Editor's Note: This article comes fromHoneycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)Editor's Note: This article comes from
Honeycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)
Honeycomb Finance News (ID: fengchao-caijing)
, Author: Wendao, JX kin, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Justin Sun's acquisition of Steemit Inc has not yet implemented his operation of "a new era of decentralized social networks", which has caused distrust in the Steem public chain community.
The witness node of the public chain initiated a soft fork, freezing a large number of public chain assets Steem Power held by Sun Yuchen due to the acquisition, so as to counter the possibility of Sun controlling the Steem chain.
The turmoil started with an open letter on February 22 when the community initiated a soft fork, which triggered the follow-up move by Sun Yuchen to obtain votes from at least 3 exchanges to replace the top 20 witness nodes.
The actions of the two parties ignited public opinion, focusing on the discussion of whether the DPos mechanism is decentralized or not, and the questioning of the exchange’s use of user assets to vote.
There are also different voices. Gu Ya, the founder of EOS Force, believes that from the perspective of the blockchain, the Steem community first used soft forks to freeze Justin Sun’s coins, and the legitimacy is doubtful. The original rules of Steem give witness nodes the right to freeze a person’s currency when they unite. Others use their own currency to select new nodes and unlock the currency, which is also the right given by the rules.
In the world of digital assets, when everything seems to be eager for quick success, we are far away from breaking the blockchain world ruled by the centralization.Whether the Steem community freezes Justin Sun’s coins, or the exchange exercises voting rights on behalf of users, it actually shows that on the blockchain under the DPos system, when the private key is not in the hands of the coin holder, the rights and interests attached to the digital asset properties cannot be guaranteed. Another reality is that the current digital asset market only has investors, and has not yet cultivated blockchain users who have a broad understanding of equity attributes.
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Steem frozen currency Justin Sun "withdraws money"
On the Steem blockchain browser, the original witness nodes are regaining control. Yesterday, 7 witnesses returned to the seat, and those suspicious accounts that registered in March, did not publish a post but have a large number of votes, are being identified by the community.
Justin Sun has issued an invitation to hold a meeting with the top 50 witnesses in the community on March 6 to discuss the future development of Steemit.
The prelude to this turmoil was TRON’s announcement on February 14 that it had acquired Steemit Inc. Nine days later, waiting for Justin Sun was a soft fork initiated by the witness nodes of the Steem public chain.
On February 22, the Steem community issued an open letter to conduct a "soft fork", aiming to prevent the network from being centrally controlled, and pointed the controller to Justin Sun who had just acquired Steemit. Some witness nodes of Steem believe that this acquisition may bring about a crisis of centralization-the native Token “Steem Power” held by Steemit in large quantities may violate the original promise of “not being used for voting”.
The direct consequence of the soft fork was that the Steem Power coins acquired by Justin Sun through acquisitions were frozen.
The "fire of war" was thus ignited. Witness node representative Luke Stokes found that the original top 20 nodes on the network were replaced by some new nodes, and the votes for these new witnesses came from exchanges Poloniex, Binance and Huobi. He made the discovery public on Twitter, “Steem tokens staked by community members on centralized exchanges become tools used by these exchanges to take over the Steem blockchain.”
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Vitalik, founder of Ethereum, commented on this matter with "election bribery attack"
After the new node appeared, Steemit quickly completed the new version upgrade, which released his frozen Steem assets worth 10 million US dollars.
The aftermath is far from over. Not only several original members of the Steemit team announced their resignation, but also brought the outside world back to the discussion on whether the DPos governance mechanism is decentralized. In addition, the exchange's use of user assets to vote has been pushed to the forefront.Sun Yuchen's subsequent responses also confirmed the connection between these new nodes and him. He said that this move is only to get back the assets legally held by the wave field foundation. After restoring the order of the Steem network, he believes that the freezing of assets in the previous soft fork is a malicious "criminal act of hackers".
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Oligarchic decision-making under the DPos system
Miners are the accounting nodes of Bitcoin. Different from the Bitcoin mechanism under the proof of computing power, under the DPos system, the network is responsible for creating and signing transaction blocks by accounting witnesses, and a witness is a network data node.
The Steem white paper stipulates that if a node wants to keep accounts, it must first run for election. Candidates need to hold shares, that is, Steem tokens. All token holders can vote to decide who will keep accounts. The larger the currency holdings, the more campaign chips.
Steem stipulates 21 witness node seats, and adopts a voting + rotation system to select the main nodes for maintaining the network. 20 of the witnesses are selected by the number of votes cast by users, and the other witness is time-shared by all the witnesses whose votes do not reach the top 20. After each round of the 21 witnesses, they will be reordered to prevent any witness from continuously ignoring the blocks produced by a certain sequence of witnesses. Witnesses lose eligibility once they miss a block and have not generated a block within the past 24 hours. Witnesses who have obtained the bookkeeping work can get token rewards from the system every time they complete bookkeeping.
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Luke Stokes video showing the replacement of the original 21 nodes
During the EOS super node election in 2018, there was a discussion about the lack of decentralization of the DPos mechanism. One voice believes that this mechanism will form a coalition of large currency holders to vote in favor of each other, and the centralization of governance will lead to the centralization of decision-making.
Now it seems that the Steem community can initiate a soft fork to freeze Justin Sun’s coins, which has become an example.
Gu Ya, the founder of EOS Force, told Honeycomb Finance that from the perspective of the blockchain, there is no problem at all for Sun Yuchen to use the coins he bought to vote for nodes. The rights and interests of the coins belong to him, why should (community) restrict him? From the point of view of the chain, he is legal, so he is free to use these coins to vote.” In Gu Ya’s view, the soft fork of the Steem community is “frozen The legitimacy of the "currency" behavior is questionable.
Gu Ya pointed out another more critical issue, "In the blockchains created by Steemit, EOS and other BMs, there is an assumption that the nodes can do a lot of things together, including moving without your private key. Your assets, nodes can also do this.” He explained that in other blockchains, such as Bitcoin UTXO account model, even if the node agrees, no one can operate your account balance, “ Your coins have proofs in the block, and the node has no way to rewrite all the previous blocks."
It can be seen that on the blockchain of the DPos world, the "oligarch" decision-making brought about by more coins and more votes is natural because of the rules, but who to choose as the "oligarch" who maintains the network and makes better decisions depends on The power is originally in the hands of the user.He introduced that Steem has a function that can modify the private key when it is designed. More than 2/3 nodes agree to have one more authority to operate user accounts, "In this way, when your private key is lost, your coins can also be retrieved."
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The market split between equity attributes and asset attributes
Another focus of public opinion is Sun Yuchen's act of pulling the exchange to vote. Supporters of the Steem community believe that it is inappropriate to exchange votes for liquid user assets. V God also pointed out that this is an "election bribery attack".
According to Steem's voting rules, users who hold Steem Power Tokens can participate in the witness's vote. After registering an account on the blockchain browser, they can use the Token in their account to vote for the witnesses. Witnesses vote, 1 Token represents 1 vote.
The reality is that the Steem Power of a large number of ordinary holders are on exchanges, and these holders may not be users of the Steem network, but merely investors in the currency. Compared with voting, trading profit is their purpose of holding.
However, when the currency holder puts the assets on the exchange, does it mean that the rights and interests are also transferred to the exchange? There is still disagreement on this issue.
One voice believes that the user has not signed an agreement with the exchange that "voting is not allowed", "When your currency is placed on the exchange, if you do not have the private key of the exchange, you will not be able to control your voting rights, your voting rights are determined by your own private key."
At present, there may not be many holders who are aware of other rights and interests of digital assets. This market has only expanded the team of speculators and investors, but has not yet cultivated a blockchain user market. This kind of tearing is also a projection that the blockchain market has always revolved around the currency market.
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STEEM rises after Justin Sun acquires Steemit
Before the dispute between Justin Sun and the Steem community, there may have been another idealized assumption—Justin Sun could have completed a market education on currency rights enlightenment.
If Justin Sun launched a campaign based on his influence, the phrase to start a "new era of decentralized social networks" when he acquired Steemit at the beginning is more like a campaign manifesto. Suppose, instead of going through an exchange, he calls on Steem Power holders to deposit coins into their Steem account to vote for him. Perhaps, the situation will be different again.
