The influence of Steemit votes threatened by a soft fork

Last month, Justin Sun acquired Steemit and gained control over a large number of votes on the Steem network. This is due to the platform’s delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) architecture.

Fearing the potential influence on the network, the Steem team initiated a soft fork aimed at eliminating the influence of Steemit votes.

Things did not go according to plan. Several centralized exchanges used their own voting power to promote Steemit affiliate witnesses. These witnesses are responsible for the production of blocks within the platform. In this way, Steemit, and thus Justin Sun, established a centralized control over Steem.

“Hostile takeover”

In what was described as a “hostile takeover”, Monday was canceled the fork promoted by the Steem community. The tokens held by the exchanges such as Huobi, Binance and Poloniex were used to vote 20 new witnesses in the network.

According to a post published on the Steemit website, the team justified their action against the soft fork 22.2 with the fact that it was “criminal and illegal”.

Soft Fork 0.22.2 was structured maliciously, intending to freeze a handful of highly targeted accounts and take their rights and possession over the assets held. This action can be considered illegal and criminal.

Steemit currently has control over the network:

“For the next 4-6 weeks, the Steemit team will use voting rights to restore order in the community, while having an open channel to discuss with community members and witnesses,”

communicates in the post.

“After 4-6 weeks, the Steemit team will give back to the community if the situation returns to normal and mutual agreements will be made.”

The Steem Wallet application has been disabled

Some developers have expressed frustration over the Steemit and TRON decision and have decided to disable their applications built on the Steem blockchain. The team behind SteemWallet, for example, has announced that it has removed the app from the Apple Store. Steem Engine has taken down its website “to protest against the hostile takeover of the blockchain”.

Currently, there are hundreds of applications built on Steem, including alternative blogging front-ends eSteem, Busy.org and SteemPeak. If the conflict is not resolved, they may opt to migrate to other blockchains.

Reactions from the crypto community

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, has published his views on the incident.

“It seems that Steem DPOS has been taken over by the large exchanges with votes from customers. It seems to be the first instance of a “bribe attack” – exchanges pay users to use their tokens in the voting system “,

of said he.

Binance did not publish an official position on the situation, but Changpeng Zhao said on Twitter:

“I was informed in advance about this upgrade / hardfork and I approved it. Projects do this all the time and we are usually only in a supportive position. I sent a message to Justin Sun but I didn’t get a response yet. I guess he’ll respond publicly soon. We will probably cancel our vote based on your feedback. I wasn’t paid to vote, I just thought it was a hard fork, ”

explained CEO Binance.

Because DPoS architecture provides voting power to tokens holders, centralized exchanges generally have a huge influence on these types of blockchain. Experts have warned in the past that this system can generate the risk of centralization, which can be considered the situation with Steem.

The solution to this problem is for DPoS token holders to keep them in their personal wallets instead of exchanges, so the influence of Steemit votes cannot be manipulated.