Justin Sun pulled some strings to take control of the Steem platform. Members of the STEEM community decided to conduct a hard fork to detach themselves from Sun.
The CEO of the TRON Foundation, Justin Sun, stated that he would turn to the authorities, noting that a group of hackers led to the controversial situation that the Steem platform has experienced.
Sun stated that, after the hard fork that occurred on the platform, Hive’s witnesses stole several million US dollars in funds. He has written in his Twitter account that he is working jointly with the authorities. His objective is to take legal action against the alleged perpetrators of the “robbery.”
Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder of Ethereum, commented on the event. He said that “a chain is the responsibility of its maintainers, not their properties.” He added that “this responsibility can be removed in an instant.”
In response to Buterin’s words, Sun said that the Steem community made their own decisions, but he had to express their opinions. He explained that “since Hive took their money, Vitalik Buterin and the misleading media have supported him 100%.” He suggested that “all media covering this information should interview the current witnesses for Steem.”
Last February 23rd, the Steem community conducted a reversible soft fork, as a preventative measure due to Sun’s recent acquisition. The community considered that the fork was necessary to prevent a person, with a large number of tokens, from taking control of the blockchain. At the time, the community believed that Sun, a clever salesman and controversial figure within the industry, had become the owner of a large number of tokens.
After the soft fork occurred, network validators, called “witnesses”, blocked STEEMs held by a set of accounts. This would prevent their holders from voting on who would govern the network and participate in other ways that could allow them to take advantage of that control.
The Battle for Decentralization
The funds discussed, around USD 5 million, corresponding to a type of founder reward that most similar blockchains grant. These funds represent around 20% of the supply of tokens, which would seemingly make it a decisive voting bloc.
After weeks of confrontation between the Steem community and Justin Sun, a hard fork was conducted, giving rise to the birth of the Hive. The new version is a copy of the Steem blockchain, but it has changed in the code to increase decentralization.
Various actions taken at Steem could have led the community to believe that Sun has been using his power and influence to penalize those users who opposed his acquisition of the platform. The community even learned that a group of exchanges, together with Steemit, used funds from their users to control the Steem network.
Sun defends himself by saying that his actions are not related to the fork. However, important representatives of the ecosystem, such as Vitalik Buterin, demonstrate their dissatisfaction with the situation.
By Alexander Salazar
