How I lost over 50$ worth payout because of the funds seizure by Steem Witnesses?

Note: If you are lazy to read the whole article, you can skip to the last paragraph.

My experience on Steem was never a pleasant one in the last 2.5 years. I invested a lot on Steem looking for opportunities and unfortunately I couldn't see my funds grow. The price of steem kept falling like anything because of many unfortunate events on Steem. I have also been sincerely posting articles every single day and most of the time my rewards end up in cents rather than even dollars. Only in recent times I have been getting some decent rewards for my posts. I have been using the @likwid service for the past two months on steem because of the inconsistencies in the blockchain. Recently, the witnesses did a seizure to nullify some of the accounts with the help of a hard fork. This has also affected me in a little way.

I was expecting a 50$ payout on my post and a 16$ payout on another post that was voted by @appreciator. I had set a 100% beneficiary to @likwid to get the rewards in liquid. Recently when there was information spreading about the hard fork 23, I was curious to check who were the 64 accounts was getting affected because of this. I noticed the name of likwid in that. I don't know what harm they did in this context. As far I see likwid was a good service that was benefiting the people on the blockchain. It was also not something that was introduced recently or after the chain split. It has been there for a very long time. They also do a decent curation service as well along with likwid service.

I was so surprised to see their name on the list and it was more than 4 million steem that was nullified from their account. I was curious to check if my payouts were fine or not and the day before yesterday I noticed that I had not been getting my rewards on steem for the past 12 days. My last payout from likwid was 12 days ago. I approached their discord server and asked for help and it looks like they are already screwed and I'm helpless like everyone else who had their pending rewards on likwid. Today the team posted an article listing out the authors who were affected because of this.

https://steempeak.com/steem/@likwid/operation-affected-by-hardfork-23

According to me, if there was something wrong with the likwid service, a notice should have been given to @likwid to stop their activities or some negotiations should be made. Because of this funds seizure from @likwid account to @community321 account it is not only affecting the @likwid service but also the other individuals who were using that service. With frustration I would like to say that this is a stupid move by the witnesses.

If a group of people can seize the funds from the wallet of certain accounts, what safety the blockchain provides to the investors. All the new investors of Steem Blockchain and people who are staying invested should think about this and make a wise decision. If the seizure can happen today for all these 64 accounts, this can happen for any of our accounts as well in the future. Forget all the problems and politics we have on Steem blockchain, the fundamental safety of the assets itself is into question now.

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Were you also someone who was affected because of HF23? What do you feel about the HF23 and Steem as a whole? Please share your thoughts in the comments section.

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