Tron's Takeover of Steemit Is Internet History Repeating Itself

Google-owned YouTube, the largest streaming media site on the web, started banning scores of content creators related to blockchain and cryptocurrency.

Our mission at POP Network, a blockchain media platform, is to help creators & communities find their freedom by decentralizing the streaming economy.

Unlike YouTube, POP Network works peer-to-peer with blockchain crypto-economic incentives.

If bitcoin is described as open, decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant and is the prime example of blockchain and decentralization evolving together in the financial sector, then its inverse example is now coming to life.

Tron's recent acquisition of Steemit, a blockchain-based blogging and social media website built on top of the public Steem blockchain, once again raises the question of whether decentralized media can remain that way.

Tron bills itself as "An ambitious project dedicated to building the infrastructure for a truly decentralized Internet." But it seems Tron colluded with top exchanges Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex to stake custodial Steem and replace elected DPoS witnesses on the Steem blockchain with their own.

Effectively, they are mounting a hostile takeover of a public blockchain, making it subservient to a private corporation.

If public blockchains are used just to reaggregate power and profits to private corporations or central governments, then what is their value to the users of those systems?

Blockchain without decentralization doesn't sound very interesting to me either.

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