We are seeing a lot of activity exposing how ripe the crypto industry is for attack.
On the day when the code was revealed (leaked?) pertaining to Steem's fork that is going to moved more than $5 million in funds to an anonymous account, we see that Block.One is being sued.
Word is getting around about how centralized Steem is. The rift between Justin Sun and the community showed how the "ninja-mined" stake of Steemit Inc was a danger to any thought of decentralization and community run initiative. Since the fork, Sun has went to great lengths to ensure his edicts are followed. Failure to do so has dire consequences.
Does this sound like decentralization to anyone?
Of course, this is no surprise since, not long before the beef with the Steem community arose, Sun exerted his influence over the Tron network by having the Tron Foundation vote out a few block validators. The claim was they those servers were running older code and that has to be fixed. Sun does not get the reality that those who oppose new code run older versions. That is what decentralized block validators do.
Bitcoin long endured a tug-o-war between the centralized and decentralized camps. Most of the hashrate is provided by a handful of mining pools (5 or 6). This debate is further fueled by geographic breakdown of said pools. Some claim that Bitcoin is becoming more decentralized as more miners set up equipment and the fact that the blockchain started with one miner originally. The opposing view is that with so few miners controlling the hashrate, a 51% attack is feasible.
This is something that reportedly happened to both Bitcoin Cash and Bitcoin Gold.
Which brings us to EOS. The creation of Block.One, this has made news since before even going live. It had one of the largest ICOs, raising over $4 million. The company claims that it seeks to decentralize the platform. There was even a near-year long ICO to help spread the token distribution out.
Sadly, it did not work. Upon going live, almost 50% of the tokens were in 10 wallets. Since there is no way to know who owns these wallets, it is possible that they are controlled by one a few people/entities.
Over the past year, the blockchain found itself involved in accusation of voting collusion among block validators. It even got to the point where Block.One decided to use its stake to vote on that. It sounds very similar to Tron.
I guess all this led to the filing of a lawsuit against the company for what amounts to $200 million in losses. Because of the securities laws in the United States, the company was banned from selling the tokens there. It has not helped that, since the ICO, the industry suffered through an enormous bear market, resulting in many of the token holders losing money.
Block.one has claimed that it wants to make EOS a decentralized platform, however, the complaint alleges that the company’s claims are false.
While this sounds more about people being upset about the losses as opposed to centralization, it does show how there is a target out there for centralized entities.
Ultimately, the potential of the blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies lies in the ability to decentralize much of a world that is presently centralized. The challenge is that we will not achieve that end by simply creating other centralized systems.
This is something that everyone needs to take heed of. Whether it is individual users or developers, we all should be mindful of how centralized a platform is when joining. The situation with Steem shows how, if one develops on a centralized blockchain, all the funds could be taken. Many will state it is being done in the name of security but that lacks any validity.
After all, that is the same excuse we hear each time the government decides to eradicate another set of freedoms. It is always done for security and in the name of protection. If the government does not protect us, who will?
We see the same thing happening in the technology world. Simply replace "government" with the name Facebook or Google.
Now we see a similar situation happening in the world of cryptocurrency. Whether it is Steem, EOS, Hive, Ethereum, or Bitcoin, the quest for decentralization is vital. When a whale or two can override the entire community, that is a chain that is destined to recreate what we see in the world around us.
With power comes responsibility and most show they cannot handle enormous power. This is true both inside and outside this industry.
We have enough of a track record within this industry to see there are many lessons being dropped. The question is how quickly we learn from them.
Some of the recent events shows how we are intent on repeating them.
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