My Initial Thoughts on Ned's Announcement a Few Hours Ago...

I don't think anybody saw that coming. I mean, we've barely finished up with Steemfest and then we had "The Bridge" sessions not too long back, so what gives? Everything was apparently running like clockwork behind the scenes at Steemit Inc. you'd think. Well, everybody knows the answer to that right about now. And the community reacted pretty much the same way I thought it would. The two distinct camps from before, who've seemingly already made up their minds about our platform and blockchain, said what was expected. No change there. But for what it's worth, here's what I'm taking away from it, considering the short amount of time I've had to digest the info.

For now anyways, Steem and Steemit is the best case scenario. I mean for the foreseeable future or until we get more information to go off, anyways. SMT's and everything related have been shelved. I know some people are still holding out hope for this final vision of an eco-system that Ned promised, but judging from the video and his overall demeanour, this is gone bye bye for now. It's all about sustaining what has previously been built in addition to waiting out the rest of this horrendous crypto winter.

Another thing a little concerning for me at present, is the message that's been sent out from last night. In other words, is this a blockchain that would seem attractive to potential third party developers? With a few competitive options already on the table for their choosing, I would hate to think they'd go elsewhere to base their operations. But then again, that's assuming other alternative blockchains aren't going through similar kinds of struggles that we are. However, given that some competitors in the space already have a huge financial budgetary advantage over us, it's disconcerting, to say the least.

The problem is, as I mentioned, there's not much information to go on, apart from the announcement itself. Like how bad the financial situation actually is? Ned made some proposals that work as a band-aid for the time being, but one thing is pretty clear to me. Maybe it always has been. And that's in the end, the responsibility and maintenance of the blockchain will ultimately lie with the community as a whole. It's just that the blockchain itself is not quite there yet technology-wise, for that implementation to work effectively. Development in the tweaking of it's code and variables, are paramount at present, before we can even "think" about any type of collective automation of processes. Again, theses are just my personal thoughts on the matter.

I must say that I'm also quite taken aback to discover that there seems to have been no substantial protective financial buffer set in place to cover the costs of running operations down at HQ. At the height of the crypto market prices near the beginning of the year, that was a golden time to take care of this. But I suppose "price bottoms" were assumed and plans co-ordinated to that effect. But this is crypto, where fluctuations in the market are on such a volatile scale that literally "anything" is possible, as we can clearly see. Oh well, I'm just making an observation. No use retreading old ground. What's done is done.

So, going forward from here? Well, it's a collaborative effort, of course. All hands on deck, as it were. As I can't ascertain "how" bad things are, having Steemit functioning as it always has been, is good enough for me regarding the immediate future. I'm also praying those incredible development project teams that are already doing their thing using the Steem blockchain, continue to do so until some sort of resolution is formulated. I really hope this is just another "hiccup" in the history of Steem, albeit a much larger one than we'd have wished for.