To me, @dhimmel's solution seems like the best way to fix this. It can demonstrate that any attempt to fork the chain against the will of the organic community with astroturf witnesses will result in a forked chain. Ice him out of the old iteration and fork defensively after he breaks off into a new path. This way, it is him shooting himself in the foot as opposed to us eating the rich (regardless of what his intentions were).

Then, let the exchanges decide which coin they want to represent after they judge us based on our actions. Perhaps, if he's made aware of this potential, he'd be far less likely to do it. It seems logical not to, simply so he can retain a higher value on his stake. This is why I don't oppose the gridlock because it allows both sides to stew in it more.

Setting aside what his initial intentions are, it doesn't make sense for either party to fork the chain if they care about the value of the stake. I'm not too clear on the technical implications of his plan, but I ran it by a few people, and they seem to think it's a viable solution. It might even be wise to put him on notice that he runs the risk of this happening so that he can make a logical choice.

"He who thinks he leads but has no followers is only taking a walk." ― John Maxwell

Contrarily, were the witnesses to act in bad faith and fork him out of his investment after he backed down; if I were running an exchange, I'd drop that community's token like a bad habit, simply because they've proven they won't honor their token.

If he is put on notice, then isolating his stake after he burns the community is a defensive move. However, to preemptively do it, looks like a hostile action.

It's easy to see how he could perceive what was done to him in the soft fork as hostile, but he also appears to have had hostile intentions towards the organic community. IMO, how this ends will firmly establish the reputation of Justin Sun and the community's blockchain regardless of whether or not it remains Steem.

Vulture capitalist, or venture capitalist, we need to set a good precedent with regards to honoring their ability to take their stake to the marketplace, if we don't I don't think there will be a marketplace for our token. All the other weirdness of what he can do within the steem ecosystem with his ninja power is reasonably an internal community matter because this is a very unique situation. The sooner we allow the "neon green" stake to go to the market, the sooner it becomes a decentralized stake.