image credit pixabay.com

If you haven't yet heard, there is a new graphene chain coming to town; the Blurt project is set to launch on or before the 4th of July 2020, with an already active testnet in place ... wait what?! Blart?! Bluuuurt?! ... no, just simply Blurt! Otherwise represented as B!#RT in the logo. The name is quirky, but so is Google and Yahoo, the key is it is memorable! Do you think you will forget the name BLURT?

Blurt is appropriately named, because as a blockchain social media user, you should always be able to speak your mind and be free to "Blurt" out and express your thoughts and ideas, without persecution. As such, Blurt will have no downvotes and the worst anyone can do is say something nasty to you, but they can't attack the rewards you earned by virtue of the stake you hold or the network of followers you have built.

The black mouth gag and the special characters in the B!#RT logo are not meant to depict swear words, but rather making a stand against censorship, shadow-banning and de-platforming that occurs on corporate-controlled social media.

image credit pixabay.com

Born out of the ashes

Blurt was born from the conflict and centralisation which arose on Steem after the recent acquisition of the flagship Ui steemit.com by the infamous Justin Sun of the Tron network. An overview of the conflict can be found in this coindesk article:

https://www.coindesk.com/bittrex-steem-seized-hard-fork

Blurt has identified the market opportunity to create a neutral chain with no ill-will towards the communities of Steem or Hive, starting its genesis state just prior to Hard Fork 23 where the balances of certain Hive member accounts were appropriated on the Steem blockchain. Blurt will keep them all intact!

Blurt will also include other accounts previously excluded from the Hive airdrop.

The only point still up for debate and is hotly contended within the Blurt team is whether or not to include the Steemit stake in Blurt Genesis, the decision is critical to social acceptance and exchange adoption, each of which may be a trade-off against the other.

Please take the time to vote for the below dpoll and let your voice be heard!

https://dpoll.io/detail/@jacobgadikian/should-steemit-inc-stake-be-included-in-blurts-genesis/

Also kindly engage in the Gitlab repo which outlines the suggested Steemit stake accounts for exclusion.

https://gitlab.com/blurt/blurt/-/issues/10

Arguements for and Against excluding the Steemit stake

Cons of keeping the Steemit Stake

The Steemit stake was minted as tokens for the steward company of the Steem blockchain alone, Steemit is not a steward of Blurt and likely will not use their funds for the benefit of Blurt. Steemit owns Steemit.com and likely that they won’t support Blurt and rather redirect Blurt gains to support steemit.com
Dump risk devaluing Blurt, risk of 4+ Million tokens per week hitting the market over 13 weeks, or any other amount over a longer period of time, Blurt likely will not be able to absorb such dumping, historically Steemit used to dump approx 800 000 tokens per month which Blurt still may not be able to absorb in the early stages in addition to other whale and community sell-off,
A devalued Blurt token will impact on growth and ability to pay the team, developers and pay for exchange listings, in addition to lack of interest in running witness nodes, specifically backup witnesses thus impacting on chain security and robustness.
Steemit Stake keeps growing at a rate of over 1 Mil tokens per year based on 2.5% staking inflation.
Justin Sun is generally untrustworthy at his word and has a bad reputation in the crypto industry.
Blurt may be accused of enriching an alleged thief and bad actor due to Justin and Steemit Inc's support of HF 23 which appropriated funds from a select set of users invovled in the competing chain, Hive, https://www.coindesk.com/bittrex-steem-seized-hard-fork
including the Steemit stake might anger the Hive communit and could lead to attacks from Hive whales and devs across many attack vectors, which will take up time and cause us many distractions, shifting focus from growth.
Users and developers may be reluctant to build on and promote Blurt because all they are doing is making Justin Sun (biggest stakeholder) rich.
Not having the Steemit stake helps differentiate Blurt from Steem rather than being a vanilla clone and further protects us against any copyright infringement/legal action Steemit may cook up.
Will need to improve and have robust consensus algo’s well before the 2 year reign of regent account ends to prevent Steemit/Justin from controlling consensus again in the absence of the Regent, Blurt does however plan to research and improve consensus anyway.
Could deter investors due to uncertainties regarding the Steemit stake and what they do with it.
It is arguable that although the stake was mined in the same way as other of the early miners (pre-social network), by the fact that the developers and releasers of the chain were mining it for the clear intent of corporate strategy and thus the property of the company, for its chain, it does not fit in the category of user accounts started by outside entities.

None of the early accounts amount to big sunk costs, to be sure, but most of the founders also mined their own personal accounts, the Steemit account was specifically a group effort.

There are numerous offshoots of this account also that were delegated various portions of it as well. The account(s) are effectively the equivalent of fiscal policy tools, and it is intended to run that differently in Blurt, as Steemit, Inc. was and is heavily spending based on this stake as part of its income stream. It is partly our position as competitor that this debases the users’ stake in general at the level it was done, and core to the mission of Blurt.

Pros of keeping the Steemit Stake

Technically easier to keep it with no delays in launch (Edit it is an easy implementation and will cause no delay)
Preserved full state of chain and narrative of upholding property rights
Blurt might not get support from external grants such as Ethereum Foundation etc if Steemit stake is excluded
Justin Sun could pump Blurt price
In Bitcoin forks no accounts got wiped, preserving long term continuation of the chain (however, Blurt is based on historical snapshot excluding newer users so perhaps this justification does not apply to Blurt)
Potentially lower marcap because some circulating supply would be missing, meaning all chains being equally valued at 20 cents, Blurt would have a lower marcap than Hive and Steem. (Not worried about this - Jake)

Discussion document also available on GITLAB

This decision is not to be taken lightly, each and every one of you who had an account on Steem pre HF 23 before the 20th May 2020 will get an airdrop on Blurt equal to your original Steem balance.

DPOLL VOTE: Should the Steemit Inc Stake be included in Blurt Genesis