The STEEMIT drama shows both the failures & successes of DPoS. This is DPoS working as it should. Both sides could of handled this better.
My understanding is Justin Sun Tron wants to use the company stake he bought for voting , the stake Ned said would never be used for voting. The community moved to block this through the witness system. In a sense they averted a hostile takeover.
The only thing Justin Sun Tron is really guilty of is breaking the community trust. He should of had more respect for the community and presented his changes for a proper vote instead of flexing his muscle and basically saying with his holdings he’d shape things as he pleases. Maybe he didn’t understand or realize what he was doing, but he basically tried to declare himself a dictator of Steemit and the community quickly tried to put him in his place.
Yes Justin Sun Tron owns Steemit and a large stake of STEEM. The community however is supposed to control the system. That’s how Steemit was set up, and that’s DPoS in action. Justin is free to use the stake he purchased with Steemit Inc any way he chooses, the community is free to fight it or walk away. It’s unfortunate he didn’t respect Ned’s promise to never use that stake to game the system or sway votes in his favor.
My final thoughts are this. This isn’t going to end well for anyone. I’m sure some version of Steemit will remain but it may never recover as the place it once was. Eventually someone is going to fork the project, or the drama will get so bad, people are just going to walk away.
I think what the exchanges did with users funds is completely unacceptable. Using user funds to sway a vote against the community is just outrageous. I can’t believe any exchange agreed to this. Another example of the need for decentralized exchanges. This gives new meaning to “Not your keys, not your coins”. This was a huge failure on the exchanges part. On ethical grounds, I’ll think long and hard about trading again on any exchanges involved in this shit show.
Funny thing about trust is once it’s lost it’s really hard to get it back.