EOS: The Biggest Online Social Experiment Ever Has A Rough Start

I think it's time to try and shed some light on the state of EOS as there's a lot of information and disinformation surrounding the launch, causing Fear, Uncertainy and Doubt among the many EOS HODLers here on Steemit (and elsewhere).

_EOS.io

How can an ICO that has been in the works for more than a year, is headed by Steemit's own @dan, one of the most brilliant minds in the cryptosphere, and has managed to raise more than four billion dollars, be delayed and have so many startup and security problems? No one can blame any EOS hodler for having these burning questions. The official end-date of the ICO was June 1^st, but now, on the 27th of June when I open my Exodus wallet, I'm greeted with the following when trying to copy my address to the clipboard:

_WTF?!?!

And when I press the "Learn More" option, I'm transported to this site, where Exodus explains by showing an important paragraph from the original EOS FAQ:

While block.one will not be involved in any way in the transferability of the EOS Tokens, it is possible that EOS Tokens could be transferred on a peer-to-peer basis or on platforms operated by 3rd parties during the EOS Token distribution period. EOS Tokens will become fixed (non-transferable) on the Ethereum blockchain within 23 hours after the end of the final EOS Token distribution period which will occur on June 1, 2018 at 22:59:59 UTC.

So everybody that participated in the ICO should know this: basically all responsibility for a good functioning main net is being transferred to the third parties that will collectively be responsible for the blockchain, primarily meaning the 21 Block-Producers that will be running the servers that validate and produce blocks once the main net goes live. On June 5^th I watched this video-interview with a candidate block-producer that explains a lot. When asked what Block.one's involvement will be after the main net launch, they answer that it's purely a community effort and that it's one of the biggest online social experiments ever. It's a 20 minute interview, but I would urge you to watch it as it gives a good indication of the EOS community and what responsibilities are shared by which participants on the EOS blockchain; it's near the end of this post.

One thing to understand is that there's been no actual delay of the main net launch, despite what some FUD articles may have claimed. On June 1^st Block.one have taken their hands of the project, like they said from day 1 of the ICO, and since then it has been a case of reaching consensus among the first 21 pre-selected block-producers and several application- and security-tests. Block.one is, according to the interviewed candidate block-producers, only available in the background for questions on possible security-bugs. Here's a timeline to show the steps that were needed:

_{The Main Net is active since 14 Jun 17:39 UTC}

This is an experiment we Steemians are familiar with: much like the 20 biggest witnesses here on Steemit, these 21 block-producers are the "board of directors" that will ultimately vote among themselves to decide the direction of the platform. And I must be honest here: this is quite a challenge. Like my good friend @meno mentioned in his post about the murkyness in EOS's waters: we will now learn if the human species is ready to take on the responsibilities that come with a truly decentralized blockchain as we, the EOS token holders will have to make sure our votes don't end up with block-producers that have eyes for their own profits only, but with block producers that actively work to keep their block-producing save and are knowledgeable about the token's inner workings, it's strengths and weaknesses, and are prepared to keep working on the latter.

It's good to know however that the EOS blockchain is in principle a governed blockchain in the sense that all participants agree to adhere to a set of basic rules that are there to prevent centralization of power: here's the EOS Constitution. All block-producers have agreed to honor these laws under punishment of losing their position as BP; this is the constitution as it is on the blockchain now, and can be changed in the future of course. Like all democracies, EOS can become a dictatorship or a plutocracy if we don't cast informed votes. One key aspect of the current Constitution is that everybody that participates on the EOS blockchain agrees that votes are not to be bought or sold:

In the EOS constitution sending or receiving anything of value in exchange for a vote is prohibited. If the criteria for casting a vote is "who paid me the most" than it may not also be "I'm voting for this Block Producer because they are good". Thoughtful voting leads to prosperity for all.

Now this is where it gets a bit... troublesome, at least for a good portion of EOS token holders. Like I've shown, my Exodus wallet is of no help to me now. How can I vote, and how can I access my tokens? Well, you'll need to export your private key from Exodus, or whatever other wallet you use, and use one of the many third-party applications or portals to be a good EOS-citizen and cast your votes. I managed to do this in approximately 25 minutes, including watching a 12 minute video on setting up Scatter for Chrome (also available for Firefox), found on this page.

Like here on Steemit we, the community, are the key to the success or failure of EOS, and like here on Steemit the the way to behave like a good "citizen" is not very transparent. It involves a lot of networking and being active on all types of social media to get to know your block-producers. And then you actually have to vote which almost always forces end users to install additional programs or use third-party web-portals.

I like to use Exodus, so I need to use a web-portal and I've chosen EOSPortal.io, which needs the plugin Scatter that you can install from a link to the Chrome Store on this page; Scatter is also needed for a lot of applications already released and (sort of) working on the EOS blockchain. If you're not as addicted to your current wallet as I am, you could also use one of the dedicated EOS wallets out there that have a built-in voting- and delegation option. I would recommend simplEOS which is available for Windows, Mac and Linux.

_{image by Laurel L. Russwurm - source: flickr}

After installing the Scatter plugin and feeding it with a new identity and my EOS private/public key-pair, I was able to cast my votes, but only after pairing scatter with the eosportal.io website. There are on this moment 359 candidate block-producers and you can bet, like with our very own Steemit witnesses, that not all of them have the community in mind and are in it for their own benefit only. The voting page has a country-counter at the bottom so it helps you vote in a geographically decentralized manner, and that helps a little bit. But it's up to you, dear EOS token holder, to make wise decisions where it comes to choosing community-minded and technically knowledgable block-producers.

I only cast two votes until now: the blokes from Sweden (or south-west Eden like they called it in the interview) and eosauthority from the U.K. That's not nearly enough for me to claim I'm doing my democratic duty as a free EOS citizen, and I'll have to do research, read interviews, listen to EOS experts and so on in order to make informed decisions on the rest of my votes. No one said freedom was ever gonna be easy.

A lot has been done by @dan and block.one to provide the global crypto-community with a solid, secure and decentralized base to build a healthy blockchain on. It's the kind of freedom and personal responsibility we have been looking for and has a good chance to develop into something truly remarkable should this behemoth of a social experiment succeed. Heck, the whole cryptosphere is still one giant experiment since Satoshi launched Bitcoin back in 2009; it's not a space for the fainthearted or those who want freedom but not the accompanying responsibilities.

Now these past days there's been a lot of news about the ECAF (EOS Core Arbitration Forum), the arbitration body within block.one to settle disputes regarding users or block-producers who violate the EOS Constitution. It's not clear what it's authority is, who's in it or why they froze several accounts. Here's a good synopsis of all the panic:

[Dan] Larimer said that he has “learned a lot about human nature by watching the disputes, the witch hunts, the ‘bring everything before [EOS Core Arbitration Forum (ECAF)]’ mindset.” But he would now prefer to put an end to it.

The EOS governance model drew severe criticism earlier this month when EOS block producers — who act as the “executive branch” on the EOS blockchain — froze seven EOS accounts in violation of its own constitution.

The EOS constitution requires such decisions to be made by ECAF, the arbitration body of EOS. But the block producers froze the accounts without receiving any order.

This was followed by another controversy earlier this week, when a block producer EOS Store failed to comply with a different ECAF order, alleging miscommunication between the block producers and the arbitration body.
_{source: thenextweb.com}

Some of the block-producers acted on their own, some have expressed concerns that there are whales watching the voting behavior in the background and wait for their chance to turn things their way... Really, all I can see is a fledgling democratically ruled social experiment's growing pains. It's the same discussions we are so very used to here on Steemit. I hope you are able to see this too. It will take a lot of perseverance and patience from all of us to let this young democracy take it's final form. And when that happens, the Dapps will be ready and waiting, because all those who have been working on them still believe in the future of this platform, as do I.

_MonsterEOS

Just for the hell of it, after the half hour or so needed to get my citizenship started on the EOS blockchain, I thought I'd try the EOS version of tamagotchi, MonsterEOS. And it worked! I made my first monster, as you can see in the screenshot above, but couldn't get the damn thing to wake up yet... Well, it's only been alive for 5 minutes, so I'll try again later. Also I didn't deposit any funds into the MonsterEOS wallet yet, so it's nice that you can create your first monster for free.

We have a working main net and that from now on it's up to the community as a whole, and the block-producers in particular to make this a success. This means we're all going to participate in all the growing-pains every new blockchain suffers from, but with an extra edge we Steemians all know too well. I am threermonts active on the Steemit platform, and I don't think I'm a total illiterate when it comes to crypto-currencies; I'm your average crypto-brother after all ;-) But I am still feeling my way around this blockchain-powered platform and only managed to responsibly fill half of my allotted 30 voting-slots for the witnesses. It's going to take time for Steemit and EOS alike to evolve into a true democracy with truly free individuals that understand their responsibility toward the community they take part in and benefit from.

Now here's the interview with our Swedish block-producers (they're not candidates anymore, since they're well inside the top 21 of the voting-list):

_{Why is EOS Launch All Drama? Block Producer Interview}

Here's one on how to keep track of any airdrops:

_{EOS Airdrops | How Do I Receive Them?}

Let me show you a few of the Dapps I found, just to remind you all that despite all FUD and the problems regarding transparency I discussed here, the blockchain is working. I found this decentralized Twitter clone:

_DecenTwitter

And this wizard battle game in which you can win cash prizes:

_Wizards.one

And there's a lot more as our fellow Steemian @dallasrushing shows us in this video, and he also explains why staking your coins is what it's all about, just like here on Steemit your voting power is influenced by the amount of Steem Power you have:

_{EOS dApps | The True Value Of The EOS Ecosystem}

So, what I'd like you to take away from all this is to have patience and not panic. Also take the time to install a dedicated EOS wallet or use the eosportal.io site to vote and install Scatter. Even now we passed the number of votes needed to launch the main net, you now know that this is an ongoing thing and there's no vote-and-forget-about-it: even the constitution hasn't taken its final form yet and there's clearly some block-producers that could do better or we wouldn't have had such a rough start.

If you use Exodus like me, don't be scared to see your tokens are frozen in that wallet: like all crypto's that's not where they really are, they're on the blockchain and there's other ways to use and exchange them. I know that I'm holding on to my EOS and stake them to have a smooth user experience when the Dapps really mature. Like all community efforts it'll just take time.

In closing I'll leave you with some positive news about EOS, even if that's also confusing:

_{source: coingape.com
EOS Adds Another Feather To Its Cap,
Rated Best Blockchain By The Chinese Government}

Now, how can it be that the Chinese of all governments rate the most decentralized and democracy-based blockchain as best?

When thoroughly assessed amongst 30 projects, EOS stood out the best in all 3 fundamental parameters of technology, usefulness and innovation. This clearly put EOS ahead in the game amongst others. The list has some prominent names like Ethereum, NEO, Stellar, and Lisk which respectively took the spots after EOS. What came as a surprise was Bitcoin’s ranking. The bellwether cryptocurrency was ranked 17th in this list which was majorly due to in its lack of technological capability and usefulness despite its innovativeness.

Just so you know ;-)

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Bitcoin | Litecoin | EOS | OmiseGo | FunFair | KIN | Pillar | DENT | Polymath | XDCE | 0x | Decred | Ethereum | Carmel | XYO