Steemit Inc was recently acquired by Justin Sun, the founder of TRON. Following the acquisition, there seemed to be mixed support from within the Steem ecosystem, but positive response from the TRON community. Many argue that this move would help Steem expand marketing efforts and bring new users on to the various Steem-backed platforms.

A large percentage of the STEEM & STEEM POWER assets were held by Steemit Inc at the time of Sun’s acquisition, most of which came from the coin’s pre-mine (called the “ninja-mined stake”). This now became controlled by Justin Sun, even though the funds were said to be used only for decentralizing and developing the ecosystem.

The Steem community initiated a soft fork (Soft Fork 22.2) to limit the voting influence which Sun would have. In a post by Steem Witness @ats-witness, the motives for the fork are explained as reducing risk to the community from a single entity controlling a major stake in the asset. The post makes it clear that it is not that the community doesn’t trust Justin Sun, but rather that any entity should not have this centralizing power:

“In fact, the risk remained even if it was never relinquished because there were no on-chain actions taken by Steemit Inc. to decline their voting rights or remove/reallocate the stake even though the options were available….

I hope that the new ownership of Steemit Inc. can respect the dedication and relationships that many of us have with each other and with/in this ecosystem and that they can respect the amount of resources and personal investment that many of us have poured into building that ecosystem over the past four years.”