Hive account@heartsgoldcrown is a new user on Steem. They were telling me about some trouble posting on Steemit. They were being told they were out of RCs.

Clearly, the account has plenty of RCs, so I didn't believe Hive account@heartsgoldcrown when they told me they were having this error. Must have been something else.

So I got the posting key and logged in myself. To my surprise, the bug was described in full accuracy. This account can't post to the Steem blockchain despite having more than enough RCs to transact.

At this point I was wondering if this was somehow a bug with Steemit. Rather than ask for the active key I added Hive account@heartsgoldcrown's posting key to my busted Hive account@drugwars bot.

"Account: heartsgoldcrown has 33880174314 RC, needs 93126633 RC. Please wait to transact, or power up STEEM."

So the account needs 93 million RCs but it has 33 BILLION?
Neat... super cool.

I feel like I don't have to explain how serious of an issue this is.
This is hands down the worst bug I've ever seen on the blockchain by a huge margin.

It leaves me wondering: How does the network decide if someone has enough RCs or not? Is it centralized? Is this an easy way to censor users from transacting on the blockchain?

It also leaves me wondering if there is some kind of problem with Steemit delegations to new users (or perhaps delegations in general) 100% of the RCs on the account are from the standard 15 coin Steemit delegation.

The plot thickens

hm... nope Steemit isn't the one delegating to this account. It's Hive account@lyndsaybowes. Wow this is so much worse.

Hive account@lyndsaybowes is an avid supporter of Hive account@fulltimegeek and vice versa. In the wake of Hive account@fulltimegeek's bot-war with Hive account@berniesanders, we saw that Steemit was more than willing to start deleting Hive account@fulltimegeek's presence from the platform:

steemit-shadowbans-fulltimebot-net

Needless to say, it looks bad if accounts made by users who are fighting with the established powers are no longer allowed to transact on the blockchain. That would completely undermine all the censorship resistance we claim to have.

Delegation Incoming

I just delegated 5 SP to Hive account@heartsgoldcrown. The transaction worked.

Delegation Removed

It appears that this solved the problem. The account is now able to transact on the blockchain using the original delegation. Very weird.

Conclusion

I fully expect that I am completely out of my element here and there is some logical explanation as to why this has happened (other than users actually being censored). If not, I have some tough power-down decisions to make.

Seriously though, I demand to know how the network decides that an account has enough RCs or not. Shouldn't the transaction be broadcast regardless and it's up to the witnesses whether to process it or not? I am very concerned.