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Yesterday, the issue concerning Steem‘s governance provoked a real clash between titans: Justin Sun against Vitalik Buterin.
It all obviously stems from the purchase of Steemit by TRON. In theory, Steem would be a decentralized network, although the purchase of its main web interface, Steemit, by the TRON Foundation seriously questions its decentralization.
This led to the creation of Hive, a new decentralized network created from a Steem fork.
Yesterday, in response to a tweet where Steem was defined “a centralized scam”, Vitalik Buterin tweeted saying:
“Shouldn’t every Steem user just be moving to hive at this point?”
Shouldn't every steem user just be moving to hive at this point?
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 19, 2020
Then came Justin Sun’s grumpy reply:
“Shouldn’t every Ethereum user just be moving to TRON at this point?”
Shouldn't every #Ethereum user just be moving to #TRON at this point？
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) May 19, 2020
That’s when a real brawl started, and hundreds of people were involved in it.
Upon reflection, Justin Sun’s grumpy response actually made very little sense.
In fact, following the same logic whereby Steem users might want to migrate to Hive, to benefit from a higher level of decentralization, it seems that TRON users should want to migrate to Ethereum, and not vice versa.
To this provocation of Sun, Buterin did not actually respond.
Instead, the discussion went on a different path.
Buterin shared a tweet from Jameson Loop with which he retweeted an article about today’s hardfork that will block the accounts of several Steemit users, and freeze $5 million worth of STEEM tokens.
Vitalik’s comment was:
“This is exactly the correct take. A chain is its maintainers’ responsibility, not their property. And that responsibility can be taken away at a moment’s notice”.
Sun’s response came promptly, who probably does not tolerate these initiatives in favour of the advocacy for decentralization:
“I am not involved in any Steem community decision but I have to voice their opinions. Since Hive took their money Vitalik Buterin & the misleading media are 100% supportive of it. Any media that covers this should interview current STEEM witnesses”.
I am not involved in any Steem community decision but I have to voice their opinions. Since Hive took their money @VitalikButerin & the misleading media are 100% supportive of it. Any media that covers this should interview current #STEEM witnesses.
— Justin Sun (@justinsuntron) May 20, 2020
Again, Buterin has not responded.
Sun also posted another tweet in which he accuses the Ethereum blockchain of not being immutable, to the extent to which he says that no asset based on Ethereum is safe. He even goes so far as to promise to sponsor 100% anyone who has been damaged by the DAO hack so that they can claim damages from Vitalik Buterin.
This looks like a war, but between the two contenders, it seems that Vitalik is the least likely to fight.
After all, he is actually promoting a blockchain, Hive, external to Ethereum, and completely disconnected from it, for the sake of decentralization.
Sun, on the other hand, is promoting his blockchain, and his activity, against accusations of centralization that have long been coming at him from all sides. He has chosen Buterin as a specific target probably due to his visibility.
It is safe to assume that the matter is not over at all.