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The drama of the Steem/Tron partnership continued today with no promising route forward. Following the inconclusive meeting between Justin Sun and selected Steem witnesses last night attention returned to the witness rankings. The large Korean stake holder @proxy.token played a decisive role causing major shifts in witness positions. --- ---

The Meeting between Justin Sun and the Witnesses

As reported in yesterday's Steem News a number of Steem witnesses were invited to a first meeting with Justin Sun yesterday. The meeting took place at 2am UTC on Zoom and was invite only. It was attended by Justin Sun and Roy Liu from the Tron Foundation, as well as Eli Powell of Steemit Inc, and well over 20 witnesses including @fredrikaa, @starkerz, @cervantes, @someguy123, @followbtcnews, @roelandp, @themarkymark, @klye, @netuoso, @ausbitbank, @lukestokes, @aggroed, @liondani, @timcliff, @svemirac, @theycallmedan, and @anomadsoul. The meeting was recorded and made available... https://youtu.be/Ymms5Eayog8 And also at... * https://www.mediafire.com/file/baicysy7aj4xy1p/2020-03-03_22-07-52.mp4/file This meeting had been brought forward by a day. A number of Steemians have posted their summaries and commentaries on the meeting including @ura-soul, @bengy and @taskmaster4450...

STEEM Witnesses 1st Meeting with TRON's Justin Sun - 3rd March 2020

My Thoughts: Steem Witnesses meet with Justin Sun (1st contact)

Justin Sun Wants Out?

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The Battle for the Top 20 continues

Aside from the continued Twitter storms against Binance and Huobi exchanges, the focus of attention today was on returning the original witnesses back into the top 20 positions. The day started with at least seven witnesses back into the top 10, and even more at one point. Then the very large Korean account @proxy.token arrived on the scene and used its 6.4 million Steem Power vote to return all the Tron backed witnesses to the top 20 slots. This shock move was explained in a post from the SteemCoinpan @sct account...

[공지] @proxy.token 증인 투표 운영 방침(@proxy.token witness voting policy)

The post expressed concern about the current situation and stated that @proxy.token will vote for the original witnesses as soon as they confirm their position on the following issues... > * Are you willing to shorten the SP power-down period to three to seven days from current period? > * Are you willing to remove down-voting policy of STEEM blockchain? > * Are you willing to introduce smart contact into the STEEM block chain? > * Are you willing to introduce a paid subscription model? Downvoting in particular has been an issue of concern for the Korean community on Steem for some time and was in fact raised at SteemFest. Negotiations were hastily initiated between a couple of of the top witnesses and representatives of the Korean community. After an hour or two it was agreed that @proxy.token would vote for 7 of the original steem witnesses to move them back into the top 20. @blocktrades. @good-karma, @roelandp, @yabapmatt, @anyx, @someguy123 and @ausbitbank are currently holding slots #1 - #7... * https://steem.arcange.eu/witnesses/ While 7 is not a hardfork enabling super-majority, it does provide the required 4 witnesses needed to block any hardfork initiated by the Tron backed witness block. This will prevent the hardfork proposed by Steemit Inc / Justin Sun to reduce the powerdown period to 3 days. The Binance and Huobi accounts are still blocked therefore from a rapid powerdown to restore the STEEM liquidity to their exchanges. With neither group of witnesses having a super-majority to implement changes a stalemate has now been reached until some major by either side. It is understood negotiations are going on behind the scenes. The next public happening will be the open Town Hall scheduled for Friday 6 March. No details of that meeting have yet been released. --- ---

Twitter Action

Steemians have been extremely vocal today on Twitter, with the Binance and Huobi exchanges bearing the brunt of their attention. Others have been sharing their thoughts to their followings including Steem's co-founder Dan Larimer... > I’m super excited to see how STEEM community is getting out the vote and keeping control decentralized. #dpos is resilient when under attack. * https://twitter.com/bytemaster7/status/1235027754577362946 Former owner of Steemit Inc, Ned Scott has also been active on Twitter today... * https://twitter.com/realNedScott/status/1235311560152821761 And in a long 12 part Tweet, Ned begins... > I love both Steemit and Steem. They are weird and awesome. I've been humbled and proud to see a thriving community grow from nothing. From the people creating amazing content, to developers building new dApps, to the witnesses who secure the chain. * https://twitter.com/realNedScott/status/1235316894770647040 --- ---

Reaction from the Community

The community has been very vocal in expressing their views on the current situation, and in encouraging everyone to power up and vote for witnesses...

@inertia - How To Solve the STEEM/Exchange Liquidity Crisis

@inertia - Was There A Contract?

@trafalgar - Why Did We Choose This Path?

@tarazkp - Takeback by Buyback

@distantsignal - The Steem and Sun Debacle

@gniksivart - The Steem/Justin Timeline, What Happened, and My Thoughts

@blockbrothers - Statement from the @blockbrothers #2

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Coverage in the Crypto Media

These current activities on Steem are attracting considerable attention in the crypto media...

CoinTelegraph - Huobi Withdraws Steem Votes, Admits to Mobilizing Customer Funds

Bitcoin.com - Tron's Steemit Acquisition Exposes Delegated-Proof-of-Stake Centralization

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And in other news...

@streetstyle has posted the winners of SPUD XI - @stuffbyspencer, @techcoderx, @mafalda2018...

SPUD XI OFFICIAL WINNER'S LIST

--- @radaquest has announced some new free games, and a profit sharing scheme...

Rada Quest: New Free Games and Profit Sharing

--- IBT Survival Island @ibt-survival has released demo 3 of the game...

Bitcoin.com - IBT Survival Island - This weeks update - Demo3 shortly

--- @hashkings are looking for funding support through Fundition and Patreon...

Bitcoin.com - Hashkings seeks funding

--- @blocktrades has formally announced that they have suspended the buying and selling of STEEM and SBD. Their liquid STEEM has been powered up for extra witness voting...

Bitcoin.com - BlockTrades' Steem wallet is temporarily disabled

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Steem Proposal System update

The Steem Proposal System (SPS) today has a daily funding budget available of approximately 2732 SBD. There are now 10 proposals receiving funding from the SPS - @yabapmatt (Steem Keychain), @netuoso (Vessel Desktop Wallet), @thecryptodrive (SBD Potato Top Up), @anyx (API infrastructure), @howo (SMT testing), @steemonboarding (Steem Onboarding), @themarkymark (Global Blacklist API), @fabien (Steem Connect improvements), @openseed (OpenSeed : Cross-Platform Off-Chain Solutions) and @steempeak (SteemPeak developments). These successful proposals are currently receiving a total of 1335 SBD per day from the SPS... * https://joticajulian.github.io/steemexplorer/#/proposals --- There has been a sudden upsurge of funding activity on the SPS - possibly as a side effect of witness proxying which is reflected on the SPS voting. Ten proposals are now being funded with the latest addition @OpenSeed gaining its first funding today. One of the OpenSeed founding team is @andrarchy who has just resigned from Steemit Inc. --- ---

KEY DATA [ from CoinMarketCap & @arcange ]

Steem price	US$ 0.190	05 Mar '20 2.58am UTC
CoinMarketCap Ranking	#78	05 Mar '20 2.58am UTC
FCAS Score	757 / A	05 Mar '20 2.58am UTC
SBD price	US$ 0.814	05 Mar '20 2.58am UTC
No. of Whales	45	03 Mar '20
No. of Orcas	369	03 Mar '20
No. of Dolphins	2217	03 Mar '20
No. of Minnows	9333	03 Mar '20
Alexa rank (steemit.com)	#15,704	04 Mar '20 11.11pm UTC
Unique visitors (steemit.com)	199,595 / day	04 Mar '20 11.11pm UTC
Page views (steemit.com)	459,068 / day	04 Mar '20 11.11pm UTC

Follow @penguinpablo, @steem-data & @steemdapps for more statistics. --- --- This is #275 (04 Mar '20) of this daily news service. --- --- [ graphics & images by @pennsif ]