First of all I was saddened today by the news that SteemIt Incorporated was now part of the TRON network. The news might have seemed great. All the TRON stuff like Bittorrent, BTFS {Bit Torrent File System}, Dlive (remember that one?) and TRON dApps, and Steem(It) getting added to that. Considered to be great are also the partnerships(?) of TRON with Samsung (smartphones) and Opera (the browser). So why did my mood go down? That was after reading a TRON publication on Medium {SOURCE}. It was the part that made it look like the days of a substantive Steem blockchain would end soon. And everything would be ported to the TRON blockchain. Just like the LINO blockchain, home of dLive, moving over to the TRON blockchain on april the 15th 2020 {SOURC}. Some Crypto news sites made it seem it was already game-set-match, Steem was to move to the TRON blockchain, done deal.
This evening I decided to watch the recording of the LIVE video staring Justin Sun and Ned Scott. Where Ned joked about Steemians getting angry and wanted to fork off. There have been very heated discussions over the four years of Steem. And forking Steem has been mentioned before. Still, it is an option, and forking all the Steem source-code might be a good idea anyway (has already been done). It is like a backup, which is always a smart thing to do. And I do not know if there will be a fork right away. It took me a while to get back into a balance, and keep an open mind. See what comes next, a fork is possible anytime in the future, if things go pear-shaped. And hey, SMTs still will be implemented, as planned. To me that would be a game-changer for Steem and I think so since 2018, so it is about time that they go live.
Emotions are a bad adviser. And for one I think I was to quick letting doubt take over. It is something like feeling really sad if Steem were to end the way it has been. Even if I have my own ideas about how it could function. Also the reversed Sybil attack came back to mind. That is were an extremely wealthy external entity takes control, by getting access to a lot of Steem Power {SP}. Had not even thought about this entity also having a blockchain of its own. Being able to move everything over, Tokens, all the data and so on. Reading some articles by TRON and LINO did make worse. Where would be the truth? What is best? After watching the video with Justin Sun and Ned Scott, I felt like I wanted to keep an open mind.
My best days
Those are behind me, still I do publish on the Steem blockchain frequently. And recently I got interested in automation. Programming for interaction with the Steem blockchain. Javascript, did not go that well, but Python did really start to work in a way I wanted it too. New to that programming language, but fun to learn, as it is a quick way to put something together. (With the help of the excellent BEEM module by fellow Steemian Holger80.) And recently I started to enjoy Vala, a trans-compiler, that creates native code, by first translating Vala code to C. With the SOUP library I think I might get some interaction done with the Steem API. Just was getting in the flow of coding. Ideas popped up and dreams, little ones. Reading from the Steem blockchain and storing data on it. Having fun, learning and some new adventures on the Steem blockchain ahead. Then came the news and at first I saw the pro side, clearly. But then I read articles that had me doubt the true intentions of the business take-over.
And I just had started discovering new ways to interact with the Steem blockchain! For me as a geek, not a programmer, that opened a whole new inspiring realm. So, did it end now, before it even started? This would have become the start for creating dApps, using Steem as a blockchained database. On the other hand, any blockchain that has an API can be used. So maybe I change my initial setup in a way that it can interact with many different blockchains. In a way that would even be more fun. Have them interact maybe, or something like that. Trying new things, like adding BTFS functionality. Having a look into TRON and its dApps. Maybe I normally would not have bothered. Now it is almost needed to have a serious look into TRON and all that is related. Storing large amounts of data on BTFS, putting the HASH(es) on the Steem blockchain. Who knows, that might actually work. Or some payed storage system. Not all data needs to be stored for ever.
It aint half bad mate
Some things do look exciting. Next week some changes for the good already, as Justin Sun announced. Curious about what that might be. SMTs will come very soon, dApps still can run on the Steem blockchain. And if all else does fail, then there is always the option of a fork, as a last resort. That it least the way how I look at it now from a distance.