Tron Community in Uproar as Genesis Coins Used in Super Reps Vote

The Tron (TRX) community was beside itself on Wednesday, Feb. 19 after founder Justin Sun’s address was shown to have voted in two Tron Foundation apps as a Super Representative (SR). Both Tron-Ace and Tron-Bet were voted in as Super Representatives by the Zion address, the same account which received 99 billion TRX from the coin’s genesis block.

Super Representatives are responsible for overseeing block production on Tron’s blockchain. As such, they receive a sizable portion of the coin rewards from each block. In plain terms, this means that Tron’s community rules were bypassed, arguably to further enrich its own foundation.

That’s despite Tron CEO Justin Sun’s insistence that he and his foundation have nothing to do with community voting.

If you think this development is a coincidence coming at a time like this I really don't even know what to say to that. This is a clear and obvious precursor to voting in Tron super reps to the Steem blockchain as witnesses.

1:30 Witness voting ratio has never been more relevant.

I still remember when I came here years ago and was reading the white and blue papers for the first time. When I learned you could vote for 30 witnesses using the same stake I was simply blown away by how foolish it was.

I asked myself why.

Why would Dan Larimer build it this way on purpose?
The answer was simple: maintaining control.

Dan left Bitshares because he couldn't get the community to agree with the best path forward for the blockchain. He didn't want that to happen again, so he build a centralized attack vector into the blockchain on purpose that would give Steemit Inc the final say in all matters (when combined with the ninjamine). Funny how he lost control of Steemit Inc anyway and left regardless, leaving the centralized attack vector in place all this time.

The truth is, the Steem blockchain (not Steemit Inc) was designed to be sold to the highest bidder like this in the event of last resort. Here we are. We can pipe up all we want and say Steemit isn't Steem, but Justin Sun can vote in 20 Tron super reps as Steem witnesses at a moment's notice. If you think that Ned didn't market the sale like this then you are lying to yourself. Justin Sun knows what he bought.

Nah everything is fine!

Did you see the messages from the Steemit Inc dev team?
Seemed reassuring.

https://steemit.com/steem/@vandeberg/my-thoughts

https://steemit.com/steemit/@andrarchy/my-statement-on-tron-s-acquisition-of-steemit

https://steemit.com/steem/@gerbino/the-future-of-steem

It is reassuring, to an extent.

How do we know positive messages like that weren't coerced to ease this transition? Too paranoid?

Disclaimer: The views represented here are my own and not representative of Steemit, Inc., other employees of Steemit, Tron Foundation, or any other individuals or organizations. Any financial actions (i.e. trades) you make based on my views are not my responsibility but your own.

When do you think the disclaimer that everyone is using was invented?

I mean it mentions Tron... so obviously right?

All I'm saying is that I don't blindly believe that everything is business at usual at Steemit Inc because some devs made a short post with an identical disclaimer at the end.

@vandeberg @andrarchy @gerbino

Show me the email that you received that disclaimer from.
What else does that email say?

That's enough conspiracy for one post.

What I'm really more interested in is the math. Does lowering votes down to a 1:1 ratio really help us as much as I think it does? I'm told @yabapmatt has 40+ million staked upvotes, and Justin Sun might have upward of 70+ million. But I guess the real question is how many staked upvotes do the witnesses have after all the redundancies are swept away? If a majority of votes are all being cast for the top 20 already, changing it to 1:1 doesn't help us much. Although it would be a huge help in the context of being able to vote in one or two witnesses against the wishes of 70 million stake.

What would the transition look like?

Under the current system, each account gets 30 100% witness votes. Under the system that I would put forth, users could vote for as many witnesses as they like but their vote gets diluted as they do so.

For example, you could vote 100% for one witness and give them all your vote, or upvote 2 witnesses and they each get half your stake. The equation for how much stake a witness gets would look something like:

(percent vote) / (total votes cast) * (total stake)

Example

I vote three witness for 100%, 50%, and 10% respectively. I have 24k stake.

witness #1 gets 15000 stake ( 1.0 / 1.6 * 24000)
witness #2 gets 7500 stake ( 0.5 / 1.6 * 24000)
witness #3 gets 1500 stake ( 0.1 / 1.6 * 24000)

In short I believe that changing our witness votes to this zero-sum game theory is imperative to the network at a time like this. By not pushing this change through we allow our network to be 51% attacked with 42 million stake (12% of Steem's total stake). This is not acceptable network security.

Unfortunately this is something that only the witnesses can do. They are the ones under threat right now, and there's even a distinct possibility that there are already measures in place today to prevent a hardfork like this from happening. All Sun has to do is vote a few witnesses in and veto the hardfork.

Justin Sun is literally voting in super reps to the Tron blockchain after gaining that exact power on the Steem blockchain. It's not a good sign, but here's to hoping for the best.

_{Disclaimer: The views represented here are my own and not representative of Steemit, Inc., other employees of Steemit, Tron Foundation, or any other individuals or organizations. Any financial actions (i.e. trades) you make based on my views are not my responsibility but your own.}

Look Out Fam: Justin Sun is at it AGAIN!