It seems that yesterday’s article Darthknight = blocktrades = alpha = … so on. included too much contents.

So for this article, I will simply focus on two things, briefly.
(1) Darthknight(Blocktrades) is a blatant liar.
(2) Darthknight is an alt of Blocktrades.

• other issues such as 22.2, 22.8888 will be discussed in a different article to avoid unnecessary confusion.

1. Darthknight is a blatant liar.

@darthknight was created on February 11.

This is his first post: link

We all know that Justin Sun bought Steem Inc. on February 14 .

And he claims that “I happened to read a tweet from Justin Sun about their recent acquisition and figured I’d check it out and so here I am now”.

What??? You already made an account a couple of days before the tweet… do you time travel? I don’t think so… and you are simply lying from the very beginning.

In addition, this guy is not a new person as he claims in the first line: “I am new here”.

As we will see in the next section, this is another lie, as this account is an alt of blocktrades.

2. Darthknight = Blocktrades

We all know that if A=B and A=D, then B=D.

A is @alpha, B is @blocktrades, and D is @darthknight.

A=B is clear: for example, blocktrades received Steem from @steemit with memo “owed payment to Blocktrades”.

Now A=D part.

alpha and darthknight use the same Binance account. See that they use the same memo 101130147.

It does not matter whether blocktrades facilitated the token swap transaction or not: alpha and darthknight have sent to the same Binance account, more than 100,000 STEEM, many times.

• you can check this yourself easily on https://steemworld.org/transfer-search (just put 101130147 in “Memo” and click “Search”)

• It does not matter whether blocktrades owns like 100 alts - who cares? it’s not relevant at all. All I point out is that alpha = blocktrades = darthknight.

• As @timcliff and others mentioned, as blocktrades is an exchange, “it is possible that all of these linked transactions can be explained by users who are buying and selling Steem via the BlockTrades.us exchange.” However, as @timcliff also pointed out, “The ones using the same memo are obviously the same user”, and this part is all we need to confirm that alpha = darthknight.

Beneficiary setting:

50% for @faki who provided the account creation time info as a reply to the previous article.

50% for @donekim who summarized A=B=D explanation in Korean: [STEEM] Blocktrades = Darthknight인 아주 간단하고 명백한 이유

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I wrote yesterday regarding @darthknight’s hive article: Re: Darthknight

If he really wanted to find a quick solution, he would have contacted jayplayco immediately, as lots of users (including myself) suggested.

As far as I know, no response at all. Weird, isn’t it?

So in the meantime, I tried to collect some info, and found surprising facts that I will share with you here.

For a quick summary.

The main logic who supported darthknight was like this:

1. darthknight (probably) made a mistake in setting powerdown(withdrawal) route (to bittrix).

2. bittrix is an old account, allegedly a scam/phishing account that aims for typos.

and as I wrote in the previous article, one needs to confirm two things to proceed:

1. darthknight himself should declare that it was his mistake and he did not mean to send it to bittrix.

2. it needs to be confirmed that bittrix is not owned by the owner of darthknight (in other words, “alt”)

1. Who is @kevtorin, to whom darthknight initially set power down route?

Let’s start from the very action - powerdown route setting.

He changed the beneficiary from kevtorin to bittrix.

Wait, what? @kevtorin? what is this account?

Given that he initially set the route to kevtorin, it is natural to assume that kevtorin is his alt, or at least it is a very close user who shares the account.

and steemd result clearly shows that kevtorin is one the very old accounts who participated in “ninja-mining” (pow) from March 2016, more than 4 years ago.

But as darthknight said in his posting Hello Steem!! 2 months ago, he is a newcomer (the posting starts with “I am new here”).

How can they know each other, if we take what darthknight said as face value?

• kevtorin has not written any post/comments, so it is impossible that they knew each other through posting/comments.

2. kevtorin, alpha, blocktrades share the same poloniex memo

kevtorin has sent steem to poloniex several times, with wallet address(memo) 6f9cf0a77c0e5207. For example,

Let’s use https://steemworld.org/transfer-search to find out who else uses this (if you haven not used it before, just click the link, put 6f9cf0a77c0e5207 on memo, and click search)

Most recent transactions are from alpha and blocktrades to poloniex.

What? Are they sharing the wallet?

3. Binance memo shows even more alts of blocktrades

okay, let’s see which wallet, or memo, darthknight uses. In fact, he sent Steem to Binance (deepcrypto8) right before making the power down route change.

So who uses 101130147 memo?

Blocktrades, alpha, ashleigh, cleta, anastacia, etc. A lot.

So who are these accounts?

Again, thanks to the help of wonderful tool steemworld.org (thank you @steemchiller!), you can find them easily what blocktrades did.

hm, so blocktrades initially set the powerdown route to alpha, anastacia, ashleigh, and cleta, and changed to bittrex.

(1) They are sharing the same exchange wallet address(memo)

(2) They share the withdrawal route.

Do we need any more evidence to conclude that these are owned by the same person(or entity)?

• If you need more, for instance, alpha is owned by blocktrades for sure (see the memo “owed payment to blocktrades”)

• Oh, and by the way, blocktrades set withdraw route at 4/4 15:04, and darthknight did the same thing at 4/4 15:09. 5 minutes difference… would it be a mere coincidence?

• @ayogom made a nice visualization of this. Link: Who is the owner of Binance’s “101130147” wallet? (darthknight??blocktrades??alpha??)

4. Darthknight is an alt of blocktrades

Sharing the same exchange wallet, and sharing the withdrawal routes.

Do you need any more evidence?

Blocktrades owns darthknight, alpha, anastacia, ashleigh, cleta, kevtorin, and so on.

Darthknight(blocktrades) blatantly lied from the very beginning, pretending as if he is a “newcomer”. Disgusting.

5. Now I would not be surprised even if bittrix is another alt of blocktrades

Given that darthknight is a liar from the start, now we need to revisit his other claims.

Think about it. If you are really a new investor who powered up lots of STEEM and about to change the withdrawal path, wouldn’t you double/triple check?

Was it a real “mistake”?

Or was it intended? I mean, isn’t it possible that blocktrades also owns this account called bittrix and pretends as if he made a mistake?

6. Conclusion, and thank you for @belgianchocolate and @steemchiller

Darthknight is an alt of blocktrades, and he lied.

There is no proof that bittrix is not an alt of blocktrades.

Thus, I have no interest in helping this liar from now on, especially given that it is caused from his own “mistake”.

• @belgianchocolate: I really appreciate for sharing the information that initiated this search. As I wrote as a reply, I set you as 90% beneficiary for this post.

• @steemchiller: without your extremely useful tool, steemworld.org, I would not have done this search. I set you as 10% beneficiary for this post to thank you.

This page is synchronized from the post: ‘Darthknight = blocktrades = alpha = … so on.’

Several users informed me that @darthknight has posted My Steem funds are currently being frozen by the top 20 Steem witnesses (reward for info)

In particular, @guiltyparties asked me on a discord channel to take a look at the issue and we have discussed it with other users (including @dr-frankenstein). I told him that I would try to fix this issue soon - and this posting summarize my thoughts for now.

The following is an open letter to @darthknight. Note that this is a gesture of goodwill, not legal opinion or advice.

Dear darthknight,

Great to see your posting.

Your posting was required to start any action

my funds are being transferred weekly to a scam account, because I made a mistake when trying to withdraw those funds.

I believe that the Steem witnesses are aware of this, but have taken no action to unfreeze my account.

There are some users who reported me of your situation, and I assume some of other witnesses would have heard too.

But nothing could be done until you openly declare that your setting the power down path to bittrix was a mistake and you did not want your power down fund to go to bittrix.

Why? Because no one except you can verify that whether you intentionally did it. Who knows whether you actually wanted to send the power down fund to bittrix for whatever reason (your friend’s account, or your alt, so on).

Contact jayplayco asap

I will contact them and give them a chance to unfreeze my account and reimburse me directly for the loss I have already had.

You should contact @jayplayco (on discord: jayplayco#9869), as @geekgirl and others have recommended.

And “reimburse” for your mistake? that does not make any sense… you have to admit that it was your fault to set the wrong power down path.

Moving on to the legal issues.

If you have any information about the real world identities of the top witnesses on Steem, please post it here. I will provide a 5% reward of any recovery I make with the people who provide correct information about witness identity (first come, first served on identity of individual witnesses).

I do not know where you live, but this is very dangerous (at least in South Korea). This could be subject to defamation and/or violation of privacy (or more) in South Korea. Take a look at @abitcoinskeptic’s reply to your post.

And there are some users who encourage you to pursue legal actions. Of course it is one of your choices.

But reading the replies, I can tell that most of them are not familiar with legal issues, in particular regarding the South Korea case.

If you choose to bring this case to the court, it will be difficult for you to deal with the following issues (and more - I have talked to a lawyer friend and she was not be able to fully understand the situation given her lack of knowledge about how Steem works, but she mentioned these issues to “start with”)

1. How can you prove that you, the plaintiff, own the account called @darthknight ?

2. How can you prove that you, the plaintiff, does not own the account called @bittrix ? Otherwise, you cannot prove that you “lost” your “asset”.

3. Were you forced to take that action? in other words, anyone forced you to “power down” and/or set the path to “bittrix”?

4. Who is(are) the defendant?

5. How can you prove that the defendant has caused you the damage, given that you admit that you made a mistake?

6. It seems that the “asset” you claim to be lost is used in the system called “Steem blockchain”. What are the “rules” of that system? Is there anything that the defendant has(have) violated?

… I will stop here. It’s already too many.

And also note that unlike the US, in South Korea if you lose a trial usually you are supposed to pay the winning party’s legal fees (up to a certain amount - it’s like up to 7~8% of what’s at stake).

To move forward.

While talking to guiltyparties and others, I have reviewed the following options.

1. Run a quick SF update that excludes you: but this option has a problem that may break the mechanical selection rules (as @roelandp pointed out, “You should not help out as goodwill for darthknight, as that will remove the “mechanical” part from the script”)

2. Run a quick SF update that includes bittrix so that this account may not be able to transfer any fund until the discussion ends and temporary SF is reversed.

Of course this needs to be discussed among witnesses, but I personally support the 2nd option for now.

Summary

1. Given that you wrote that you made a mistake in setting the power down path, we can do something.

2. Contact jayplayco#9869 if you want to resolve this issue fast.

3. Be careful with legal issues - defamation, etc. Check @abitcoinskeptic ‘s reply.

4. I personally support a quick patch to limit transfers of the bittrix account.

Best,
glory7.

This page is synchronized from the post: ‘Re: Darthknight’

This post is my response to the recent article How Steem Became Hive by @lukestokes, to show that where we do not agree and to find out how to facilitate potential discussion to go forward.

It will be posted both in Steem and Hive.

Before I begin, let me emphasized the following points first:

1. I respect lukestokes a lot.
   While the only interaction with him is exchanging replies several times and reading his articles recently (so I won’t be surprised that he does not really know me), I believe that he is one of the, if not most, considerate and reasonable witnesses and I would love to discuss and share views with him any time. In fact, even after him shutting down his steem witness node, I still vote for him as a sign of respect.

2. I am writing this to fill the gap and move forward, if possible.
   That being said, I am not writing this to argue that one side is perfect and the other side is evil - it is more like a situation both sides did something wrong and two wrongs don’t make it right. Since it seems that users with different opinions are scared of saying so, I decide to write a dark side of Hive. I do know that there also is a dark side of Steem Inc (or Justin), but I am pretty sure you have read thousands of them so I would skip here.

3. I will focus on the core understanding differences on two main issues,
   as most of the topics are discussed in many ways already.

For the rest of the article, I will mainly use quotes from the luke’s article (quoted and used the numbers from the original article, like “. 14. “) to start and put my views below.

1. It is 22.2 witnesses who initiated the attack (and changed their words)

Many users, including myself, became skeptical in supporting most 22.2 witnesses (most of them are the current Hive top witnesses) because

1. They changed their words.

2. They took someone’s money first.

In January 2019, lots of witnesses publicly wrote that they will not touch Steem Inc. accounts.

. 2. The community is constantly frustrated with Steemit over the use of this stake with some even threatening to null out the keys for it last year. I and other witnesses stated plainly we will not do that. Example: https://steempeak.com/stopthepowerdown/@lukestokes/is-steem-centrally-controlled

I was not familiar with this matter, so I read the article and related links. In short, Ned was powering down steemit account as he feared that witnesses would fork his account out, and witnesses wanted to persuade him that they will not do such action.

For example, luke wrote

“I will not implement, support, or condone any hard fork that effects the balances, keys, or security of any accounts on the current chain,” and

@therealwolf wrote (https://steempeak.com/statement/@therealwolf/public-witness-statement-therealwolf)

“I will not support any fork that is trying to alter/remove the balance/keys/stake of Steemit Inc. on the main-chain STEEM!”

It seems that other witnesses wrote something similar.

And this event, soft fork 22.2, comes, and everything changed.

. 8. Soft fork 22.2 freezes the ninja mined stake, prevents it from being powered down or participating in governance. It’s an easily reversible code change and not a theft or ransom. All token balances are intact.

Let alone that there was not a single word of public “community discussion” before the actual fork.

• If you were one of these “normal” users(like me) who did not know about this, make sure to check whether you really think people who made such decision would treat you as a community member.

Focusing on what happened: I still do not understand how one can think of this as “not a theft or ransom”. This is clearly taking someone’s asset as a hostage and asking for a random, at best.

Let me use an analogy of a reply to the 22.2 fork (I forgot who wrote this).

Andy took Bob’s wallet with lots of money in it, without any notice.

Andy says it is “easily reversible”, and “temporary”, and Andy says that he may return it to Bob only if Bob agrees that he would use the money in the wallet in a way that Andy thinks correct.

Again, my understanding is that it’s ransom at best, and probably theft.

And lastly, it is not “the” ninja-mined stake - it is one of the ninja-mined stakes.

At this point, we all know that there are lots of other ninja-miners and lots of 22.2 witnesses (and Hive witnesses) are ninja-miners themselves or getting witness votes from ninja-mined stakes (blocktrades, freedom, berniesanders, etc.)

When I point this out, some people argued that Steem Inc. stakes are different as there is a “promise” that these stakes should be used in a certain way.

Okay, I think now we are ready to move to the next core issue.

2. If you think “public interview” is a “promise”, you should blame blocktrades (or Hive) for breaking “promise” and lying first.

. 1. in 2016, Steemit, inc launched a PoW blockchain and ninja-mines 80% of the tokens telling the community they will be used for the community and not for Steemit, inc’s own profit. There is no contract between them and the community, but see interviews, 2017 roadmap, etc

There are some users who kept saying that there was a “promise” or “social contract” of Steem Inc. As he notes, the only “evidence” is indirect anecdotal pieces from like 3 years ago.

. 14. Within less than a day of launching Hive, the list of accounts that will not be included in the airdrop is released. CoinDesk interview of Blocktrades says it will be ninjamined stake. Hive announcement says it will include those who support centralization.

This. If anyone thinks that “promise” regarding Steem Inc. is broken, he or she should attack Blocktrades(or Hive) too. He backtracked on what he publicly interviewed, in a couple of days.

and it seems that luke did not want to discuss more of “lies”, but let me present them here again.

so this is the CoinDesk interview luke mentioned: Steem Community Plans Hostile Hard Fork to Flee Justin Sun’s Steemit

• By the way, this CoinDesk article has been updated a bit from the initial one - but it still contains these “lies”.

For this initial hard fork, one key thing will change: The tokens from the original development fund controlled by Steemit will not be carried over to the new chain. Everyone else’s will be ported over.

Everyone with tokens on Steem will also have tokens on the new chain; that is, except for the Steemit wallets controlled by Sun’s Tron Foundation.

As we all know by now, the day after this interview Hive changed words: not going to airdrop to a select group of users by a random, subjective criteria which was not disclosed to most users, even including many Hive witnesses in advance.

Furthermore, they lied about the tokens from the “Steemit wallets”. It clearly states even twice that Steemit tokens will “not be carried over”. And what actually happened?

They took it to @steem.dao, along with the stakes from the 326 airdrop excluded users’ stake, which is under control of the “community”, or in fact basically the top Hive witnesses and whales.

This reply from Chanse Bradell summarizes what actually happened:

So you guys are taking the ninja-mined stake and using it? LOL.

Just to add, in Why I won’t be compromising with Justin Sun blocktrades wrote that the financial resource will come from “several prominent stakeholders.”

No mention of using “confiscated” Steem Inc.’s tokens (and potentailly airdrop excluded tokens) in steem.dao account to “fund” Hive.

Does the community have the resources to launch a blockchain?

Yes, we do. It’s actually much easier for us to launch a chain, because of the many lessons we’ve had operating the Steem blockchain. And as far as financial resources go, several prominent Steem stakeholders have privately offered both computing resources and significant financial support, including my own company, BlockTrades. Even at this early stage, I’m utterly convinced we have sufficient support to launch and develop this new blockchain.

This article went much longer than I had initially guessed.

Let me wrap up quickly.

While I understand that Steem Inc (and/or Justin) has made lots of mistakes, I also believe that the 22.2 witnesses (or Hive witnesses) have done many wrongdoing (or mistakes), and it seems that they are the ones who attacked first.

When both sides change words(and make mistakes), I believe that the initiator is more responsible. That’s why I am still skeptical about supporting Hive.

That being said, I also believe that unnecessary aggressive attitude and actions from both sides would not make things any better. I hope that there could be a positive development and we may find a nice solution.

To do that, I think understanding each other is the necessary first step - and luke’s article would show how Hive users think and hopefully mine would show why Steem users are hesitant to support Hive.

This page is synchronized from the post: ‘Why I am still skeptical about Hive: Response to “How Steem Became Hive” by lukestokes’

Here’s a quick summary/comparison. I tried to exclude my personal judgement to deliver the fundamental “facts” by quoting a lot.

• Maybe I will share my understanding and opinion at a different post.

1. Soft (“temporary”, “reversible”) or Hard Fork?

22.2: Soft

22.5: Soft

HIVE: Hard

22.8888: Soft

2. Pre-announcement before the actual action was taken?

22.2: No

22.5: No

HIVE: Yes for the fork date, No for the airdrop exclusion and where the missing airdrops would belong to

22.8888: Yes

3. Main argument (from the performers) of the fork

22.2: “freeze” the “Ninja-mined” stakes that were “promised” to be used in a certain way

22.5: “unfreeze” the legally purchased asset

HIVE: make a decentralized version of STEEM

22.8888: “freeze” accounts that were actively contributed to the potential stoppage of the STEEM blockchain

4. Decision criteria regarding stakes

22.2: based on “promise”(with no legal evidence made public so far) by a previous owner

22.5: take one’s asset back

HIVE: “Accounts excluded who voted a minimum of two sockpuppets or proxied someone who voted a minimum of two and who didn’t unvote before the hive announcement with more than 1k sp” (and more)

22.8888: “Accounts that proxied or directly voted to more than 10 witnesses running the version 0.23 on the Steem Blockchain during the Hardfork with an influence higher than two million Steempower.” (and more)

5. Results (so far)

22.2: Steem Inc. accounts were “frozen”

22.5: Steem Inc. accounts were “unfrozen” and Steem Inc. installed its own witnesses

HIVE: creation of a “code-copy” chain that are identical to the STEEM blockchain, except that confiscating 326 individual accounts’ “asset” and Steem Inc. related accounts’ “asset” to the steem.dao account (allegedly, there could be a system where these accounts may get these “assets” back, but so far no date/plan/detail announced)

22.8888: temporal restriction of 8 accounts (but thanks to the pre-announcement, most accounts (except about 3) have taken actions before the actual fork so restriction is basically limited to 2-3 accounts)

Hope this helps.

This page is synchronized from the post: ‘Quick comparison of 22.8888 and past events (22.2, 22.5, 23(“HIVE” fork))’

한국시간으로 오늘(4/4) 오전 11시에 공지문이 나갔고, 이후 소프트포크가 이루어졌습니다.

소프트포크가 있었는지도 모르게 스무스하게 잘 지나갔고, 몇 시간이 지난 지금도 안정적으로 돌아가고 있지요.

현재 업데이트중인 증인들도 있어서, 아마 내일까지 정도면 더 다양한 메인 증인들을 볼 수 있지 않을가 합니다.

일단 오늘 수고해주신 분들께 이 글을 빌어 다시 한번 감사드립니다. 개발자가 아닌 저로서는 거의 도움이 안되어서 그냥 응원만 한 격이 되었네요.

• 소프트포크의 내용과 임팩트 등은 다른 분들이 잘 설명해주실듯하니 넘어가고…

이번 포크의 의미는 크게 다음의 2가지라고 봅니다.

1. 하이브측에 우리가 가만히 있지 않을 것이라는 시그널을 준 것

2. 구증인들의 주장, 아니 추측, 아마 억측, 과는 달리 한국팀을 포함한 신 증인들이 무난하게 소프트포크를 해내는 능력을 보여준 것

이제 시작입니다. 가능하면 win-win 할 수 있는 방향을 찾아봐야겠죠.

This page is synchronized from the post: ‘22.8888 업데이트를 지켜보며.’