Steem, STEEM, and Steemit are in "the news" far more than usual these last couple weeks, in what will come to be known as The Fall of Ned the Snake, The Rise of Justin the Sun, a brief period right before the community corrected the biggest blemish on this blockchain since its inceptions.

I'm going to start with the important lessons, that apply to many places besides Steem, and then at the bottom I'll put a timeline of everything that happened. Skip down to the Princess Bride meme for the timeline.

#SteemIsNotTron

The Important Crypto Lessons

Exchanges are a point of dangerous centralization! Remember when the owner of QuadrigaCX died with all the keys? Remember Mt. Gox? Holding crypto in a wallet is just that, holding it close to you. You've got control over it. Putting it into an exchange account is like putting it into a paypal or bank account. You now have a bunch of digital IOUs, while the exchange holds all your actually coins in their wallets. This means they are subject to government intervention, the business closing down, hacks, and deliberate conspiracies such as what happened to Steem. Three different Chinese exchanges used their customers' STEEM to assist in a coup against our consensus governance system. Simply put: "If you don't hold the keys, they're not your coins."
It's hyper-important to vote in a Delegated Proof of Stake (dPoS) system, or other voting-based governance system. Especially when that governance decides the security of something. Not nearly as important to vote when a group is choosing where to go eat dinner, much more important when deciding the block producers of the blockchain where you live. Don't confuse voting for witnesses with the voting that people do out in the left vs right, blue vs red world. Not only does our version not include the barrel of a gun, but anyone can run for witness, and any account can vote (with equal effect) on 30 different witnesses. It was great to see our community step up and re-activate a LOT of VESTS that hadn't been voting.
A community (even a relatively small one) can make things happen when they put their differences aside, get communicate a LOT, and collaborate to get something done. The greatest thing about Steem has always been the community; coming here in 2016 and realizing I was now on a social media where the norm was an understanding of personal sovereignty. Mind blowing. We all know Tron actually bought Steemit hoping for that user count, so they can add it to their "15 million"... Ha!

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What Exactly Happened?

Here is the timeline of events as simplified as I can get them, and as far as I know them. Please do comment with things I missed, if I mis-quoted somewhere, etc. I tried to really summarize, and just include a bunch of links for those who want to dive deeper.

March 23rd, 2016 - The Steem blockchain is launched with Proof of Work (mining) consensus.
- Dan Larimer states that they (SteemitInc) "want to have a large amount of STEEM to give away via faucets"
March 24th: 2016 - The Steem blockchain is relaunched. Apparently their servers crashed overnight and they ended up not in the lead for STEEM mined.
April 1, 2016 - Dan Larimer announces Steem on the BitSharesTalk forum, stating: "We have secured ~80% of the initial STEEM via mining. Our plan is to keep 20%, sell 20% to raise money, and give away 40% to attract users / referrers."
April 24th, 2016 - The Steem blockchain transitions to Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) consensus.
May 10, 2016 - Dan Larimer states that "the Steemit team has adopted a neutral position on witnesses and isn't voting."
January 17, 2017 - In their 2017 Roadmap, Steemit Inc. says outright: "We plan to decentralize the @steemit account stake."
~^ ^~ ^~ Years Pass ~^ ^~ ^~
February 14, 2020 - Justin Sun & The Tron Foundation purchase Steemit Inc.
February 15, 2020 - Justin Sun & Ned Scott do a live-stream "AMA"
- It was a glorified infomercial
The next week - Tron and Justin post a lot of crazy stuff on Twitter. @pfunk captured it all nicely in this post.
February 23, 2020 - The consensus witnesses launch Soft Fork 0.22.2
- Implemented to stop the ninja-mined state from being used to take over the entire network by replacing the top 30 witnesses
- Here are some articles about the fork, from witnesses, that I found insightful: pfunk, arcange, jackmiller, Guilty Parties, ura-soul, aggroed, therealwolf, timcliff.
February 24, 2020 - Justin Sun releases this open letter, stating that he would like to "invite a group of our top 50 Witnesses to our first STEEMit 2.0 Town Hall, which we will hold tentatively on March 6th, 2020"
February 28, 2020 - The official SteemitBlog account releases this statement, reiterating that there would be a town hall on March 6th, and adding a "meeting between Steem Witnesses, Justin Sun and other TRON members, as well as the Steemit team. The meeting is tentatively set for Wednesday, March 4th at 9 pm PST", plus releasing that they want to connect Steem & Tron via "cross-chain atomic swaps."
March 2, 2020 - Day 1 of the Occupation
- Justin Sun, with the help of 3 exchanges (Binance, Huobi, Poloniex), commits a hostile take-over of the Steem Blockchain
  - The 3 Chinese exchanges power up over 45 million custodial STEEM
  - The 3 Chinese exchanges use that SP to replace all our top 20 witnesses with his own newly minted accounts
  - Justin Sun quickly launches Hard Fork 0.22.5, allowing the ninja-mined stake to vote for witnesses
  - Proceed to vote for same 20 fake witnesses with ~60 million more STEEM
  - Use massive stakes to downvote comments that oppose the take-over
- Community holds 7 hour town hall on Discord, discussing the options. Ultimately, prepare for hardfork, get the word out, vote for witnesses, see what happens.
- @vandeberg (blockchain developer) resigns from Steemit Inc. (1/7)
- @gerbino (blockchain engineer) resigns from Steemit Inc. (2/7)
- @andrarchy (Head of Communications) resigns from Steemit Inc. (3/7)
- Binance withdraws their vote, stating: "Done, unvoted. 1 oversight on my part. Miscommunication/upgrade rubber stamp. 2 @binance have no interest in chain governance. We stay neutral. 3 will continue to support regular upgrades/hard forks."
- Justin sun goes on a Twitter Storm, referring to our consensus witnesses as "malicious hackers", and saying things like "We knew it would be a complicated process since we needed to control the network for a short period of time, but we had no choice." & "we had no choice but to keep our actions under cover. However, transparency is our #1 priority."
March 3, 2020 - Day 2 of the Occupation
- Another half-day of town hall = Operation Liberation
- @roadscape (Senior Product Engineer) resigns from Steemit Inc. (4/7)
- Community pushes everyone to get out and vote, and as of this writing, we have 5 community-elected witnesses back on top.
- Huobi releases a "Letter To The Steem Community" telling us that they overthrew our governance system, to protect it from "immediate risk of an attack," but that "this action is not final." It turns out it has "always been our intention to return voting rights back to the community", so they've now "removed the vote" and they will "always stand behind the decisions of our users."
March 4, 2020 - Day 3 of the Occupation
- The top witnesses have a meeting with SunTronSteemit. Here's the full recording, thanks to @ausbitbank. @ura-soul breaks down the bullet points here.
March 5, 2020 - Day 4 of the Occupation
- Justin Sun ~~posts a list of demands~~ asks for the opinions of the witnesses, by laying out his 11... questions. Apparently if you answer them properly, he'll vote you into a top 20 witness slot... Interestingly enough, if you go to the post now, it simply says "Happy to talk to community. Looking forward to seeing it.", but Steem is a blockchain, and that shit's forever.
- The witnesses have a meeting with Tron represetative Roy Liu. The full audio is once again available thanks to @ausbitbank.
- SteemitTron announces that Justin will be doing his "town hall" via Zoom in 4 hours, 3 hours earlier than originally announced.
- Cointelegraph publishes an article titled Binance CEO Admonishes Justin Sun Over Steem Fiasco: ‘Transparency Works’

#SteemIsNotTron

What Comes Next?

It's hard to say. Theoretically the town hall is still on for March 6th... But with Justin all over Twitter calling our witnesses "hackers" and "criminals," the conversation seems less likely to be productive than it did 60 hours ago. Personally, I'm going to take a bit of a break from posting much, focus on getting ready to hit the road in 8 days, and do more reading of content & comments, so I can stay abreast of the community's thoughts.

Pretty sure there will be a hardfork. On one chain will be Tron, SteemitInc, Steemit.com, their full nodes... The other side will have the community(ies), Splinterlands, Steempeak, Keychain, 3speak, SteemSQL, SteemServices, and many others.

What I'll be doing if there's a HardFork

I'll stick with the community chain, keep my same stake on that chain (or increase, especially if price drops.)
I'll liquidate 100% (over time probably, depends on post-fork price) on the tron-chain, remove all my content (replace it all with a redirect to my content on the community chain), and use my down-votes against steemitron as I power down.
Revel in our new/old blockchain that has just removed a ~20% stake that was ill-gotten gains, PLUS we've gone through major crisis together, AND we got more news than ever before.

Have You Seen The News?

Some Great Articles About the Event

Crypto Lessons Everyone Can Learn From the Hostile Takeover of the Steem Blockchain

#SteemIsNotTron

The Important Crypto Lessons

What Exactly Happened?

#SteemIsNotTron

What Comes Next?

What I'll be doing if there's a HardFork

Have You Seen The News?

Some Great Articles About the Event

#SteemIsNotTron