about, but we do need to gently guide and teach the TRON team through these things... not just express confusion and ridicule if they don't, this would be unproductive.
Going Forward
To be honest... this was coming. We thought that the Steemit stake (and exchanges) were going to stay out of governance, this was based on words and promises. This is not how decentralisation works... this is called trust, and decentralised networks need to be based on the fact that you DON'T NEED to trust the other transacting party.
This entire affair has shown that our system of 30 votes and 20 consensus witnesses is flawed. This allows the complete takeover of the governance system by a single (or handful) of large actors... We have managed to avoid this in the past, due to the fact that it wasn't tried. This is security through obscurity... lucky us! Now we know that it IS insecure... thus, the dPOS system needs to be tweaked... 30 votes is WAY too many.
Binding certain accounts to non-voting is NOT a solution. We were lucky that the hostile takeover ONLY reversed the soft fork. They could have done much much much more... If we bind certain accounts, all it would take would a quick transfer and then takeover, and the STEEM chain is taken over... sure we could track it... but it is a trick that only needs to work ONE time!
This would lead to the fact that exchanges and Steemit might likely have representatives on the consensus witness list... some of our "old" witnesses would have to relinquish their positions.
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