I most certainly did not start the fur flying but until it all settles on the ground and the post mortem is done, I'm only gonna be visible here from time to time and you will notice my username pop up every few hours in the git, until Monday, at least.
I can believe the offender might be inclined to dine on humble pie as I think it is a very easy bet to say that Blurt will appreciate greatly in value once the Justin Solar Eclipse passes. We are the producers, he is an intermediary, value does not go in the opposite direction.
I will just say that I saw this coming more than a week ago, and I categorically reject that I provoked it, since I did not act first.
The Rap Sheet
The offender was throwing his weight around regarding an admin posting some current political slogans innocently in the welcome message at the discord, a black man from Africa, no less, ignorant of the political context. He threatened to delist us from his little exchange if it was not removed.
Then a little later he started asserting that he had some sort of special privilege with regard to getting the support of the DAO for his own community project, in the private witness chatroom.
Next he followed up with some sneaky social engineering, pointing out a flaw we knew existed but are stretched on budget to fix, caught one of the founders in a distracted state and got seemingly explicit permission to post regarding this issue on the forum, which obviously would alert other potential attackers. This was the act that made my claws involuntarily extend.
Next, after I pointed out how utterly obnoxious and hostile it was to raise attention to this since our beloved @baabeetaa was in the process of working up the fix, who is a volunteer, a cofounder and Blurt believer, and he upped the ante by publishing explicit code to exploit the vulnerability.
I don't know about you but this does not seem like the track record of a loyal supporter of this project and while the damage is petty and ridiculous, making threats and pushing his politics, presuming privilege, attempting to sully the reputation of one of the founders, putting undue and unnecessary pressure on our most valuable developer, none of this something we should respond to with placation.
He needs to step off and apologise and maybe he gets to keep his witness role. As it is, right now I can see that the man in charge of ensuring we can push this necessary security fix through has shuffled the votes around and he is no longer on the top of the schedule. It is probably a coincidence but I moved up one spot also.
Just last night I was approached on the discord by another prospective witness. These positions are a privilege and do not accrue to those who abuse the trust, disrespect people and publish exploits on the chain.
The Upgrade
As though Lady Fortuna is trying to say something to me, you can see that as soon as my witness finished replaying, it was my turn to make a block.
I am not saying or doing any of these things in order to put a feather in my cap. I saw trouble coming, I warned people and everyone was too ready to be lenient.
Lenience will only be deserved at this point if he apologises and does some kind of penance to prove he really means it.
Let it be known that there is sharp eyes watching all of the community as far as is possible in parallel to my development work.
I am very grateful to @jacobgadikian for fostering my development, without his support I would be unable to do any work at all, and would be scraping around homeless. Attending to the community and doing my helper monkey thing is part of my brief, and I think it was, albeit a little over enthusiastic, I don't think the security of our community nor the sanctity of the inner circle whose work this all depends on are outside of my remit.
stalker.loki upgrade complete!
Blurt Loves You!