Hi, @jayplayco here,
It is now history that Steem had its first chain split including the whole content and user information. Shortly before the split 10 of 20 witnesses were moving to Hive and running a separate version, that would support the switch to Hive. Meaning that 50% of the witnesses would not anymore produce blocks for Steem would also mean that it could interfere heavily with the stability of the Steem blockchain.
The Steem community reacted on it and shifted the votes to secure more Steem related witnesses to keep the Top 20 witness numbers over 60%.
The Steem blockchain was during the split not directly available, due to the stability of the full node of api.steemit.com, but the Steemit Inc. team took care of it within the first hour. There are still hiccups with the condenser for Steemit.com but, the blockchain itself is creating blocks without any big issues.
1. Fact checks
1) Witnesses
Most of the old witnesses have closed their witness server for Steem now as reaction of muting posts on Steemit.com. It has to be understand that all muted content is still available on the Steem blockchain and therefore also reachable on 3rd party condensers like steempeak.com, but not on Steemit.com, which is the property of Steemit Inc.
2) Spam Marketing
It seems that now spamming on Steem is ok for some users, as they have left the platform but still like to damage it as much as possible.
- a plagiarism fighting account called cheetah is now leaving comments about censoring on every post they may find.
- Other accounts are commenting on user accounts to move to Hive, some sounding reasonable, some more disturbing.
- Worst case is a comment with a long list of
/brcodes that makes it very difficult to read other comments.
I have personally nothing against informing people about a new service, but don’t think that it should be in this way.
3) Selective distribution of Chain split
A controversial move even within the new community, but it had been done and is history now. As the claim is, there is no right for a newly created token, this is not wrong in the approach. Same as the approach of freezing the stake of possible threats of the chain. Arguable, but based on the logic of the community of the new chain a rightful thing to do.
It seems that we have now not a possible threat but a real one that happened already and I think that the community of this chain will protect the value with the tools we can use.
4) Copyright
An interesting part about the split is that it is the first time in Blockchain history that not only transaction data have been transferred but also content, which is based on legal views not easily transferable. Let’s have a look into the current policy of Steemit.
Copyright and Limited License
We may retain data, text, photographs, images, video, audio, graphics, articles, comments, software, code, scripts, and other content supplied by us, the Steem blockchain or our licensors, which we call “Steemit Content.” Steemit Content is protected by intellectual property laws, including copyright and other proprietary rights of the United States and foreign countries. Except as explicitly stated in this Agreement, we do not grant any express or implied rights to use Steemit Content.
The next one we should have a look into is the following,
You are granted a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, and non-sublicensable license to access and use the Service and Steemit Content for your personal use. You retain ownership of and responsibility for Content you create or own (“Your Content”). If you’re posting anything you did not create yourself or do not own the rights to, you agree that you are responsible for any Content you post; that you will only submit Content that you have the right to post; and that you will fully comply with any third-party licenses relating to Content you post.
As an easy example, I have NOT agreed that my content is visible on a different blockchain-based condenser like the current split blockchain. (And I am aware that some users from the split blockchain are mocking about it that these users don’t understand how blockchain works) I have ownership over my created content. It may be difficult to grab the split blockchain itself, which is decentralized, but that is not the case for any 3rd party condenser that is displaying content based on this split blockchain.
Because this blockchain split had been anyhow selective, it should have been secured that only content from authors that are explicitly confirming to have their content on the new blockchain should be visible on any condenser that is supporting the new chain. As it may the blockchain itself is a decentralized databank, but the condenser is not.
Personally I think this will have consequences for all 3rd party condenser running parties, because the blockchain itself may not be held liable, but the condensers are. For myself, I will have to check if these condensers can be held liable for displaying my content without any consent.
2. Next Steps
Life is going on and the users are now split into different communities and blockchains. I wish the users on the new chain the best, as a lot of them have been good friends during the last years, even if there have been different opinions. I am also aware that nobody from the other chain will read this post, but at least I have left the message here. I will move on with the community here building up the chain I have been the last years and make sure to secure this chain from any harm.