RE: Why WAX choosing to build their own blockchain based on EOS.IO isn't a bad thing.
The WAX team noted that they tested many blockchains and all of them, except for EOS, were found wanting. EOS was chosen because "it is the superior base technology". This isn't the first nor the last time developers will say this. Each time they do, it telegraphs to the rest of the world that EOS is not only something to watch but something to act on.
But still it's kind of weak if they just take the software and don't give anything back. Nice words are not necessarily worth anything.
EOS is an operating system. Think about Linux, not all existing Linux distributions satisfy all of the needs of every user so some create their own distributions. Does the number of Linux distros harm or help the overall Linux ecosystem? Many would argue that it helps - tools and applications created for one distro are fed back into the community and implemented on other distros. This bodes well for the EOS.IO software development life cycle and could lead to future improvements.
Blockchains are different compared to any other open source project. The network effect suffers every time a blockchain is forked to two branches. Most value comes when all users are able to be part of the same ecosystem.
I dislike this attitude of creating new blockchains for every possible project. It just makes the blockchain revolution harder because the ecosystem becomes fragmented.
WAX is in the top 90 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization at the time of this writing. We're venturing the guess that they have more resources at their disposal compared to the average developer group. Building your own blockchain, even if based on other code, is time-consuming and expensive. Not to mention the cost of development and the cost of building out the hardware to host the network and/or building the community to participate in transaction validation (e.g. block producers) is very high. Most will not be able to take this route.
Yeah, it is expensive and stupid. That's why we should take care that developers are not encouraged to create their own blockchains when they can use EOS mainchain.
Block.One dreams of a world with not one chain but thousands or more. The EOS.IO protocol will enable inter-blockchain communication through merkle-proofs. Almost as good as building on top of EOS is building alongside it. WAX or any other developer group building a custom configured version of the EOS.IO protocol should be able to communicate with other EOS.IO chains, further cementing EOS.IO as the foundation of the blockchain ecosystem. The resulting network effect could increase the value of all involved.
But why would EOS accept a blockchain as its sidechain if it doesn't honor the token distribution?
AFAIK BPs are responsible for implementing a sidechain. So I'm not going to vote any BP who cooperates with projects that just copy the software and don't give anything back. I strongly recommend same to everybody. Just say no to parasites!
WAX doesn't have any real reason to create their own blockchain. They could implement their business logic just fine to EOS mainchain.
Eos producers don’t need to approve of side chains. Anyone can start a side chain.
Is there anywhere a good explanation how sidechains will actually work? I had the understanding that sidechains would need some cooperation of BPs of both chains to function. But this might be from your older plans before EOS.
But anyway, sidechains will try to attract EOS BPs to become also their BPs. EOS community can stop that by refusing to vote for BPs that cooperate with blockchains that don't honor the original token distribution.
@dan Could you explain to use why Steemit is unbalanced and unfair and what people like myself can do against abusive whales?
We definitely share your concerns. It would be ideal if WAX built on the chains governed by the main EOS token. And who knows? They still might. We don't think that forking the EOS.IO repository to build your own blockchain will be a popular route and we aren't saying that EOS New York supports this. We just wanted to help dispel any concern that this was the end of the world.
EOS New York nor any block producer candidate has any influence over what WAX does. Their reasons for creating their own chain were a little vague, but they say they have their reasons.
We also could not confirm the extent that WAX is working with Block.One or if they're working together at all.
It's the goal of EOS New York to spur as much development as possible on the chains that support the main token. We have yet to realize the effect of inter-blockchain communication so we just aren't jumping to negative conclusions just yet.
Inter-blockchain communication is great and we should encourage projects who want to do that.
But it doesn't mean the EOS community should shoot itself in the foot by encouraging scams or other stupid projects, or like in this case, greedy parasites that just copy the software and launch their independent chain so that they can make more money.
It's important to be exclusive in the beginning, so that the EOS community makes clear for developers that they really should use the mainchain and not launch their own chains (if they don't have a legitimate reason). By accepting parasitic projects, we are just making things harder for everybody. Governance becomes harder because the ecosystem is fragmented, people are getting scammed in ICO frauds, time and resources are wasted in stupid fighting, etc.