Tired of slogging it out with the new owner of decentralized social media network Steemit, the community on Friday relaunched the site on its own blockchain network, Hive.
But there's one key difference—one that could end the month-long war: Steemit's new owner, as well as his supporters, can’t move Steem tokens over to Hive.
On Steem—the blockchain network that houses Steemit—token holders vote on proposals about how to upgrade the network. The richest users have the most influence.
The community was worried Sun would use those tokens to control the network, thereby undermining the platform’s democracy. So, a few weeks ago, they voted in favor of a soft fork that prevented Sun from using the tokens.
When #Bitcoin invented, the beauty of the cryptos is that no one can take them from you. The sanctity of private property is guaranteed by the math and code behind it. Freezing people's funds violates the basic foundation of cryptocurrency.
Sun enlisted the help of crypto exchanges Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex, to take back control over the network. The exchanges are some of the richest (and most powerful) members on the network, since they can use their customers’ funds to vote on the network. With their help, Sun managed to unlock his money.
Unsurprisingly, the Steemit community didn't like Sun’s decision to take over the network. They convinced Binance and Huobi to stop supporting Sun’s takeover.
Since then, both Steemit’s community and Sun have been using their money to wrestle control over the network.
Well, not everyone can swap tokens: According to Hive’s blog: "The only accounts who will not be [able to swap their tokens] are those containing the Steemit Inc [pre-mined] stake, and those who actively contributed to (and publicly declared support for) the centralization of the Steem Blockchain.”
These members are listed on the “HIVE AirDrop Exclusion List”, which contains the nicknames of alleged “tron puppets” and “ninja miners.”
Steemit has also been accused of censoring Hive-related content. Crypto blogger Girl Gone Crypto posted a video where she said that her “neutral explainer video” about the Hive’s launch was deleted from the platform.
Well, it finally happened. I had my content censored. I just always figured it would happen on Youtube... not Steemit. 😳