As we know, TRON recently bought Steemit, a blockchain platform using the DPoS (Decentralised Proof of Stake) protocol, but this has sparked community discontent.
So, a few hours ago the same Justin Sun, CEO of TRON Foundation, explained in a series of tweets the whole story and how they managed to save Steemit from certain failure.
(1/9) On Feb 22, some malicious hackers froze 65 million #STEEM legally owned by Steemit, the core STEEM developers. When we found out, the hackers already hijacked STEEM & threatened to nullify the existing STEEM. We had a difficult choice.
— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@justinsuntron) March 3, 2020
The hacker attack perpetrated last February 22nd was aimed at freezing as many as 65 million dollars of the fund used by Steemit to pay its developers, thus trying to put them out of play and actually destroy the network and the Steem token.
Justin Sun and his attorneys have thus ascertained the malicious nature of the situation and have decided to intervene to avoid the collapse of both the network and Steem’s token.
In order to allow the unblocking of the network, TRON used the support of some centralized exchanges to get most of the votes and therefore the tokens. These tokens were owned by the users who had stored them on various exchanges and therefore, in fact, the platforms decided unilaterally and without consulting the users to lend them to TRON to allow them to counter the attack.
Obviously, this involves an even more serious problem, since force was actually employed to make use of the tokens, although it’s also true that users in possession of Steem had every interest in solving the situation.
The procedure was explained in a recent post, stressing that everything was done only with the interest of saving the network and the project.
Even if this kind of intervention can be justified, the method chosen to save the network from the attack is certainly not acceptable, since the community was not questioned and in fact, it has been demonstrated how centralized the whole system is.
The opinion of influencers
Daniel Larimer, CTO of Block.one, has also expressed his opinion on this issue, giving an alternative solution that could be a simple fork of the net as for example happened with ETC or BCH.
Anyone can fork STEEM and https://t.co/n79ktYXsgk is clearly just a single view. Being forkable is the key to decentralized systems. True power remains with community of users. https://t.co/H9HzlcvSu8 can fork and watch where community goes!
— Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster7) March 3, 2020
In the meantime, Vitalik Buterin of Ethereum has had his say, even if only by establishing the facts.
My understanding of events leading up to the takeover:
1. Tron buys steem: https://t.co/Wo6RV166MA
2. Steem delegates move to limit Steem co account's voting rights: https://t.co/rpDsr1Ce1h
3. Justin Sun not impress: https://t.co/hKLIKeV2Zh
4. This: https://t.co/INeN2fnNrJ— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) March 2, 2020
In essence, the fact that TRON bought Steemit showed how the centralization of exchanges allowed an individual to control the entire network, albeit for a short time.
