I'm not demanding anything. I'm requesting. That's a giant difference.
There's no hardfork on the steem blockchain that's going happen because the exchanges are unlikey to update to the new version. The witnesses have been able to softfork his voting rights for almost 3 days and haven't.
Then make public statements to that fact. In his latest blog he asked if you supported freezing his stake again or not. If witnesses came together and made simple public statements that no we're not going to re-do the softfork since you've had your answer then that would hopefully ease his mind a bit.
Because it's impossible to make any deeply tangible statements honorably while in what I perceive as a hostage situation.
It's a hostage situation going both ways, He's taken our blockchain hostage, we've taken his stake hostage. Need to make a trade, We get governance back, he gets his coins. But accompanying that need to be the fixes that prevent or reduce the risk of his large stake taking over consensus.
We never took his stake hostage. JS claims he wants to invest in Steem via Steemit, so the company's funds being frozen should have no effect on that. If Sun planned on being around 5+ years he wouldn't have been at all worried that we froze his accounts temporarily out of fear.
In fact, Justin has so much money, that we should have all fully expected him to invest even more in Steem outside the initial investment. He should have been getting us exchange listings and looking for more developers before even trying to unlock his accounts. These are the kinds of actions that generate a lot of sympathy on the community level. Instead he tries to rule with an iron fist.
Hey guys, I need a million coins to hire more developers and get exchange listings. Please unlock liquid coin transfers on X account so I can do this.
And we would have done it... so obviously. He doesn't need 65M coins all at once. He can't use 65M coins all at once for anything except to fuck us over. This is exactly why Ned sold instead of performing these same fucked up actions himself.
Sun has no intention of helping us, and he has ruined everything, and now he will lose everything. End of story. (unless he deescalates, which I would be floored)
From his perspective his funds will be frozen again the moment he lets go of his sock puppets. So the only thing he can do is to keep voting, otherwise he's going to be locked up and unable to make any moves.
I don't like the way he's reacted to this whole mess any more than you do, but you have to signal a way out for him to break the stalemate. If he continues to vote in his witnesses, then tough luck, evidently we can fight him enough to veto his proposed changes.
The other possibility is he cashes out, which would decentralize the chain further and that's a good thing in my eyes.
The last option would be for him to build something with the community and get some ROI.
But all of these possibilities won't become a reality unless you guys signal him that it's okay to get rid of the witnesses.
I think @theycallmedan offered some solid suggestions in his reply. I like the idea of a portion going into the SPS. It's a safety net for us and an incentive for Justin to get involved in the space. Even if his only interest ever is to just make money, I have a feeling he can find opportunities abound here after all this settles.
It's a hostage situation in his eyes as well. You guys froze his stake and he believes that if he removes his witnesses you will go right back and do it again. You have framed him as the enemy but it was you guys that drew first blood here, and then he responded. Either way, you can't demand he remove his witnesses without also putting in some safeguard that will prevent his stake from being frozen. It's a give and take at this point, not a take take.