BEOS Governance Considerations

stan (71)in #bitshares • 5 years ago (edited)

DISCLAIMER: The following represents the current thinking of the BEOS team and is subject to change without notice. Nothing should be interpreted as a statement of fact or promise to do anything. It is released here for community discussion purposes only.

Governance

Block.one has no role in BEOS and we do not foresee any circumstances in which they will get involved. Therefore, we do not foresee them utilizing their own funds to help develop the BEOS ecosystem. BEOS will still benefit from upgrades and improvements Block.one develops and releases as freely-licensed open source software because the two chains will essentially be the same and it will be trivial to import any EOS upgrades to BEOS.

BEOS will need to fund certain important endeavors to protect the network. A BEOS Endowment Trust Fund will be created for this purpose, but it will not be managed on the blockchain like the existing BitShares Reserve Fund. Instead, it will be managed by a traditional legal trust fund, the BEOS Limited Cooperative Association (BLCA). This is for pragmatic reasons. A conventional board of trustees is able to make contracts, act quickly, and maintain commitment to a plan longer than a purely democratic process can achieve. This is another way where BEOS may be thought of as a hybrid chain built to be efficient and pragmatic, not ideologically pure.

Initially, the Trustees of the fund will be selected by the founding BEOS team. After launch, trustees will be elected on a staggered basis much the way that Commissioners in the American SEC serve their terms. One or two trustees will rotate out and be replaced each year who will then serve a three-year term. This is intended to maintain some stability for the fund so that a long-term vision can be developed and executed while control transfers from those appointed by the developers to those elected by the community.

Initial BLCA Directors and their term expiration dates

Dec 31, 2019 Stan Larimer
Dec 31, 2020 Angus McGlynn
Dec 31, 2020 Tim Burke
Dec 31, 2021 Michael Taggart
Dec 31, 2021 Paul Martello

The responsibilities of the fund will include rapid legal response to defend the network and its participants to make grants for the defense and welfare of the blockchain industry at the discretion of the trustees. It will be funded with 1 billion BEOS tokens to ensure that there are sufficient resources. The Trustees will hold the right to vote for block producers and participate in governance related votes. This results in a bicameral form of government, initially with 2/7ths (1B BEOS) of the voting power residing with the Trustees and 5/7ths (2.5B BEOS) residing with the holders of the circulating supply. If the Trustees gradually spend their fund into circulation their voting power will decrease, although the fund is envisioned to function like an endowment to be borrowed against or used to generate income for the Trust, ideally without touching the initial principle.

At the time the chain is first launched, a general-purpose worker proposal system will not yet exist and must be developed. Because of this, the chain will begin its life with a hard-coded Genesis Worker Account (GWA) to guarantee that the chain will have adequate initial funding for future needs. Block Producers will be paid from a small amount of inflation, not to exceed the max rate already established for EOS.

The GWA will be considered as automatically voted in as a side-effect of depositing funds to the rainfall gateway. In other words, BEOS users are implicitly voting that GWA and endowment will be spent on the maintenance and future development of the chain by claiming their tokens. This ensures that there will be a sufficient pool of BEOS to maintain and enhance the chain and that the costs of bug fixes and improvements are shared equally by all the participants in the network.

The GWA will stop accumulating funds after two years, but unused funds accumulated in the account will still be available to fund support of the blockchain until the account’s balance is exhausted. If and when the blockchain has implemented a general-purpose worker proposal system, worker proposals can be created by any BEOS holder who wants to propose specific tasks they would like to see funded that they believe will be beneficial for the community.

Gateways Managed by Block Producers

As the bridge between BitShares and EOS, BEOS will enable any token running on the BitShares network to be easily moved to the BEOS blockchain and eventually to other EOS side chains. This will be accomplished in one of two ways, depending on how the BitShares community chooses to proceed. If the BitShares community votes to enable inter-blockchain capabilities, this will take place entirely on-chain, which would be ideal. Otherwise, this will be accomplished through gateways initially operated by the developers, but ultimately operated by the block producers.

BEOS elected block producers will eventually have the duty of managing multi-signature escrow accounts on the BitShares network that enable sequestering any token on the BitShares chain that is to be moved to the BEOS chain. “Proxy” tokens representing the BitShares tokens will be issued to the owner on the BEOS chain. This will be similar to existing gateways on the BitShares network, but accomplished in a far more democratic and secure manner.

Proxy of Staked BTS Voting Power to BCDT Trustees

While participants in the rainfall have their BTS locked up in escrow backing corresponding proxy tokens on the BEOS side, they are explicitly licensing the BCDT trustees to vote those BTS for the good of BEOS integration with BitShares. This should increase the value of the BEOS rainfall they are collecting, by supporting closer BTS integration.

Summary

BEOS will take a pragmatic approach using trust engineering techniques drawn from traditional human in the loop trust structures for governance combined with incorruptible blockchain technology for asset ownership and smart contracts. Depending upon willingness of the BitShares community to support tighter integration, this may change over time.

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