What doesn't kill us makes us stronger.
The Hive community has tested this theory many times over and it seems to be playing out as anticipated. The hostile takeover was the ultimate test in attrition. Most communities get PTSD just from the spot-price going down. We had our spot price crushed over and over again in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Then to top it off the CEO sold us downriver to the worst vulture capitalist within the ecosystem.
Fun times.
Now we have no CEO. We've been orphaned, and that seems to be a pretty positive outcome. Emancipation complete. This community should have died a dozen times by now, and yet here we are, stronger than ever. We have proven that the Theory behind DPOS is nothing like like the Reality of DPOS. The theory was not accounting for a Layer Zero element. This community x-factor really mucked things up for would-be blockchain imperialists.
On the day-trading side of things I've decided to put my money where my mouth is and buy here at 46 cents to defend the 25-day moving average. This is a very precarious position because Bitcoin is showing some weakness; trading slightly below the MA(25), and $23k is hanging on by a thread. Luckily both Hive and Bitcoin have massive support all the way down to 36 cents and $20k respectively. Hoping to catch another one of these pumps at 55 cents with the Hive I just bought.
Day trading is pretty fun when you play around with amounts that won't consume your every thought and the limit orders just sit there static. Volume on the internal market is higher than ever; a very impressive milestone indeed compared to just a year ago.
Our perception on good market prices for crypto alters with time.
I remember back when Hive was trading at 80 cents it seemed like the worst place to sell ever. How could it not be? We had just peaked at $3.40 and even $1.40 seemed to have good support for a while. Now if the price were to spike back to 80 cents many of us would be clamoring to sell into that action.
This is another example of time changing our perceptions on things and time healing all wounds. At one point selling at 80 cents would have been "painful" and now it would be a "gleeful" experience. All of this is based on token progression over time. It takes a while for the mind to adjust to these new valuations. That's why I've been so focus fired recently on TA involving 4 different moving averages. I believe there is some market psychology to be divined here that many aren't looking for.
But this is not a speculative post.
EVM Multisig Counter-Terrorism
https://blockworks.co/news/jump-crypto-wormhole-hack-recovery
In what appears to be the result of a coordinated effort between Jump Crypto and Oasis, the exploiter behind the infamous Wormhole attack of February 2022… has become the exploited.
Oasis recently exploited their own protocol using multisig
Of course they did it under the justification that it was to steal back money from a blackhat hacker, so there is that. Some people are rightfully angry about this situation, but at the same time how much do you want to bet they don't us Ethereum Classic? ETH Classic was the exact same story. Everyone uses ETH regardless.
“On 21st February 2023, we received an order from the High Court of England and Wales to take all necessary steps that would result in the retrieval of certain assets involved with the wallet address associated with the Wormhole Exploit on the 2nd February 2022. This was carried out in accordance with the requirements of the court order, as required by law, using the Oasis Multisig and a court authorised third party.
We can also confirm the assets were immediately passed onto a wallet controlled by the authorised third party, as required by the court order. We retain no control or access to these assets.”
This report has vibes.
It feels as though there is zero pushback or outrage over this exchange. It's almost as if Oasis wanted to be ordered by a court to steal back the money so they'd have an excuse to do so. They rolled over instantly and without any consideration as to what the community actually wanted. In fact they weren't even allowed to ask the community because then the hacker would have started moving around funds and messing up their plans.
This shows that multisig EVM chains have no layer-zero.
EVM clones have fake communities that aren't in control of anything. Many are trying to say that something like this could happen on Hive in the same way. That is impossible. Anyone who witnessed the hostile takeover should be able to identify this fact instantly. We have a strong history of not allowing blockchain imperialism to rule the sovereign nation of Hive.
To Recap:
The difficulty of justifying the freezing of funds and subsequently forking to a new brand was astronomical. And that was against a blatant bad actor who was holding the entire network hostage. What would that situation have looked like if it was only a couple million Hive rather than complete systemic failure of the system? Completely different: especially considering it was all ninjamined stake with a verbal contract for development.
Oasis did it without even asking: the slippery slope.
Instantly folded and acted like, "Oops our hands are tied there is no other option." This really goes to show you just how bad things are going to get in the future. Today hackers are being targeted. No big deal. Next it will be 'drug dealers' and 'terrorists'. That stake now magically belongs to the government instead of the underlying community. After that political dissidents will be targeted.
They aren't going to announce these things; they will just become backdoor deals that get labeled as conspiracy theory even though the evidence is right there on chain. Getting away with manipulating transparent systems is not so easy, but the propaganda machine doesn't care about things like fact and logic. Those are the tools of a sucker. It is the manipulation of emotion that matters.
Censorship resistance is not a trivial matter.
Consensus is not a trivial matter. Those who don't know better think these are the easiest things in the world. They are not. Be glad you are part of a group that wouldn't bend over backwards the second someone from the outside tells them to.
What does that look like?
How does the government issue such an order for Hive witnesses? Many of our top 20 witnesses exist all over the world, and a legal attack coming from the United States puts even more pressure on us to create proxy servers in other nations or simply elect witnesses who live within those borders.
A witness could be ordered to push code to the blockchain, but most of the other witnesses have to accept that code as well. What are the chances of this? Isn't it far more likely that some of our top 20 witnesses would sooner shut down their nodes and wait for the whole thing to blow over rather than deal with such a lawsuit. Let's not forget their entire reputation is only the line and they can also simply be voted out by the network for any reason whatsoever.
Given these recent events we may even want to think about setting up a proposal that would fund witnesses to shut down their nodes temporarily given extreme legal pressure to push imperialist code to the blockchain. Better to pay someone to shut down their node than deal with the legal threat directly. Not that this is anything that actually has to be done today... we just need to be thinking about it going forward as a potential theme. Governments and regulators aren't going to stop at just targeting hackers. I can guarantee you that.
Conclusion
Many communities are going to learn a very tough lesson over the next ten years. The wheat must be separated from the chaff. Which networks are decentralized and censorship resistant? And which are not? Many users are going to figure this out the hard way. Hell, even Hive figured it out the hard way. Turns out, after many trials and tribulations, we are in fact decentralized and censorship resistant. Many didn't see that one coming, and even more are still in denial. Couldn't be me.