By now I believe everyone knows what happened.
Justin Sun, asked his friends (or employees, in Poloniex case) from Binance, Huobi and Poloniex to help him release his Steemit, Inc. stake.
Whether he was entitled to retaliate or not, whether he taking control of Steem would have happened without the soft fork which froze his Steem accounts or not, this simply doesn't matter any more in my opinion, because what he did was even worse.
Actually he was smart enough not to do himself the worse part of it. He did the whole thing with the hand of others. And those others were foul enough to believe him without checking AND to use customer funds to help him in the hostile takeover of Steem, by undermining its DPOS governance system.
The exchanges which were involved are even in deeper sh*t than Justin Sun, I think.
While CZ from Binance backed down when cornered on Twitter and after realizing what they've done, and the proxy set to the account controlled by Justin Sun was cleared
Huobi and Poloniex are still backing the position which undermines the DPOS governance of Steem.
While I have little hope from Tron-owned Poloniex, Huobi may reconsider its opinion.
But being mostly an Asian exchange, it would really help if the Asian community on Steem will get involved.
I know one of the proxy.token's reproaches when they disapproved the witnesses soft fork, was that they weren't consulted, although being the largest single voter after Steemit, Inc. stakes. Maybe it's not to late to rectify this now? I haven't approved of the witnesses action, but I definitely don't approve of what Justin Sun and the exchanges have done. So, don't rule anyone out and don't see things in black and white!
The entire situation led to the resignations of three key employees from Steemit, Inc, as they announced on the Steem blockchain and I'm sure you are by now aware of that: @andrarchy, @vandeberg and @gerbino.
After a night's sleep and a long 6 hours+ town hall yesterday, I'm still unclear how we should proceed forward, but I have a few clearly formed ideas.
Vote for your witnesses!
Legitimate witnesses, not the ones imposed by exchanges using the STEEM of their customers! While we all have favorite witnesses and others we don't normally approve of, it may be time to get passed that and vote at least 20 top witnesses which are currently the best ranked, excluding the dummy accounts of Justin Sun, which currently run blockchain version 0.22.5.
Start from @yabapmatt and vote at least 20 witnesses, including himself!
The witness blockchain version should be either "0.22.4444" or "0.22.0" or "0.22.1" or "0.22.404" or "0.22.333". Each of these are variants of the blockchain before the soft fork "0.22.2", only renamed.
You can see the blockchain version here (Block column):
Need a beginner's guide how to vote for witnesses using your preferred interface? Here it is!
I would advise to take the vote in your own hands! If STEEM were a democracy, we just had a coup!
Constant pressure on Huobi to back down
It's obvious what they did is at least immoral if not illegal. They can't remain deaf to constant pressure, especially if it comes from the right direction (their customers).
Contact Asian communities and talk to them
Justin Sun made a good strategical move trying to bring closer to him the Asian communities from Steem. Is it too late to reach out to them? Yes, there are cultural differences and that's what Justin Sun is speculating on, but at the same time they are steemians and I'm sure many love Steem, not tronics or whatever the people of Tron call themselves.
Protection Against Similar Attacks
After we regain control of the chain, we need to find the best way to protect Steem against similar attacks, with or without exchanges being involved.
This won't be easy, but a number of solutions have been talked about repeatedly and now the best ones should be chosen and applied without further delaying it.
Hard fork
This is a real possibility and as such we should be prepared for this eventuality and not just talk about it.
Life will be hard both if we regain control of the Steem blockchain, with Justin Sun around and a shattered trust from both sides and if we choose to fork Steem out.