Is this the decentralization they were looking for?

Listen, I know some of you still feel stung from DLive leaving Steem. I get it, I don't want to open up old wounds here. Fact is, I contintued using both Steem and DLive after the split.

But I cannot help but feel trauma-bonded with you all after Justin Sun purchased both DLive and Steemit in such a short fashion.

In such a little time, I lost both of the communities that I felt closest to.

In both cases, he had me for a minute

I didn't know anything about Tron so I literally had to start at the ground floor. Friends that I greatly respect showed immediate concerns, I played the "wait and see" game.

I absolutely believe that DLive would have folded if it wasn't for Justin Sun. They call it a "partnership" but he bought them out and kept them afloat. So, in a way, it is sort of a "what does the community have to lose".

Apparently, what they have to lose, is 15% more of their donations.

My friend tweeted this awesome spreadsheet that breaks it down pretty good.

How it started after they left Steem

Initially they ran everything on the Lino testnet, your Lino points could be staked. It was an easy calculation:

Every time someone donated, 9.9% of the donation went to the Community Staked "Pot". What you receieved from stake rewards depended on the daily "pot", how much total was staked, and how much you had staked, as such:

Your Stake Rewards = (Your staked lino / total staked lino) X Total Stake Rewards.

Basically, your percentage of the total staked gets that percentage of the staked pot.

This entire time, Lino was available to be purchased and sold through Lino only for a flat price of $0.012 USD.

I would like to add, they paid for their validators (block producers) through the inflation. Part of that inflation was also used as "content bonuses" based on a bunch of math.

Then, they changed it.

They wanted to change it to two different coins. Lino would be now only be used for staking and rewards. They added Lemons as the "stable coin" and donation coin of the platform, keeping the price the same on that.

How it worked was 9.9% of lemon donations where "converted" to Lino to be distributed to stake holders.

What happened then was obvious and very predicatable.

This platform was full of streamers. Very, very top-heavy of streamers comparted to viewers. Much like we can related to on Steem and Hive, having so many content creators without the large content consumption audience.

The reason that is such a big deal is much of the donations were between stakeholders who were also getting donations and stake rewards. People were using their stake rewards to donate to other streamers. It was very much a thought and expecation to spread it around. Once they changed it to Lino and Lemons, however, the liquid Lemons used to donate were drying up because 9.9% of the lemons were essentially "burned" and converted to Lino, taking the liquidity out of the available donations. Then, the only way you could Get more lemons was to be donated them or buy them.

Everyone paying attention could see what was happening. Donations were slowing down and continued to drop. I can only assume that when they changed over to Lemons is was their hope that purchases of lemons would outpace their need to pay for servers and paying out to streamers. I felt, even then when things were sort of exciting, that the end was near.

"But now that the percentage of donations that went to staking rewards goes up from 9.9% to 25%, that is more money for the community"

No, it doesn't. Thats more money for BTT holders, which very likely is mostly Justin Sun. BTT has been available for over a year. BTT holders are largely outside the platform.

If you were in the United States during the conversion, you had to do KYC verification and cash out. If you were outside of the country, YOU HAD TO USE JUSTIN SUNS POLONIEX EXCHANGE TO GET YOUR BTT.

You can read the details here for more information.

The amount of Lino converted compared to the amount of BTT already out there is a drop in the bucket. There is no way the DLive "community" is going to get any sort of majority of rewards with this.

This is further centralization and protection.