Colluding
with Exchanges TRON Allegedly Executes a Hostile Takeover of Steem
TRON founder Justin Sun has,
with the help of major cryptocurrency exchanges, allegedly executed a hostile
takeover of the Steem blockchain after TRON acquired Steemit Inc, the company
behind the Steem blockchain’s number one application Steemit.
Shortly after the acquisition
was announced Steem’s witnesses – similar to miners on the Bitcoin blockchain
or block producers on EOS – moved to limit Justin Sun’s power on the network,
executing a soft fork to stop him from using Steemit Inc’s Steem token
holdings to make governance decisions. The move was contentious among
witnesses and was meant to be a reversible updated to give the community some
time to gain clarity on the acquisition.
In response, TRON has issued a statement saying they would use
Steemit Inc’s holdings to vote and thwart the soft fork limiting its use. The
statement claimed the update was “maliciously structured” and could be deemed
“illegal and criminal. It reads:
“Unfortunately, the Witnesses’ decision
created a need to reclaim the stake and vote in new witnesses to usher in new
policies for a healthier ecosystem and community.”
To execute the hard fork and
reverse the update, TRON had the help of Poloniex, a cryptocurrency exchange
that’s also a part of its ecosystem after it acquired the platform, Binance,
and Huobi. Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, said on social media he’d reverse the vote made with users’ funds
after the move was criticized.
The hostile takeover saw TRON –
with the help of the exchanges – oust 20 of the 21 witnesses on the Steem
blockchain and replaced them with accounts created in the last three days
that appear to be controlled by TRON.
