When Justin took over our witnesses I felt a sudden sadness in me. I thought to myself: is that it? Did all these years of hope really just end like that? I was kind of surprised I had that reaction honestly, I have been in a very relaxed relation with steem but suddenly when I saw it being taken away from me I felt a genuin sadness and disappointment.

Because of that I would like to express my gratitude to the witnesses for the endless hours of negotiations they are doing on behalf of the community.

I would like to express the immense feeling of empowerment I have gotten from seeing all of you steemians regardless being a minnow, dolphin or orca taking action to make us all stronger. I hope I managed to do my small part by resteeming countless of witness vote posts(sorry to spam all of your feed) but also powering up to over 50k of SP once again.

This major crisis did truly answer my question I have been wondering for a long time;

Is the steem blockchain really decentralized?

I am not only talking about the technical term here, but also as an community and spirit.

After tron and the exchanges chose to vote in the puppet Witnesses it would seem like our system is flawed, that steem was indeed not as decentralized as we would like to think.

However the massive uproar of us made massive echo through the crypto space with such power of the people, that we made some of the biggest centralized exchanges bail with fear of loosing more of their reputation.

Now we have them eager to get their steem back. Or as I would say a nice firm grip by their stinky balls.

most of you know me from my cycling adventures. That's because I started my cycling adventures around Europe at the same time I started my steem adventure.

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

We steemians love to fight amongst each other, like a small family in a too small house we wage wars between each other and our difference of opinions. Sometimes it also feels childish.

Most of the time we are not able to agree, we all have different visions of what's a better steem. But isn't that the beauty? We keep pulling each other's ropes and slowly but surely we shape the perfect blockchain as it is. I would never want 20 witnesses who would all agree and I hope you never will.

After past events the most clarifying truth is clear to me, we all wish the steem blockchain to live on and as soon as we are under attack, we do indeed stand together, regardless of our minor differences.

We still lack half our witnesses in top 20 it is hard to say that the blockchain is centralized on a technical level, But it is most certainly on a spiritual level

I told my friend that Justin acquiring steemit will either be the worst or the best thing that has happened to steem

And I am starting to think Justin buying steemit.com is the best thing that ever happened to us, just not the way we would expect.

Here is why:

Justin does indeed bring a lot of attention with him, both good and bad. We needed that badly.

The fact he pulled this major takeover might initially hurt our reputation but it seems like we are also getting a lot of recognition for our rally we have made to fight back. I would almost say we have gotten a certain amount of respect.

Now the world are watching and if we come through with our witnesses intact and (hopefully) peace with Justin, great things could come our way.

I don't like holding grudges and I still do hope we can find common grounds with Justin(the new steemit team) to find progress on our blockchain. We are going to live in the same house with them for quite a while, hopefully.

I hope Justin will learn a lesson here: Respect the community, acknowledge and communicate with us and he will have access to a very powerful community, just like we will have access to him and his resources.
Going against us and he will only hurt himself.

Good faith versus our pride

We are in a powerful position now, the exchanges are surely pushing Justin to get their steem back and Justin are begging us.

From a moral standpoint giving in for the exchanges and let them withdraw their funds is absolutely nonsense. Why would we, they went completely against our values.

From a strategic standpoint The exchanges have not started powering down yet and it could indicate a threat they will do the same again, prepare the code, make another takeover and fork their funds out. This will surely hurt their reputation even more but more so ours. I think they are holding back on it to avoid anotherbacklash once again and give even bigger uproar. But if they get desperate who knows?

It might be a super unpopular opinion but maybe it is not far fetched to let them have their funds back and building the bridge again with Justin? It all depends on what values we put in it. Again our differences of opinion is what is needed here. Please don't judge me for entertaining that thought.

Overall it's a very complex situation with a lot of nuances. Let us believe our witnesses will make the right calls on behalf of us.

Whatever happens I am proud of being part of such a great community.

Our future might be unclear but I have a feeling this attack awakened the beast of a community that we are, probably even more than ourselves would have known. Stay strong guys!

I'm a proud steemian, are you?

SteemON!

-holm