There has been a “coup”on the Steem platform.

Justin Sun and Tron Foundation – with the help of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges – gained control of the Steem blockchain.

Exchangers where Steem tokens were stored(Binance, Huobi and Poloniex) used them to “vote” for the change. In practice, this has shown that when users hold a large number of assets on exchanges, this gives companies the opportunity to influence decentralized networks, especially when management authority is granted by the native asset.

Let us recall that on February 14, Justin Sun announced the acquisition of the Steemit platform, which owns a huge amount of the STEEM cryptocurrency. 

February 23 Steem community leaders and validatorsThe blockchain was initiated by a soft fork, which limited the number of tokens owned by Steemit. Leaders and validators of the Steem network are called “witnesses.” They perform the same function as miners in the bitcoin network. Now the aftermath of the soft fork has been canceled, and the Tron Foundation has again gained full control over the site.

It's worth noting that Steem developers, including the lead blockchain developer and head of communications, recently announced that they were leaving the project. 

Vitalik Buterin, creator of Ethereum, said:

Apparently, Steem DPOS was captured, andmajor exchanges used customer funds to vote. It seems that we are witnessing the first case of “attack through bribery” when voting with assets.

At the moment, representatives of Tron, Steemit and Huobi did not give official comments on this matter. Binance head Changpen Zhao tweeted:

I was aware of upcoming updates and approved them. Various projects constantly do this, and the exchange, as a rule, approves such decisions.

In the comments on his post, Justin Sun wrote:

False comments that we are working with exchangers to seize power are not true. We were not going to take over the network, so the voices of all parties will be withdrawn.

In a separate publication, he added:

We will withdraw all votes as soon as we are sure that hackers will no longer be able to sabotage STEEM. After that, we will return all rights to the community. The voices of all exchangers will be withdrawn soon.

Based on materialswww.coindesk.com