The leading spot exchange Binance has received a request to upgrade the STEEM network to version 0.23.
This controversial hard fork earlier this week aimed to freeze 23.6 million STEEM tokens worth $5 million of 65 accounts and reduce the un-staking time to 4 weeks from 13 weeks.
In an attempt to prevent the takeover of these funds, they were sent to crypto exchange Bittrex but as we reported the exchange has decided to not turn over these funds to their owners as they would be following the “consensus of the blockchain.”
Now, Binance has also agreed to support the upgrade and allow the users the “freedom to use their STEEM tokens as they see fit.”
“We don’t want to support this upgrade.But there is a flip side.If we don’t support it (technically), no users can withdraw any STEEM coins.The wallet stopped syncing at a certain height, and there are no other forks,” said Binance co-founder and CEO Chagpeng Zhao.
Over the next two months, the exchange will further reduce support for STEEM by cutting down its trading pairs to just one from the current 3 pairs.
CZ also advised one of the victims who reportedly lost $1 million due to this fork to “create a fork of STEEM just before the hard fork, and we will likely support that.” I’m a victim of this theft to the tune of almost $1,000,000 at the time of seizure.The #SteemHostileTakeover set this all in motion & now over $6,000,000 has been forcibly taken from innocent users.
Convenience should never take precedent over justice & personal responsibility.
— They Call Me Dan (@TheycallmeDan_) May 23, 2020
As CZ himself wondered, “Thought you would have sold those for HIVE long ago,” the Twitter user They Call Me Dan shared it was because he “fought in the voting war and kept my steem powered up until Hive was born.”
He powered down his Steem but as it takes 13 weeks to fully unstake Steem, which has now been reduced to just 4 weeks, they remained stuck on the Steem network.
Earlier this month, when Tron founder and CEO Justin Sun had a hostile takeover of the Steem, which he acquired late last year was with the help of Binance, Huobi, and Poloniex, a crypto exchange also acquired by Sun last year.
Later on, Binance and Huobi retracted their influence , which they gained through the tokens staked on the exchange.
Although this time there is no “power-up and voting” involved, this one is tricky, because this upgrade turns the asset balances on a few addresses into zero of which Binance is against, explained CZ.
“The fact that this can happen on a blockchain means it is overly centralized,” he said.And in that case, “fork away from it.” If this is accurate then in my opinion it will result in a class action lawsuit and the exchanges that participate in this will also be named defendants.#steemHF23 https://t.co/KBKOqsl2lu Get Free Email Updates! *Action* Enter Best Email to Get Trending Crypto News & Bitcoin Market Updates I will never give away, trade or sell your email address.
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