I've been quietly listening to a variety of thoughts about the recent Soft Fork 0.22.2, and just wanted to put out there what I think about it, mainly because I seem to be in the minority.

The Ninja Mine

My position on the initial "unfairly" acquired stake ultimately boils down to being fine with it. I don't care so much about the governance by the community (although having a fully democratic 1 person, 1 vote would be interesting, but seems out of reach). I do care that there is a governance structure in place. Is it so bad that the founder has a significant portion of it? That's exactly how corporate structures are, and power can shift over time depending on ownership of company shares. I wouldn't even have cared if they decided to vote with it, especially now that the collective assets are not actually overwhelmingly dominant (I've heard the figure 20% thrown around, and with all the fuss you'd think it was >50%). The stake right now has a bit of spread now, and the distribution is improving over time, at least with respect to this Ninja mined portion.

Soft Fork

Since I'm starting from the premise that the stake in question is okay, then it's clear that I do not approve of the soft fork. But let's say I was against it. I still wouldn't approve of the soft fork.

The assets belong to Steemit Inc, and it should be theirs to power down and sell as they see fit. If we've established that voting with it isn't going to give them a mandate on all future changes, what are we doing?

Then let's go a step further, say they do have full control of the chain (are we even sure we got all of them, by the way?). Would I be okay with this hard fork, then? Say also that Steemit Inc's vision is totally unacceptable to me, and I do not want what they have the ability to force feed through. Surely that possibility warrants this move?

I still don't think it matters. If they wanted their way, they can do the clean fork themselves too. Sure, the soft fork adds more steps but it doesn't make the possibility any less real. They would have the support of the exchanges as well, being the side with more resources to boot. Either way, it would make it difficult for those that side against.

So really, what's the point? I applaud that the current consensus witnesses were able to have such a conversation and come to their own consensus to deploy this soft fork, but to me it just seems like an empty exercise.

And where was I, you ask? Too busy with real life and the occasional Steem-related maintenance to deal with the current drama. But had I been part of this discussion I would have argued similarly anyway. So I just watched from the sides. But yeah, this is how I feel at the current time.

Witness Votes

For the time being, I have adjusted my witness votes to reflect my disapproval of the soft fork. Right now it's proxied, but will probably soon set them myself as there are still those that approved the soft fork I still want as witness.