Steemit Inc recently initiated a power down of its @steemit account which will result in a few hours that 2.6 Million STEEM would to be placed on an exchange account. This has been publicly acknowledged by Ned Scott (CEO of Steemit Inc) as a mechanism to secure the company founds responding to a threat of an hypothetical hardfork that could potentially remove or freeze the balances of all known Steemit Inc's accounts.
To make it clear and stored on-chain:
We are committed as a witness to not implement, support, or condone any hardfork that affects the balances, keys, or security of any accounts on the current Steem blockchain.
Nevertheless:
- There are a widespread community sentiment that the reason behind this power down could be more than just "securing Steemit Inc's stake" (i.e. cashing out, selling the company, centralising block production, etc).
- We encourage Steemit Inc to #stopthepowerdown to send out a on-chain signal that you are still committed to the Steem Blockchain.
Having talked to many users, stakeholders and witnesses over the last months, there is also a widespread opinion that Steemit Inc could have done "more" during the last 2 years ("SMTs", "Communities", "State of the Art Clients/Wallets", etc) given the stake that they had available due to systematic Steem token sales.
Therefore, for the mid-long term and as a future alternative to keep the level of innovation required to survive and give value to the Steem token on the markets:
- We will strongly support and recommend to all Steem stakeholders the creation of a non-profit future legal organisation (i.e. "Steem Fundation") that should step by step and with a well through elected governance structure take care of the future developments of the Steem blockchain),
- We will also strongly recommend to Steemit Inc - as well as other stakeholders, wittnesses and investors - to voluntarily provide fundings and support this future new organisation.
yours sincerely.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : http://cervantes.one/wordpress/index.php/2019/01/19/witnesses-can-be-trusted/