Steem Community Relaunches Platform as Hive to Make It Truly Decentralized

Published at: March 18, 2020

The Steem (STEEM) community announced its intention to create a new platform in the wake of the controversy with Justin Sun. According to a blog post published on March 18, the new platform, named Hive, will launch on March 20.

The new platform will initially be launched as an exact code fork of the Steem blockchain, but it will not directly copy the current blockchain’s state.

Steem users will receive their balances through a 1:1 airdrop taken from a snapshot of the blockchain at 10 AM EST on March 20.

There is a major caveat, however, as the airdrop will not include Steemit Inc.’s “ninja-mine” of some 74 million STEEM tokens, currently worth $9.25 million — more than 20% of its $46 million market capitalization.

The community’s earlier fork that removed the stake was reportedly the reason why the governance crisis initially occurred, as Justin Sun — the new owner of Steemit Inc. — called it an illegal hacking attack.

The airdrop will also not include any other funds associated with the takeover attempt. Furthermore, exchange balances will not be automatically copied over. The companies must contact the Hive team to signal that they want their customers’ funds to be moved to the new blockchain.

The original Steem blockchain and its social platform will remain fully operational, though this split is likely to result in a diminished user base and possibly, price.

Steem community leaving for Hive

Cointelegraph reached out to Gandalf, the Hive community’s exchange liaison, for further comment.

When asked why the community decided to leave the Steem ecosystem altogether, Gandalf replied:

“The Steemit Inc stake which came with the purchase of Tron Foundation has always been a burden on the Steem blockchain. On several occasions during its 4-year history voices rose to codify the stake's purpose into the blockchain software instead of being a social contract. The events started by the purchase and subsequent false narratives, PR and centralization with help of exchanges sped things up significantly.”

He also referred to a March 16 post by influential community member and blockchain witness Blocktrades, where he argued that the Steem community should “refuse any compromise with Justin Sun.”

Blocktrades believes that Steemit Inc. now has no value due to the alienation of the community. He also claims that Hive is already counting on the support of 36 developers, some of whom were key Steem developers.

While effective community support is difficult to accurately gauge, the post received more than 1,800 STEEM tips and many supportive comments.

The Hive platform will initially only make small alterations to the Steem code to allow the community to decide on the future of the platform.

The community appears nevertheless to be excited to renew the development and improve the decentralization of the previous platform. This could lead to a renaissance of the social media project, which gradually declined since its 2018 peak.

The analogous EOS-based platform Voice was launched in 2019 by one of Steemit’s original founders.

Binance has already announced its intention to support the Hive airdrop. Its users will not need to withdraw their STEEM to claim Hive tokens, but there are no guarantees that the new token will be listed on the exchange.

The article was updated with additional information regarding support from Binance exchange.

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