{"id":5539,"date":"2020-06-04T13:47:38","date_gmt":"2020-06-04T17:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/?p=5539"},"modified":"2020-06-04T15:10:57","modified_gmt":"2020-06-04T19:10:57","slug":"steemit-andrew-levine-tron-acquisition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cointelegraph.com\/magazine\/2020\/06\/04\/steemit-andrew-levine-tron-acquisition","title":{"rendered":"Exoduses and Ex-Communications: Blowing Off Steemit with Andrew Levine"},"content":{"rendered":"

“Steemitans and Twitterers, after four beautiful years, I have sold Steemit to @justinsuntron. AMA tomorrow at 9am PT.”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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Ned Scott, ex-CEO of Steemit, is not the first crypto founder to sell to Justin Sun. He likely won\u2019t be the last. But his now-deleted tweet<\/a> rivals the most controversial blockchain announcements of recent years.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI have to say that I feel a bit of guilt in retrospect, because I think that my conversations with Tron ultimately played a role in getting our two organizations to talk to one another,\u201d says Andrew Levine, the former Head of Communications and Advocacy at Steemit.<\/span><\/p>\n

He worries that his overtures ushered the proverbial wolf into the henhouse. A gruesome ending of sorts seemed inevitable.<\/span><\/p>\n

When Justin Sun announced the purchase of the Steemit platform, along with 20% of the total supply of STEEM tokens, the Steemit team was stunned \u2014 they learned about the details of the acquisition along with the wider community. A centralized takeover of a supposedly decentralized passion project immediately took the shine off the whole project.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we had a tough time,\u201d he reflects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Levine soon resigned, along with a number of his co-workers.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This is not the story of precisely what happened, when, or according to whom \u2014 that has been documented elsewhere<\/a>. It\u2019s the story of how one man\u2019s passion project became subsumed by another\u2019s ambition\u2026 and how that interplay has implications for the wider blockchain industry.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The greatest blockchain you\u2019ve never heard of…<\/h3>\n

In describing how they deal with a shocking or traumatic event, many choose an inspiring cliche, plucked from the motivational posters that used to adorn office wallspace.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every cloud has a silver lining. The phoenix rises from ashes. Hang in there!<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

But Levine subscribes to one in particular: There are no failures; just learning opportunities.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recounting the tale of the Steem blockchain, Levine makes it clear that learning opportunities are available in abundance.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think Steem is going to go down in history as the greatest blockchain you\u2019ve never heard of,\u201d he says.<\/span><\/p>\n

For those new to the saga, Steem (the blockchain) powers Steemit (the social media platform) which enables contributors to interact socially and receive rewards for their content in the form of STEEM tokens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite Steem\u2019s important role in the lives of many budding blockchain content creators, the pioneer may wind up being a sad footnote in the pages of the technology\u2019s history. Following the acquisition of the Steemit platform by Justin Sun\u2019s Tron Foundation, arguments over the control of the blockchain appear to have left it in a fractured, and possibly irreparable, state.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sun is a polarizing figure in the blockchain industry. Derided by some as a lightweight showman, \u201cthe P.T. Barnum of crypto\u201d, others see him as a marketing genius whose penchant for the limelight has created an army of loyal followers. He embodies the CEO-as-spokesman, actively adopting the post-Trumpian, post-Muskian philosophy of attention at any cost. It\u2019s rumored that Sun cares little about the value of Tron\u2019s TRX token, or indeed the value of any of his multiple investments, and that his personal key performance indicators revolve around Twitter engagement.<\/span><\/p>\n

It’s this centralized cult-of-personality that turned many in the Steem community off the deal.<\/p>\n

Steem’s ecosystem, Levine says, has spawned countless careers, generated enormous value, and has distributed that value all over the world. \u201cWe\u2019re talking millions and millions of dollars distributed to ordinary people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s crazy how many people I meet who are like, \u2018Steem played this big role for me.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now, much of that community has moved on to the Hive blockchain and hive.blog, a forked replica of the original ecosystem, <\/span>sans <\/span><\/i>Tron. This has left the Tron Foundation with what some now argue is merely a hollow \u2014 and expensive \u2014 shell. A facade that may no longer have a genuine and active community behind it… which is what created most of the platform\u2019s value in the first place.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A brief recap of the acquisition drama<\/h3>\n

In an effort to halt the exodus of jaded community members, Justin Sun imposed a series of account freezes and dispatched a so-called \u201csecurity update\u201d to a number of major cryptocurrency exchanges. Using the massive quantity of STEEM tokens entrusted to these exchanges by token holders, Tron spawned new governance \u2018witnesses\u2019, described as \u201csock puppets\u201d by some in the community, to replace the previous validators of the Delegated Proof of Stake consensus system.<\/span><\/p>\n

The large concentration of token holdings in the custody of these exchange agents allowed Sun to execute what some saw as a hostile takeover of the vulnerable network. Some exchanges subsequently reversed course, with the notable exception of the Sun-affiliated Poloniex.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dan Hensley, a STEEM holder, told Cointelegraph in April that \u201cJustin was losing the voting war halfway through and started offering people $2,500 each month to run a witness node for him on Steem. I own a dApp called 3speak that was on Steem, he offered us money, power and users.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The community fought back, fearing the centralization of a platform that had made its name promoting the opposite thesis. Casualties of the war include the most vocal protesters, some of whom claim to have lost millions of dollars\u2019 worth of STEEM tokens which became inaccessible at times due to the forks and account freezes imposed by Sun\u2019s team.<\/span><\/p>\n

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