Crypto exchange Binance published an open letter to air its side about the controversy involving TRON CEO Justin Sun and the DPoS-based crypto platform STEEM. The letter was addressed to the STEEM community members.
Binance apologized for the situation which it believed was due to “miscommunication about the specifics of the blockchain’s upgrade/hard fork.” The exchange added that after receiving the feedback from the community, it decided to “unvote.”
“Binance stays neutral and has no interest in on-chain governance beyond the Binance ecosystem. We hold a supportive position of normal upgrade/hard fork and will continue to do so in the future,” the letter read.
“Hopefully, the STEEM community and TRON will reach a consensus in an efficient manner. If they fail to reach an agreement and it poses potential risks/damages to STEEM users on Binance, we reserve the right to take corresponding actions at the consent of our users.”
According to Binance, it participates in community voting in their users’ interests. It provides staking services to PoS-based crypto users on the platform and will continue to distribute staking rewards to PoS-based crypto users on Binance regularly.
Backstory: Steem vs Tron Controversy
Sun has reportedly “strategically partnered” with the members of the STEEM community. Following Sun’s acquisition, the STEEM community orchestrated a coordinated preemptive “due diligence” to soft fork the blockchain to deactivate the major stake called the “ninja-mined stake” owned by Steemit.
The ninja-mined stake comprised roughly 74 million tokens and there was a concern that Sun would have excessive control over the platform if he has the power to dispense the voting rights that came with the stake.
Sun declared that it was a criminal action by malicious hackers and enlisted three major exchanges including Binance, Huobi and Tron-owned Poloniex to vote the STEEM tokens deposited by their users for a hard fork to reverse the community’s action.
According to Cointelegraph, Huobi has already announced that it removed its vote. Meanwhile, Poloniex is yet to release a statement about the matter.