Soft Fork 0.22.2 and Beyond

By now, many of you are already aware of the soft fork 0.22.2 deployed yesterday (sunday 23 feb 2020) by the top 20 witnesses (with two exceptions) and several backup witnesses (https://steemit.com/steem/@softfork222/soft-fork-222)

This was a significant and important fork aimed at protecting our blockchain from a potential takeover. Since day one as a witness, I commited my efforts to this network and its community while doing my best to preserve it. I've always been among, if not, the first responder(s) whenever we had bugs, system halts and emergency patches, and will continue to do so.

What happened that prompted this soft fork?

Ned Scott, ex-CEO of Steemit Inc (@ned) dropped a bombshell on our heads when he announced the sale of Steemit Inc to Justin Sun from TRON (@justinsunsteemit), on Valentine's day (14 feb 2020). The news were met with mixed feelings by the community. Some welcomed a new partnership with TRON, others (like myself) advised caution. As I slowly learned about Justin's personality, through tweets and articles describing previous dealings with his own community and other acquired projects, my concerns grew about what he was going to do exactly with STEEM the blockchain. For instance, there were tweets about (forced) swaps, Poloniex getting ready for those swaps, while other signals as in "don't worry, your chain and community will stay as they are" were contradicting those claims.

Furthermore, many tweets were deleted and reposted to suppress comments clarifying errors, or expressing opposition to the "partnership", or simply deleted for good. To appease the masses, Ned and Justin held an AMA (15 feb 2020) that didn't really address our concerns or answer important questions from the community; it was more of introductions and hot air. So basically, we were still at square one. Also, some announcements boast a strategic partnership while others boast an acquition. Those are two different things, make up your mind Justin: when you acquire something, you own it, it's not a partnership.

Also, what bothered me more was this tweet:

_{https://twitter.com/justinsuntron/status/1230558161381150724
- justinsuntron}

It gave a perception that TRON was responsible for the release of communities on STEEM!!! Let it be known that Steemit's developers have been working on that feature for over 1.5 years, so it was a rapacious move on Justin's part to neglect acknowledging their work and take credit for it.

With such piling indications, one may wonder if we can trust Justin at all with our community and our blockchain. What he acquired was a company and its assets (stake in a blockchain, employees, etc), NOT a blockchain. I don't know if he understands the difference between Steem and Steemit, but given what we heard during the AMA, he seemed to mix them up frequently. Whether it was language barrier, unintentional ignorance or malicious sale by Ned, the lack of clarity in Justin's statements was overwhelming.

So, in the face of such uncertainty, there were two options:

Stand by, do nothing, and risk being taken over by a new comer holding Steemit Inc's ninja-mined stake (SINMS) with a precendent of using a huge stake to enforce certain outcomes.

Act in a preventive manner to enforce what the SINMS was intended.

The soft fork

After careful consideration and lengthy discussions with the other consensus/non-consensus witnesses, projects leaders and investors, I decided to act in order to protect our blockchain and support the soft fork 0.22.2. It was a difficult decision for all of us, but I believe it was the right move in the best interest of our blockchain. I will stand by it until we get guarantees that the SINMS will keep its promises as intended.

Without sounding too pretentious, I'm proud to say I was the first witness to test the fork's code. I would like to acknowledge @netuoso for his effort in writing this fork, as well as the multitude of witnesses who participated in testing it. It was a great show of solidarity and support for our blockchain.

One aspect that displeased some community members was the secrecy and lack of public discussion about this fork. I don't blame them, I wish we could have held public consultations, but as with any security threat, we had to keep things under wraps (while hoping nothing got leaked) in order to be efficient in the execution of the fork. This is not new, security issues were always treated as such in every previous patch or soft fork. But in this case, please accept my apologies, my (our) intention was not to hide anything from the community. If things were public, matters would have been way more complicated if there was a reaction on Justin's part (powerdown, transfer) in which case a hard fork would have been needed, complicating thing much further. With a soft fork, the blockchain and the exchanges can still function without any drastic changes or lengthy server replays.

What comes next

Following the fork, Justin announced his willingness to reach out to the witnesses and open dialogue (https://steemit.com/steemit/@justinsunsteemit/open-letter-to-steem-community). I welcome that, it's what we've been hoping for. We're currently preparing for our meeting with Justin, hopefully we'll come to an understanding that benefits us both. But keep in mind, my priority is STEEM and I will keep doing anything necessary to protect it.