Theycallmedan still beating the drum.
Guy is on a never-ending warpath I tell ya. The topic of premines comes up quite often. As it should. People in crypto don't understand the heinously centralized threat that premined tokens facilitate and the inherent greed of the founders that it conveys. Surprising considering they seem to understand that "centralization bad" but then turn a blind eye to things like the founders owning 50% of all the tokens (and in many cases 95% of the liquidity). Oops!
OP Tweet
Classic Dan tweet
So why did I take this moment to play Devil's Advocate like a little bitch? lol man, couldn't tell ya. I swear I'm annoying myself these days. Can't turn it off I guess!
Woof, time to parse this garbage.
Okay so Satoshi Nakamoto was the "founder" of Bitcoin. But Satoshi Nakamoto is an anonymous entity. Thus there are scenarios out there (unlikely ones) where Bitcoin has no founder because "Satoshi Nakamoto" was really the forward face of an underground decentralized organization, and thus Bitcoin had no founder and came about organically in the shadows.
Doesn't really matter how unlikely that is: we can't say that Bitcoin has a founder when the founding entity is anonymous. I always joke that it was aliens saving us from exterminating ourselves.
Damn it, Bob, you were supposed to let them sink or swim on your own!
But I like the funny monkeys!
You heard it here first: Bob the alien is Satoshi.
Hmmmmmm, what else?
Right, the "rebrand". I think it's weird to say that Hive doesn't have a founder because if we actually won the hostile takeover and were still called "Steem" we wouldn't dare make that claim. The only thing that is different, is the brand, and branding is an irrelevant WEB2 thing in my opinion. Doesn't matter what we call ourselves. The community that used to be called Steem is now called Hive, and the only thing that changed during that transition was the brand name and forking the ninjamine into the dev fund, which was a huge mistake if you recall me saying so:
Fuck: Never Send Humans To Do A Hobbit's Job.
There was absolutely no reason to not fork the ninjamine to @null. Zero. If we need money for development, we could have simply printed it out of thin air. All the value of the Hive token exists as exit liquidity on the exchanges to other tokens. Allowing 80M coins to just sit around is nothing but a 100% threat to anyone who doesn't control those tokens. We know this better than anyone else. We did not get rid of the ninjamine like we should have, we moved it, and now people on this network vie for control of it hoping to not get caught with their hand in the cookie jar.
But I'm getting sidetracked and I need to stop.
This is a WEB2 vs WEB3 issue. The definition of something within WEB2 could mean exactly the opposite in WEB3, and we see the manipulations of these things all the time within crypto.
For example, saying Hive doesn't have a founder is WEB2 logic. Within legacy systems, Hive is a new network, new brand, new token. Everything is different. It's exactly the opposite with WEB3 logic. Same community. Same token. Same code. Same network. Same infrastructure. Nothing has changed.
I explained all of this in great detail in May 2020.
Playing Devil's Advocate: Why Steem HF23 is NOT THEFT!
Flip-Flop Time: Steem HF23 is Now Theft
The difference between WEB2 and WEB3 is vast.
The core difference is that in WEB2 one can own data (called Intellectual Property IP), and in WEB3 data can not be owned and everything is open source and collaborative. In WEB2, the value comes from the patents and authoritarian force of the police state. In WEB3, value comes directly from the communities and the ability to profit without actually needing to capture value from the products produced; the token and network capture the value automatically and funnel value into everyone's pockets.
Steem forking away tokens from the whales was only theft as defined by WEB2 rules and the idea that third-party institutions are in control. According the WEB3, anything the community comes to consensus about is the law. Whether those laws are healthy and just is another argument, but be careful arguing these things within an abundance environment. Calling out a community and accusing them being greedy thieves within an abundance economy? That just going to make yourself look greedy because there is money everywhere. We'll get there soon enough. It's a very awkward transition phase
60% DNA shared with a banana
Just like 60% of our DNA is an identical copy of a banana (all life has the same core building blocks) so to does all of crypto share a huge amount of DNA with Bitcoin. Can we really say Hive doesn't have a founder when it clearly would not exist if Bitcoin doesn't exist? Again, another thought experiment that I could easily get sidetracked on for another hour, so I won't.
We are the orphaned children of Larimer
And in a way it's actually kind of interesting how this is all playing out. Hive is grizzled as hell and we are entering this new stage of abundance with eyes wide open. Again, to say we don't have a founder? Questionable. That's certainly not how people from the outside looking in will see it. We need to be careful of the perceptions of others, even if they are wrong. Perception is reality.
Personally I think Hive is going to become something that Larimer becomes very surprised by. He left us in what, 2017? He left us thinking this was a failed state, and it very well may grow into something that nobody anticipated. Also I'm excited to share this post I wrote in 2018 that I forgot about:
Taking Bets On When @Dan Leaves EOS
kek, get it? Because he's already left :D
Troll energy strong today.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a huge Hive simp.
Hive is awesome. We get none of the accolades and are constantly ignored for the exact niche we provide. Eventually something is going to happen where it is impossible to ignore us because we can do the thing and nobody else can. Only a matter of time at this point.
Does any of this matter?
LOL, course not... having a founder or not is just semantics. It's a badge of honor we gave ourselves after a traumatic experience. It doesn't matter if we have a founder or not. Doesn't matter what happened in the past. What matters is the current state and where we are headed into the future.
That being said it is very important to note that the fact that we can even make the argument in the first place (Hive has no founder) is a very important dynamic. Most (all?) other projects can't even try to pretend. They have a founder, and more importantly, they have a premine that controls everything (at least the input and output of value via liquidity pools, which is the biggest thing).
One-two punch
Just as I was finishing up this post I get hit hard by these arguments. I'm tapping out. These are all good points.
At the end of the day it's easy to get sidetracked by small details that simply do not matter. Hive does indeed have a bit of a grassroots movement at the core of the brand. We are way more decentralized than many are willing to give us credit, to the point of being buried under a hundred other garbage VC projects that aren't gonna go anywhere.
Conclusion
It's very important to note that we haven't even come close to seeing the fallout that occurs from premines and the founders that wield them. It's a highly traumatizing experience. One that Hive has already suffered. When people realize this they'll come to Hive for fear of suffering it on another network that still has a premine and founder in play. Again, doesn't matter so much if we have a founder or not, but if they are actually in control of things. On Hive, they aren't. Good times.
The battle rages on. Hive fights for a place at the table with the big boys. We'll get there soon enough. The longer it takes the more satisfying the victory will be.