Holy S**T!!!! Steem Hardfork At Block 18,500??? That is Two Weeks!!!

Is the steem blockchain forking?

If my reading of the white paper for the Vice is correct, we are looking at a fork in approximately two weeks.

To start, here is a pic of the Vicetoken website.

Notice how it says "A blockchain for the Attention Economy"? When the site was Vice.org, it said build on the steem blockchain. That was up over this past weekend so this must be a new development.

Now we see the name of the token in the white paper referred to as the "Vice Industry Token".

“The Vice Industry Token and its blockchain will
revolutionize the entire online traffic Industry”

• Stuart Duncan, CEO, Vice Industry Token and Blockchain”

Wow....Sound familiar?

...Existing adult websites can quickly and easily power their own websites with
the help of the Vice Industry Token Blockchain and our B2B
assistance program to help any business integrate our blockchain
into their web monetization strategy. While we will initially
operating in the adult sphere, our blockchain and implementation
teams can easily benefit and cross over into other industry verticals
and help many types of video content distribution businesses, not
just adult pornography.

Then there is this...notice the word "similar":

We are implementing the world’s most scalable public blockchain software
platform capable of over 100,000 transactions per second similar to
that powering the Steem and EOS blockchains.

Similar to is not the same as the Steem blockchain....

This is like reading the SMT and Steem white papers....

The Vice Industry Token offers immediate liquidity by offering two
conversion methods. The first is through a decentralized exchange
as part of the Vice Industry Token Protocol utilizing automated
market makers to standardize the value of tokens relative to other
currencies (both crypto and fiat). This allows users to have a real-
time sense of the value of their tokens, and the ability to convert
them on demand.

Any guesses who else uses Chainbase/Graphene and IPFS? I will give you a hint, it starts with "s" and ends in "m".

Vice Industry Token sites will all be decentralized video platforms,
offering familiar and relatable user interfaces in many ways similar
to existing tube websites. They will utilize the ChainBase/Graphene
blockchain platform for social interactions and text, as well as the
Inter Planteary File system (IPFS) for hosting and delivering media.
The sites can also operate using existing legacy video files sharing
and even peer-to-peer bittorrent type interfaces. All will be
powered by the Vice Industry Token which will facilitate user
rewards for engagement, while enabling site operators to collect
fees for transactions.

Hmmm, this sounds familiar too....

Since its functionality can equally
benefit viewers and creators of all types of video content, we will
enable any party to duplicate the portal to run their own Vice
Industry Token blockchain node under their own brand, and in any
language. They will also have the flexibility to modify their version of
the portal at their discretion, and add other off-chain features.

But wait, there is more:

We will offer a re-branding option to provide ample opportunity for
enterprising parties worldwide to create their own specialized
versions of the Vice Industry Token with their own unique flair. In
the interest of enriching the overall network of users of both the
sites that are created and the Vice Industry Token, those who
operate Vice Industry Token nodes will be able to earn Vice Industry
Tokens as transaction fees for all tokens transacted on their node.

I read this somewhere else....

The Vice Industry Token network is an inflationary system, in which
new token generation (inflation) will start at a 10%, degrading to 1%
over ten years, at which point it remains constant. All new tokens
will be generated by the system as rewards for producers,
participants and curators.

I think @ned got some 'splaining to do....

It should be noted that as part of the Vice Industry Token Network
protocol, website operators that utilize our blockchain are free to
retain a percentage of all rewards distributed. All Current Vice
Industry Token partner websites will be collecting 3% of all rewards
paid out to users of their web properties on the Vice Network.

ICO via ETH:

The price of each proxy token will be sold at at a fixed amount of
ETH equivalent to ~$0.05 of ETH at the beginning of the crowdsale.

According to steemd.com, we are at block 18,095 which, according to my calculations, is about two week from block 18,500.

Upon the token’s launch, 400,000,000 (10%) of the genesis tokens
will be air dropped to Steem holders of block number 18,500 on the
Steem Blockchain.

There you have it. This looks like the Steem blockchain is being forked and we will have Steem and the Vice blockchains. For the trouble, steemians are going to get 400,000,000 Vice tokens (I am guessing it is a 1 for 1 token "dividend").

All characteristic of the Steem blockchain are mentioned in the Vice white paper. Quite frankly, I cant figure out another way to have that happen other than a fork.

Perhaps someone else knows.

Here is the timeline in the white paper:

January 3, 2018 Pre-crowdsale begins.

February 1, 2018 Launch of Token Crowdsale.

February 28, 2018 end of Crowdsale and distribution of ERC20
proxy Tokens.

May 1, 2018 Release of Vice Industry Token Testnet.

June 1, 2018 Launch of the Vice Industry Token MainNet and
expiration of Refund Contract.

June 28, 2018 Launch of first Vice Industry Token site.

If you found this to be informative (how could you not), upvote and resteem....this sucker needs to go viral.