Raising Realistic Concerns Regarding EOS Proposed Operation
Regarding @eosgo's recent video of @dan's "Explanation of New BFT+DPoS w/ Daniel Larimer - Part 2 of 2", I may see a problem here.
When some of the original operating specs were released, I raised an objection to the idea that block producers were going to be limited to ~21 because of the lack of dynamic decentralization and opportunity for anyone to run a node. The only answer I received is that sacrifices must be made in decentralization to achieve positive user experience/efficiency.
Now in this video linked below, @dan describes the block producers as likely to be well known entities such as universities and small governments. He goes on to describe voting within the community as the fix for dysfunction. Concluding that "if there is lots of fighting, you can vote them all out".
How is that working in congress right now? How does tyrrany of the majority work out in any democracy for the individuals? With the revelations around the entirety of the media and deep state colluding to get Clinton elected in the last US presidential election, what reasonable and informed person thinks that voting is going to help problems of collusion in governance between a small set of powerful and privileged people?
More to the point, is @dan serious about his stated intentions to secure liberty through his projects?
I'm starting to think I was fortunate to sell my ETH tokens when I did and haven't had the opportunity to reenter a major position at a good buy price.
Thanks to @eosgo for the video share and the illumination on this project's current status. Paging @larkenrose, @dollarvigilante, and @strategesis. Would love to hear your thoughts on this.
Full video here:
I also think that there is a problem here, because this model assumes that voting power is equally distributed - as long as everyone has the same power in the blockchain, it´s a great idea - but as soon as the vote of a minority of people is more worth (because they have more money = more power) we´ll have the same situation as here in Steemit. Few people own the majority of VP and therefore can dictate where the whole network is heading. In this way, what we are experiencing here, is not different to real life situations. As for EOS, they were trying to even this through doing the ICO over 1 year, so that it will become harder for a few whales to accumulate most of the voting power, which in the end won´t change that much in my view, since now these whales just buy EOS every day until they have their desired power. Yes, the voting system and equal distribution of power is broken in a way. I do think though, that the idea of blockchains is changing the way of power distribution in general, because it works like a virus and its hidden dynamics are loosening up structures. Is it perfect and best solution? No, I don´t think so, but it´s the best way we could come up with at the moment and the intentions of @Dan and others who work on this revolution are good. I always try to keep in mind, that for me people like @Dan are geniuses and their way of thinking regarding these topics may be way over me capacity of understanding the inner workings of these systems. I still trust in him and my gut feeling, that he is up to something I still can´t comprehend - also he has proven with Steem (and bitshares) that he is one of these guys, who really walk their talk and get things going, which is by itself something special in a field, that still consists mainly of hype and hot air. The rest, we´ll have to wait and see.
Thanks for your thoughts. No doubt he is a smart guy. To trust because of past performance or because of perceived intellect is a great example of a halo effect which can lead to irrational decision making based on false premises.
Wondering what in the world he could possibly be thinking regarding using these methods for self governance?
No doubt EOS will make money for investors. I'm addressing the function down the line in this thread. Look where bitcoin has gone, undermined and infiltrated by Clintonites/pedophiles. Pretty sure one of the same people is involved in this project.
I thought @dan's proposition of radical transparency as a solution to bad actors was novel and provoking, even if I wasn't convinced. Now, after considering these other issues, I'm starting to get a sinking feeling.
My worry is that with the entry barrier to BP, if the Novogratz and TopVentures/ Eric Schmidt ventures of the world start dominating the scene..there will be less of a democratic venture here. The most important thing to handle is what payments and returns the BPs should provide to token holders for their votes and support - and how to stop a few conglomerates from dominating the scene. Yes you can vote out a few.. but how many new can you bring in and what cost? How many new political parties can be formed to fight an election and what cost? May be we should rethink this.
Agreed. That is in line with my original point on EOS. Maybe a hard fork is in order once they release the final code this Summer. Sounds like a worthy project that I'd love to be a part of.
Free market competition is the check you haven’t considered
Thanks for taking the time to respond @dan.
It isn't clear to me how voting on competitors in a free market is the ideal solution. This appears to be how we got to our present situation in the United States.
I've been considering the issue of individual action in such a system as EOS and sharding: I'm assuming that if a shard breaks off with its own ledger balances that go on to be changed, if/when the shard re-joins the original, larger ledger the smaller shard balances would be overrided?
What if sharding were used as a feature and sharded ledger balances were given tiers instead of being completely wiped?
Governance in itself is a worthy blockchain project due its own special set of attention and one set of rules is not likely to fit all communities. EOS aims to not only govern itself, but also grant a programmable high speed creative computing platform to its users.
I've considered how I might design a system of malleable rules for local residents to organize in a voluntary way and concluded that even within say a single city block, we are likely to need multiple sets of rules to operate by depending on the subject at hand. It may turn out that EOS gets forked to allow for just those sets of possibilities. I'd bet good money on that outcome.
Free market competition at what cost? If the entry barriers to be a block producer or staker are too high of the order of 10 million dollars, there will be hardly anyone to step in the role. Same thing as how much it costs to set up a political party, do political campaigns to contest in an election. I believe you should decentralize this thing in a way that there is a loose connection across the different resource providers and the different resource providers be basically plug and play candidates and give the individual stake/token holders a far more libertarian economy to work with. A light client working on a home computer or game pc with resources like ram, processor power/hashing power, disk storage outsourced from different vendors like Amazon and ipfs would be a far better approach to decentralization. That will make EOS more truly democratic. We do not want a few oligarchs only controlling the block production.. Again, voter apathy should be a big concern and people with high status quo cannot be easily shaken by the tiny stakeholders. It takes a lot of effort and communications to make different propositions and get them passed through and voted upon.. just my 2cents @Dan
Decentralization would certainly be my priority in a project like this. Democratic? Not so much. Your only true representation is through individual action.
Sorry, by democratic i rather meant giving the individual rights more in a fully decentralized way. I know what you mean by the US and other democracies and how they operate once the votes are gained every 4 or 5 years.. Very hard to impeach the bad presidents and how national security is played as a ploy against the citizen's rights in many parts of the world.