RE: My position on the soft fork - I am not running the changes on my witness node

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RE: My position on the soft fork - I am not running the changes on my witness node

timcliff in #witness-update • 6 years ago (edited)

I am obviously not in direct support of what was done, but at the same time I can say that it was not a decision that was taken lightly, and the people making it perceived a very real and credible threat to the security of the blockchain.

Nothing has been done at this point that cannot be quickly undone (at least at a technical level). If however Tron had done something hostile (such as voting in a new majority to carry out their will), it would not have been possible to undo such an event without major changes. To that extent, I can at least understand the "precautionary" nature of the move.

That said, I do agree 100% with regards to the hostility part. My goal was (and still is) to try and achieve a mutually beneficial outcome, and I hope we have not backed ourselves into a corner where that is no longer possible.

6 years ago in #witness-update by timcliff

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whatsup 6 years ago

you forget that what has been proven to everyone is that a small group of people can meet, change the code and execute it without a single public discussion.

Whether Justin turns out to be great or not, that can never be undone. And it is way more important than the circumstances used to justify why it happened.

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timcliff 6 years ago

There are limitations on what can be changed "in secret" in that if the consensus rules are changed, other entities in the ecosystem (exchanges, seeds, full nodes, etc.) have go "agree" to the changes and apply them to their nodes too, otherwise the witnesses will go off on their own and leave everyone else behind. The code changes that were made today did not change any consensus rules.

Witnesses always have the ability to "ignore" transactions. In 99% of the cases, if they do this - it is a very good way to get voted out by the stakeholders and replaced by new witnesses. That is esentially what all of the (other) top witnesses are doing with this "soft fork" - agreeing to ignore a set of transactions from certain accounts.

Ultimately, DPoS is a stake based governance system. Stakeholders are the ones who choose who to vote in, and witnesses who do not align with the interests of the stakeholders typically get voted out. If the stakeholders are not OK with the witnesses ignoring certain transactions, then they 100% have the ability to vote in witnesses who won't ignore them.

What I suspect you will find though is that in this case the witnesses do have the support from a large majority of our stakeholders. At least that's my read on it.

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4 votes

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brianoflondon 6 years ago

Exactly. This is representative democracy rather than direct democracy. We appoint senior witnesses to act on our behalf for our stake in Steem.

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keys-defender 6 years ago

@whatsup True, but that small group of people has the community trust through their witness votes..

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keys-defender 6 years ago

I fully respect your decision to be the black sheep in this case.

At the same time I agree that it was our best move so that Justin will be more inclined to find common ground with the existing community or he'll lose half of the users (and his investment).

It's indeed a hard measure but his words were quite threatening (and naive) at the same time.

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1 vote