Why the softfork 0.22.2 didn't prevent this?
How this was done?
They used the funds in several exchanges to power up. Concretely:
| Account | Steem Power | Time of Power up |
|---|---|---|
| @binance-hot | 31 730 053.775 SP | March 2 |
| @huobi-withdrawal | 8 002 101.000 SP | March 2 |
| @poloniex | 2 293 743.643 SP | March 2 |
| @ben | 1 536 362.853 SP | Last year (Feb 2019) |
| @bitdev100 | 800 109.047 SP | March 2 |
| @pacemaker | 636 317.641 SP | March 2 |
| @joe767676 | 240 516.435 SP | March 2 |
| @imadev | 227 153.927 SP | |
| @geos | 180 006.613 SP | March 2 |
In total 45.6 million Steem Power... This is more or less the steem power that the previous witnesses received in votes.
They needed at least 17 new witnesses in the top 20 in order to apply a new fork... With this amount of power it is possible, then they changed the top witnesses.
The new fork allowed Steem account to vote for witnesses... then finally they used this power to vote for the new witnesses, which is around 60 million more steem power. So, at the end, they reached 106 million steem power in votes (more than double the previous witnesses).
All the funds of these exchanges are powered up, meaning they will not work for steem for at least 3 months (unless they change the rules for a short quit power down only for this group, take this in mind).
Bittrex didn't participate in this movement. They still have liquid steem (15 million in total). So the alternative to sell (if you want) is using Bittrex or Blocktrades.
Very bad days. I want to sell.
RE: An Open Letter to the Community - HF22.5