Community post
Statement from the @blockbrothers #2.
Thank you for your trust in @blockbrothers.
We were against the Soft Fork because we don't believe in freezing anyone's assets and feared the precedent it would set. And we were right, while the Soft Fork turned out to be ineffective, the precedent will always be here and will loom over Steem forever.
What Justin did to take back his stake, by utilizing customers funds on exchanges, we also oppose. Using exchanges for this purpose is equally unacceptable.
With Justin now getting his stake back and the exchanges clearing most of their proxies we are seeing pure DPOS.
This is how it should have been from the start.
Having said that we do understand why both parties took both actions.
We, @blockbrothers, would have preferred more talks before action. We are happy to see these talks finally started.
The only outcome to the situation that makes sense for users, investors and witnesses is to make a deal that will suit both parties. Something we have said from the start.
We are just waiting for everyone to realize this.
Thanks again for your support.
End of statement.
If you support us please vote here for @blockbrothers or set us as proxy
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Replies (58)
What deal makes the most sense to you?
I only see one possible compromise. Remove the voting rights but no constraints on selling the stake.
Either this or hardfork into two coins.
AFAIK, many witnesses tried to communicate with Sun before the soft fork, but he didn’t respond. Hard to have “more talks” if one side isn’t willing to talk.
Exclaiming you were right doesn't make you right. The only precedent the witnesses set was that they will protect the blockchain when presented with an existential threat, and I'm glad they did.
In addition to an underlying skepticism that Ned would care enough to do a deal that actually takes into account the community's interests, Justin's own INITIAL actions toward the community were clearly not a good sign. Among other things, he confused Steemit with Steem, talked about swapping STEEM for TRX, migrating dApps, he showed that he clearly had NO IDEA that Steemit's STEEM stake had obligations attached, and he didn't even respond to meeting requests (like, seriously?). This forced the witnesses to act defensively such that nothing crazy would happen.
That's a perfectly reasonable and in fact responsible action considering the circumstances. ESPECIALLY considering that we're not talking about just ANY stake here. We're talking about Steemit's ninja-mined stake which, due to the attached obligations, is CLEARLY a special case.
So please stop pretending the action taken by witnesses has wider meaning and somehow looms over Steem forever. And stop comparing this perfectly reasonable action to the highly unethical action JS took by colluding with exchanges to usurp user stake and lock it up for 13 weeks in order to hijack the network with illegitimately voted sockpuppet witness nodes. Such comparisons are not intellectually honest.
And btw, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that not only was the action taken by witnesses reasonable and responsible, but also that Justin's response PROVED that the concerns witnesses had to begin with were WELL FOUNDED. We now know what JS is capable of. If the witnesses had not acted, in a few months we'd very likely be EXACTLY where we are now, except that JS would be far more prepared to force his will upon the community.
Let's not be so naive, please. Thanks.
I think the problem remains there that if they remove the voting rights but allow the sale of the stake, it can easily be moved to a fresh account and be used to upvote witnesses. I wish they had simply waited until the town hall before doing anything rash, although hindsight is 20/20 as they say. I'm not a witness, so I wasn't privy to the discussions between the witnesses that executed the 22.2 softfork. At this point all I care about is keeping Tron's zombie witnesses from hard forking this chain out of existence. We'll figure out the rest later.
I had unvoted you as witness for the sake of getting the top 30 above but I've reinstated it just now. I removed a vote from a former top 20 whose rhetoric I find particularly problematic. I like what you have to say here and I wouldn't mind seeing this voice of reason in the top 20. It's not much but every vote counts, right?
Nothing to ad. You are one the clear thinking witness here.
Another reasonable statement to add to a growing list. I'm seeing good things.
I'm interested in your thoughts on 'a top priority' to have Justin apologize for calling witnesses supporting 22.2 malicious hackers.
Is covering asses or saving faces a top priority? In my case I support some of these people, but for the time being I think convincing Justin to wait before selling while moving forward on exploring the idea that the ninja mined stake is for Steem and not Steemit is most important.
That's what the witnesses said. I don't think they were wrong to do the soft fork and it wouldn't surprise me if Justin planned this takeover from the start. I just don't get how a social media platform that's anti-censorship can work with Chinese owners? I like the Chinese people, I'm just not a fan of the way they can't say what they want about certain things.
About time people were starting to see sense.!!
Came across this Blog because I am a big fan of @exyle and it was on his feed.
I agree with every single word above.
Resteemed.
Stephen
I don't think Sun's maligning the witnesses carries any weight with folks that matter. From Buterin to BTC, anyone that understands the situation recognizes what Sun is up to and what the Steem witnesses have now achieved by taking 7 of the consensus positions and blocking Tron from executing a HF and extricating Binance and Huobi from their fraudulent positions.
I expect legal action to remedy the tortuous harm customers of those exchanges have suffered to completely reveal just who hacked maliciously to those that don't already know, and CZ will be lucky to avoid criminal charges IMHO. Sun as well. Dunno who runs Huobi, but them too.
I currently proxy you for my witness votes. Are you at least voting enough top witnesses to keep a hard fork from happening until some sort of agreement can be worked out? I believe that the 22.4444 fork that they are running has reverted things to the 22.1 state.
Sounds like a long legal battle will happen.
I think Justin engineered a lot of this and at least anticipated it. Don't be tricked again. I think he has us exactly where he wants us. Lets not becime completely disorganized and squabbling for scraps.
Maybe he messed with CZ, CS (huobi) and Ned, too.
What you're saying here seems to be in contrast with what others are saying as to why the SF was implemented. From what @tombstone has said, there seems to be a bit more to it than there appears to be on the outside looking in. At the time of the SF I chose not to make a judgement, despite the questionability of restricting someone's use of their stake, purely because I wasn't privy to all the ins and outs of everything and wasn't really aware of what had been going on at the front lines. So I had to trust that those on the front lines knew what they were doing for the sake of the community who voted them in. Yet from what you've said here, I'm now not sure that the lower level witnesses are in the loop as much as they should be. Is this an oversight? It seems you weren't aware that attempts to talk to Sun had been ignored.
These are fucking sacrosanct words!! In my opinion you guys have been too good!! Person like him doesn't deserve nothing!!
jep 👍🏼
Talking is always better than killing.
If he promised them they could powerdown their customers money right away, he sure did mess with them, because now he can't deliver, and they're stuck holding the bags of money with other people's names on it.
They're not gonna like that, and Sun did it to them.
This action goes much further...
Well freezing funds is not okay.. what if it was used in the btc 51% attacks.. every blockchain can block accounts as every bank can freeze or plunder the bank accounts.. The president is created now. I hate banks and everything around it.
What Mr sun did... was accusing the witnesses of hacking... Well if they were hackers those servers weren't alive for long they were taken down as the exchanges involved would have been taken down also.
Mr sun bought for 10million dollars steem if you buy 25% of a chain and you own a chain this would be with the intention of taking over the chain... like the 51% btc war but the 25% pre mined stake would be invested into steem... now he said I bought it out of business point of view I want to earn...
Everyone was against steemit to dump their steem on the market... this is the same..
If I buy a product I investigate the product if I buy a house what I don't ever do in the Netherlands again anymore because my house got sold for a bill of 1000 euro.. leaving me with a debt of 81.000euro never ever again.. its illegal and I'm fighting against that But that's aside.. but when I bought the house I hired someone who looked if the house was good. You buy steemit and 10 million dollars worth of steem stare in those brown eyes and say ok? You don't investigate what the coin stood for? You don't look in the kitchen and see who is working in the company you buy?
The card game splinterlands has tron...
It gives me bad vibes...
Exchanges also used the customers funds in a war... what about the next 51% btc war? Are or were those exchanges also involved in those wars? With customers funds? Personally I say those exchanges involved have to be closed.
Also the 20 witnesses president they can do anything what they want.. you see that is also not okay. Top 20 can easily be taken over. Someone with a big wallet can buy himself into the chain and just take over the chain... do whatever they want... It was just waiting for the moment that something like this would happen.
But the top 20? It's not good take the top 100.. or something like that. I'm not a specialist but it isn't ok. That must be changed if there is a future for steem.
Your statement is too soft is my opinion. Yes freezing accounts is not okay and you would have voted against it like this is also this witness system is failing...
They just thought no one would notice or care or stop them from using power to change this. Maybe they thought it was an easy change. They should have waited until they could immediately change it and took a gamble. It's not Justin's fault they supported Justin before the code was ready to be used.
Their keys, their choice. Regrettable they trusted him. Yeah he took advantage of them, but they took the bait and had the final say.
You're right. He reamed them pretty hard by not having that code in place prior to the forkening.
They've got to regret taking part at this point. He has left them dangling.
Only we can save them now.
Also, look at the person's history: Former Employees Sue Justin Sun and TRON Foundation, Alleging Workplace Hostilities. This isn't his first acquisition after which employees have resigned.
Congratulations @blockbrothers! You received a personal award!
You can view your badges on your Steem Board and compare to others on the Steem Ranking
Do not miss the last post from @steemitboard:
Vote for @Steemitboard as a witness to get one more award and increased upvotes!
Justin expected pushover centralized trash like LINO that he easily assimilated. What he got was a bunch of angry idealist that wouldnt take his shit.
Why would you proxy and then ask what they are voting for? Get a set of balls and vote for the witnesses yourself. Blockbrothers has dropped to 59th and will continue to sink.
Well I have changed my vote after seeing their response to Justin's "post".
Awesome
Real Decision
The exchanges have the voting power to initiate a fork for a quick powerdown anytime they want.
The fork 22.2 was an ethical failure as well as a tactical failure. Sun's tweets about airdrops did not constitute an existential threat to STEEM. If a powerdown/transfer was initiated on the accounts in question, witnesses would have plenty of time to establish lines of communication and decide on a course of action. However the bigger issue is the tactical failure of allowing a single entity to easily control the entire chain. The witnesses have neglected this fundamental security risk, probably for their own favor, and this was the most obvious attack vector after freezing wallets. It was the only question I asked the witnesses about on the Steem Consensus Witness Statement Soft Fork 22.2 thread, and only two responded.
No. They have the stake, but they do not have the fork. I am confident they are dependent on Tron for that code. Also, it is notable that to possess the stake to tip the scales on governance, they must seize their customers money for their own use.
That is a clearly tortuous harm to their customers, and is probably a criminal act. IANAL, but my understanding of fiduciary responsibility is the basis for my statements here.
Whether it's a crime or not, anyone that sends Steem to exchanges presently deserves to lose it. The exchanges are provably taking it and using it for harm to the Steem blockchain, which harms Steem stakeholders.
A different perspective is the exchanges have responsibility to ensure safety of customer funds by remaining in voting position until frozen wallet issue can be resolved.
Except Sun isn't a customer, and they have no legal obligation to protect his funds. I suspect a court would not agree that exchanges had any business protecting Sun's funds. They should be protecting their customers, and instead they've granted Sun complete control of the very source of the funds those customers entrusted to them, by using those customers funds to fuck them, instead of Sun, because they like Sun, not want to fuck him.
A threat that has existed since this chain's inception, and they didn't really pay attention to it because they had a few accounts who pretty much guaranteed the top 20 positions.
Essentially, nothing changed. Just leadership of the biggest stakeholder company on here. Right then it became okay for the witnesses to 'protect the chain'. Foul play.
Idealists that only think in codes and have literally no understanding of how humans respond to threats.
Did we really think he'd sit back and watch us freeze his stake and dictate the terms to him?
This post stated the obvious truth. Enough time should have been given for a dialogue.
It's amazing how people keep talking about what Justin did, as if that's all that happened.
This post didn't get the support of the top accounts because they do not like it.
Other short posts that simply call for witness votes are on the trending page.
I would wager Sun is a customer, and while you may not agree with it, being in position to overrule a fork that froze any of their customer funds is a reasonable position to take. I consistently hear the phrase "not your keys not your coins," and these actions are part and parcel of that philosophy, as exchanges are engaging in protective stewardship of coins within their purview.
Only if they favor that individual over the blockchain itself, and that demands they do due diligence and ascertain whether that action they are overturning by assuming complete control of blockchain governance isn't somehow prescribed by law or otherwise illegal or unethical.
Given the ignorance pled by CZ to date, that isn't what has happened.
This is just a brute force takeover of Steem by hostile actors, including Binance, and it's probably a criminal act for them to do so by seizing their customers funds and keeping them from their customers indefinitely, perhaps permanently, which is the definition of theft.
They are thieves, and you are supporting them in their depredations on the Steem community.
Fuck off.
I think you may be correct , sir!
Yep, this part here triggered me as well.
I don't think he deservers everything.
:p
ahahahha is the double negation the problem with my sentence?
ok ok so i repeat it for a better understanding:
"he deserves nothing!! The only thing that he deserve is getting out from here!!
Like I said the day Justin Bought Steem, he will not respect censorship resistance and he is just trying to make a quick buck.
Today your friend Justin censored the HIVE announcement. Now you owe the community an apology for all the stupid shit you have been saying for way too long.
https://www.lassecash.com/communityfork/@lasseehlers/announcing-the-launch-of-hive-blockchain-repost-on-lassecash-due-to-justin-sun-censored-the-original-post-from-hiveio-on-steem
Its on LASSECASH where, Justin can't censor anything.
/Lasse
statement from justin's bitch ;)
you're gonna end up running justin's code and freezing people's funds.
Thanks for this piece
You are fucking SCUM of the earth, and a VERY GREEDY motherfucker who crawled to Justin Sun's side as soon as he offered a payout to traitors like you. It is fucking DISGUSTING that a fucking worm like you has a HIVE witness account and got the airdrop even though you're the biggest fucking traitor/greedy Justin Sun ass-licker there was out of EVERYONE. I'm not caring MUCH FOR HIVE anymore, now that I see they let your worthless ass in, and even PAID your traitor fucking ass.
This is a travesty of justice, all for a greedy fucking pig like you.
I miss you and still think there should be room on Hive for for everyone's opinions.
Not on peakd.com yet? Been silent for a while now...
I would love to see a public statement from @blockbrothers explaining why you think you dropped from Witness Position #1 to Witness Position #55 overnight.
a bit harsh no?
congratulation
Our Rep is low due to wrongful Downvotes
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50
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Please read and share 🙏🏾
To the downvoting racist old and young farmers You are a scammer a thief a criminal who is working for other criminals
⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕⭕👀
Hello everyone I hope you are all good and well today in this post is some of the evidence to prove my case
If you didn't know I've been getting downvoted for a long time on Hive
They have been trying to bully me with downvotes and words but it doesn't affect me I've been online for over 25 years
So I've dealt with people like this before it's nothing new
But what they are doing is bad Very badi joined steemit like everyone else thinking it offers freedom but I must say steemit offered much more freedom than Hive does
Everyone already knows I only post my own original content I have no need to steal anything from anyone
I've been labelled a lot of things on Hive 😂 by the biggest farmers scammers and downvoters
Actions speak louder than any words do especially when them words are coming from a compolsive liars
I will keep updating this post when I get time
https://hive.blog/hive/@ureka.stats/the-untrending-report-hive-downvote-analysis-16-09-2025-20250916181314
https://hive.blog/hivedev/@makerhacks/please-peakd-allow-me-to-completely-block-spammers-would-you-ever-vote-for-this
https://hive.blog/hive-167547/@dlmmqb/re-kgakakillerg-t34wy6
https://hive.blog/hive-170475/@acidyo/re-kgakakillerg-t32sw1
https://hive.blog/hive-167922/@themarkymark/re-kgakakillerg-t30ziu
https://hive.blog/hive/@ureka.stats/the-untrending-report-hive-downvote-analysis-29-09-2025-20250929172045
No downvotes for this racist person 🧐
https://hive.blog/hive-196387/@acidyo/re-kgakakillerg-t41yr6
https://hive.blog/dvs/@dhedge/re-kgakakillerg-t3clz3
https://hive.blog/hive-150329/@kgakakillerg/t3a8fu
https://hive.blog/musical/@steevc/re-kgakakillerg-t2kz1m
@crimsonclad please do your job 🙏🏾
https://hive.blog/hive-135178/@crimsonclad/re-kgakakillerg-sxllhv
https://hive.blog/hive-148441/@hivewatchers/svftu9
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https://hive.blog/hive-176853/@steevc/re-kgakakillerg-syyy4x
https://hive.blog/dev/@howo/re-kgakakillerg-szhax7
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https://hive.blog/hive-127022/@shmoogleosukami/re-kgakakillerg-t0hcxc
It's unbelievable that they downvoted this Goodbye Auntie R.I.P 🙏🏾
Comments being downvoted by blocktrades https://hive.blog/hive-170744/@kgakakillerg/t0ns3b
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Stop farming Hive https://hive.blog/burnpost/@buildawhale/re-1756307402814502169-20250827t151240z
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📊 The Untrending Report - Hive Downvote Analysis - 2025-09-07
RE: Understanding Pointers in C Programming
Please Peakd, allow me to completely block spammers (Would you ever vote for this?) thanks for exposing yourself more @makerhacks
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