Follow Up: EOS Gravity's Response to Voter Kickbacks

EOS New York would like to conduct it's own survey of the community with the question "Should Block Producers pay for votes?" Here is the link: https://goo.gl/forms/tmWWabdM829GsDq62

We are excited to share a great example of how the EOS community is coming together. In our last post titled Your Vote Matters #2: Hierarchy of Block Rewards & The Economic Effects of Voter Kickbacks we publicly stated our view on voter kickbacks and that we are against them. We pointed out a screenshot from EOS Gravity, a preeminent Block Producer candidate in China. Here is what we wrote:

Translation:

Zhangjiaming Question: As the largest Chinese community, Gravity is about to campaign for a main node for EOS. Would it consider a funding round / ICO of sorts? Say after that we then rent a facility and get a few server clusters, and then lend EOS?

Ocean: Right, initially no server clusters are needed, but a very high spec server would be needed, especially on the RAM front. What's the purpose of an ICO? I don't quite understand the logic. If Gravity ourselves acts as a main node, we would dividend out most of our revenue outside of necessary operating costs to the voters that support us.

EOS New York: We respect EOS Gravity. They are one of the most promising block producer candidates in the world and have been cultivating the EOS community in China for a very long time. They have done an amazing job of it and are expanding every day. We are very impressed with their team, organization, and their dedication to spreading EOS throughout China and the world. We hope that they are successful in their mission and we look forward to working with them. We also look forward to learning more about their plans which we are sure are extremely thoughtful. While this screenshot is likely only a fraction of what EOS Gravity stands for we at EOS New York firmly stand against voter dividends and will outline our reasoning in this post. For more information on EOS Gravity, check out EOS Go (https://forums.eosgo.io/discussion/155/emails-with-chinese-eos-gravity-group-10k-followers)

News travels fast! Our post made it's way to EOS Gravity and they responded:

Every owner of EOS should be retweeting and participating in this vote

Today Gravity's knowledge community info cross the ocean. One of the questions I answered was cropped and translated to EOS New York (EOS's New York community, block candidate, EOSNY Hereon), EOSNY thereby released an article on Steemit with the above picture with their perspective:

I think EOSNY's attitude is very worth drawing lessons from -- they pay close attention to other EOS communities, express their view in a public way, and actively engage other communities (they reached us via email after the publication), this would lead to an easier community momentum for EOS, and make reaching consensus on certain concepts amongst the EOS community easier. Thus, EOS Gravity respects EOSNY also.

Thereafter, I cropped the picture and put the article on the Knowledge Plant (an app), and encouraged the members to discuss the topic. There are quite a few replies, and here's an excerpt:

"- How do presidential candidates campaign for vote? Who's going to vote for them without the promises of benefits?

• I don't see a problem, whoever has the capability should try to pull the votes, even if EOSNY would like to give out dividends, it's not a guarantee that say we in China would trust them
• I think it's fair to say whoever puts money and effort in should reap the reward -- with better operations on the nodes and more DAPPs, we the EOS holders getting our appreciation in token value is good enough.
• Admin - my view is every node should have a right to dividend, thereby, every node will not only compete on the hardware front, but also compete on the dividend front -- whereby the winner will be one with the best hardware and most reasonable dividend policy
• It's a community derived solution and we should let the fittest survive. There are a lot of DPOS projects where there's even a automatic dividend mechanism that leads to a win-win.
• I think it's doable, the 21 nodes represent the whole EOS community and each node has its votes. The node should have the right to bear and fulfill promises by their communities as long as they don't violate the EOS constitution. So unless all communities reach a consensus and ban the nodes from dividending to campaign for votes, the strategy should be viewed as reasonable.
• It's a market quesiton and should be decided by the market. I don't think it's a problem.
• From 2 angles, one is that the node's mission is the honestly produce blocks and improve the efficiency of hte platform, and providing dividends will not negatively impacts the 2 points above, and second is that once EOS launches and operates well, the node competition will intensify, and dividend certainly happen regardless. The profiteering nature of businesses and us as human beings dictate so."

Whether the nodes should have the right to dividend to the voters that support them is a very good subject of debate, and there are a lot of complicated factors within -- consensus, profits, stability of economy, community sentiment, sustainability of community, vulnerability to attacks, etc. I think from every angle we can debate it -- so what's your view? I won't show mine for the time being, but instead I want to incite a bigger discussion.

So I set up a vote, and feel free to leave your perspective. We will select the most valuable 5 -- and each of the 5 will get 2 EOS tokens as an award.

Regardless of your view, please retweet and share the article for more people to join, as this topic affects all EOS holders and the ecosystem that we are building.

From Wechat - so far the vote is:

• 74% for dividends
• 11% against
• 13% neutral
  2100 votes total thus far

We would first like to thank the EOS Gravity team for their thoughtful response and for responding so quickly. We spoke off-the-record with a representative from EOS Gravity. They were very open with us about many things that they will share with the community when they are ready. They did say that they were comfortable with us posting their position on paying for votes. They agree with EOS New York, paying for votes may be in the short-term interest of the individual token-holder but it is detrimental to the long-term success of all token holders and the network itself. EOS Gravity is committed to avoiding this practice as is EOS New York.

EOS is a global network filled with different cultures, experiences, and perspectives. There will be plenty of things for each regional community to disagree on and that's ok. This isn't about one way of doing things. But it's good to know that we are able to communicate with each other openly, honestly, and for the betterment of the EOS network and community at large.

EOS New York would like to conduct it's own survey of the community with the same question. Should Block Producers pay for votes? Here is the link: https://goo.gl/forms/tmWWabdM829GsDq62

Please share this link with as many people as possible. We look forward to sharing the results.

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EOS New York is a block producer candidate for the EOS.IO Blockchain

https://www.eosnewyork.io/
https://twitter.com/eosnewyork
https://medium.com/@eosnewyork
https://steemit.com/@eosnewyork
https://www.meetup.com/EOS-New-York/