I've said it before, and it appears to be confirmed with each passing day. SteemTron is a centrally-controlled database which will become irrelevant over time for those who actually care about blockchain technology, Byzantine Fault Tolerance, resilience, anti-fragility, and the core principles of distributed and decentralized community-engaged governance that give cryptocurrency value.
I'll try to explain as best I can in small, tweet-sized bites why I believe Steem is now Hive and what is currently called Steem should be considered SteemTron.
in 2016, Steemit, inc launched a PoW blockchain and ninja-mines 80% of the tokens telling the community they will be used for the community and not for Steemit, inc's own profit. There is no contract between them and the community, but see interviews, 2017 roadmap, etc
The community is constantly frustrated with Steemit over the use of this stake with some even threatening to null out the keys for it last year. I and other witnesses stated plainly we will not do that. Example: https://steempeak.com/stopthepowerdown/@lukestokes/is-steem-centrally-controlled
On February 14th, Justin Sun and Tron buy Steemit, inc, Steemit.com, and 20% of all STEEM tokens which Steemit still had left over from the original 80% ninja-mine. Without their consent, Tron tells Steem community they are moving everything to Tron.
Community understandably responds with, "WTF? The hell you are! We invested in STEEM, not TRON." AMA with Ned/Justin is a joke, questions unanswered. All attempts at clarification are met with empty statements which later prove completely false.
STEEM holders, witnesses, and app developers see Tron's statements (example, Poloniex saying you can swap "Old STEEM" for "New STEEM" on Tron) as an immediate threat to their on-chain Steem value and demand something be done.
Tron Foundation votes on the Tron chain with foundation tokens not meant for governance. Sets a precedent for what STEEM investors think he will do on Steem. Still no useful communication between witnesses and Tron (email back channels open with me and others remain unused).
Witnesses make the difficult decision to deploy soft fork 22.2. It's described as a temporary measure: @softfork222/soft-fork-222 Individual witnesses publish their views. One consensus witness disagrees with freezing liquid tokens and is voted out.
Soft fork 22.2 freezes the ninja mined stake, prevents it from being powered down or participating in governance. It's an easily reversible code change and not a theft or ransom. All token balances are intact.
As a side note, I disagreed with freezing tokens and only wanted to prevent voting temporarily until we could learn the intentions of the new owner. I was overruled by consensus. Discussions about property ensue: @lukestokes/what-is-property-is-it-defined-by-consensus
Justin Sun responds to 22.2 positively the same day it is deployed: https://steemit.com/steemit/@justinsunsteemit/open-letter-to-steem-community There is no mention of "hackers" or "theft" at this point. A Town Hall is scheduled for two weeks in the future.
Without community notice, Justin Sun tricks exchanges into powering up user stake and deploying v0.22.5 to single-handedly control the chain. Pretending to be multiple witnesses, it's essentially a Sybil attack: @lukestokes/fact-steemit-sybil-attacked-the-steem-blockchain He calls community witnesses hackers.
With Steemit's intentions now clear, the community wishing to create a new chain which honors the original intention of the Steemit ninja-mined stake grows. The idea behind Hive is born.
Myself and others make a last ditch effort to help Justin realize he's about to lose all the value he invested in because the value of any cryptocurrency is in the community supporting it: @lukestokes/the-value-is-always-with-the-community
Within less than a day of launching Hive, the list of accounts that will not be included in the airdrop is released. CoinDesk interview of Blocktrades says it will be ninjamined stake. Hive announcement says it will include those who support centralization.
When I see the list includes hundreds of accounts who proxied or voted to support sock puppets, I strongly disagree and push back hard. I consider not running a Hive witness over this issue as I think it will become a big PR problem for Hive.
Eventually, I decide to accept it because I'm told the proposal system will be fairly used to let the Hive token holder community decide which excluded accounts should be allowed to get an airdrop. @lukestokes/witness-update-running-v0-23-0-to-support-hive
Hard Fork 23 is deployed which creates a new chain known as Hive. Other than the accounts involved in centralizing the chain (and some errors) all token balances on Steem are airdropped on Hive. All content is preserved. Steem is unaffected.
Steemit starts censoring accounts (including one of mine, lukestokes.mhth) on the Steemit.com interface.
Some errors are discovered in the Hive airdrop exclusion list. Some accounts were excluded in a way that didn't fit the criteria. Community members make it clear this will be fixed for those accounts with a future update. Others can use the proposal system in the future.
Originally, myself and some other witnesses agree to run nodes on both chains to support Steem until people can power down. I discuss this with token holders on both chains and decide to shut down my node as I will not support censorship. @lukestokes/i-ve-decided-to-shut-down-my-steem-witness
As the community hostility towards the centralization of Steem continues, Steemit begins censoring accounts on the Hivemind API level. Now posts censored on Steemit are now also censored on Steempeak, Busy, etc as there are no other community APIs running.
Meanwhile, Hive thrives with growing community support every day. Apps that used to run on Steem continue moving to Hive and even though the volume is still low, exchanges begin listing Hive and the token price is holding, in some cases doing better than STEEM.
Soft fork 22.8888 is deployed which locks 8 accounts including an exchange from transferring tokens, powering down, voting, etc. This is, once again, a centrally controlled action with no community input. Via the dev365 proxy, witnesses who don't agree are removed.
Of the 21 “witnesses” supporting 22.8888, only 1 published about the code deployment (unlike 22.2 where all witnesses posted their views). 5 of these sock puppet witnesses have never posted on chain at all.
SteemTron is no longer a blockchain. It is not Byzantine Fault Tolerant, it has no resilience, is not anti-fragile, is not immutable, and is not decentralized or distributed. Hard Fork 23 will be remembered as the moment Steem renamed to Hive.
Anyone can run code and call it a blockchain. It's open source and permissionless. What creates a real public blockchain is distributed consensus. Hive has that consensus. SteemTron does not. What matters, as always, is human conscious attention.