RE: Proposal for an incremental Constitution and Dapp layer governance on EOS
A thief steals someones tokens and the token holder calls ECAF to step in - ECAF agrees to step in and freezes the account (highly unlikely as it's not set up to act this quickly), the thief has not agreed to arbitration, yet ECAF agrees to arbitrate anyway. How is this arbitration when their are not two parties agreeing to it? It's not.
The point of creating the constitution as a multiparty contract is to make sure that all transactions that happen on the blockchain are under its jurisdiction. If you make a transaction on the blockchain, you agree to the constitution contract, so ECAF can arbitrate a dispute that arises because of a transaction that you made.
If you disagree with this, then you have a larger problem: Does any kind of constitution for a blockchain have any legitimacy? "Constitution as a multiparty contract" is pretty good framework in my opinion. So far I haven't seen any better.
If a constitution is not a valid multiparty contract, then it's basically just a wishlist of how the users would like everyone to behave. Enforcing any of it might become problematic because it's validity can be always questioned. This applies to v2, too.
It's enforcement. You guys are claiming ECAF doesn't have enforcement powers when it clearly does.
It's not a question about enforcement – that's still a job for the BPs. It's a question about jurisdiction: Does the ECAF have the right to make a ruling for certain cases or not?
In terms of the unresolved disputes - my advise to ECAF would be to resolve as many of them as you can before we vote via referendum and show the community your worth rather than holding these cases over the community as some means of political leverage in order to gain funding.
My point is not about disputes that are currently open, but more generally that certain kinds of disputes won't be resolved at all with v2. Except maybe in some very lucky cases where police in some country manages to catch the thief.
For a market economy to work properly, it's really bad idea to just bluntly leave disputes unresolved. Nobody likes a business environment like that.
The dispute would be between the State and the Dapp.
What kind of dispute? Remember that ECAF only has jurisdiction over disputes that happen onchain. For offchain disputes it can't make any rulings. So there must transactions on the blockchain that create the dispute.
And to solve that dispute, the guideline is, in Dan's own words: "EOS is designed to focus on restorative restitution rather than punitive retribution."
Freezing an account can be done only for a certain period of time, in order to fix what's wrong and then it's unfrozen. Freezing an account is not a punishment, because dispute resolution in EOS doesn't focus on punishing users, it focuses on restoring the situation back to where it was before the dispute.
From this perspective it's very difficult for a state to force ECAF to make rulings. If it's not about certain transactions on the EOS blockchain, it's very easy to see that the ruling is out of ECAF's jurisdiction and BPs will ignore it. And if it's about certain transactions, but the ruling is more like a punishment rather than restitution, BPs (and the whole community) can easily question the validity of the ruling.
I appreciate all you ECAF guys for coming on here and putting forth your side and for that I thank you.
Thanks. I also appreciate that people make the effort to write exactly what they see is wrong with the current system.
BTW, I'm not "ECAF guy", I don't have any relationship with it. I'm more a "core level dispute resolution guy" because as a libertarian I see it necessary. If we don't have dispute resolution, we don't have free markets.
'What kind of dispute?'
Censorship of an onchain dapp - as per the example in the article.
'If a constitution is not a valid multiparty contract, then it's basically just a wishlist of how the users would like everyone to behave.'
Agreed and that's exactly my point. Without actionable rules and consequences it's pointless.
And if BPs can simply ignore ECAF rulings, again, what's the point?
The businesses built on EOS will be dapps, I'm not recommending disputes go unresolved, just move arbitration to the layer of the dapp(s).
They can't simply ignore BP rulings, they can only decline to implement them if they feel that the Community wishes it otherwise. In which case it is in effect referred to the Community. Who vote out the BPs, or agree with the BPs, or conduct a referendum.
How is declining to implement them not the same as ignoring them?
This is all getting very semantical.
How about;
Look at, yet pay no heed to
But how exactly they would convince ECAF that censorship must happen?
There must be a dispute over an article of the constitution. Which article that could be? And how it is broken by a dapp so that somebody can demand it to be censored? ECAF doesn't have any jurisdiction on things outside the constitution, so it can't give any rulings on them.
If ECAF/EMAC are named as the sole arbitrator on the protocol layer then they provide the access for states to make these kinds of requests.
How would they convince ECAF/EMAC to act? Threats probably.
No matter how many threats they make against ECAF it doesn't have any effect. If the case is not a dispute over certain articles in the constitution, ECAF can't do anything about it. ECAF simply doesn't have the authority to make those rulings.
If ECAF makes a ruling that's clearly outside of its jurisdiction, it will be immediately noticed and ECAF's indepencency will be seen as compromised. Until this has been dealt with, no rulings from ECAF will be taken seriously.
Protocol layer = the constitution. ECAF can't do anything about things outside of the constitution.
Please, write down the whole case like you think it would go. Then you can see it is practically impossible to happen in real life.