In one prominent example, Steemit, a startup building a decentralized social network on their blockchain, Steem, had an on-chain governance system controlled by 20 witnesses. Voters used their STEEM tokens (the platform’s native currency) to choose the witnesses. While Steemit and Steem were gaining traction, Justin Sun had developed plans to merge Steem into Tron, a blockchain protocol he had founded in 2018. To acquire the voting power to do so, Sun approached one of the founders of Steem and bought tokens equivalent to 30 percent of the total supply. Once the then-current Steem witnesses discovered his purchase, they froze Sun’s tokens. What followed was a public back-and-forth between Sun and Steem to control enough tokens to install their preferred slate of top 20 witnesses. After involving major exchanges and spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on tokens, Sun was eventually victorious and effectively had free reign over the network.