The centralization of EOS, is the Chinese consortium backing up?

EOS is once again the focus of controversy because of node centralization.

Compared to the original criticism, the EOS community has begun to “guilty”.

On August 22nd, Larry Sanger, chief information officer of the decentralized Wikipedia Everipedia, said that EOS would abandon the development of DAPP if it was centrally controlled by the Chinese consortium.

This remark has attracted a lot of controversy.

• Blockchain Security Science: Witch Attack
• Cross-border dialogue | How do Haier, Fast, Sany, Changhong and other well-known companies view the digital economy?
• Bank of England Governor: Libra-like digital currency will be the best option to replace the dollar system

In the Chinese community, Li Xiaolai angered in the telegraph group "Without me, how can I have EOS? I invested in BM five years ago and voted four times in succession, Bethune? Now it is said that the centralization is in the Chinese consortium, as if they are (Everipedia) Wherever you build it can be successful." The HelloEOS promoters also accused Everipedia of not making progress on the social platform for more than a year. The daily transaction volume was only a few hundred dollars, but the EOS was controlled by the Chinese team. With a room LV bag, I can't say it" and said that "foreign projects are not as reliable as you think."

In foreign communities, Everipedia's remarks have attracted many people's remarks. Reddit netizens said that the existence of interest and ticket exchange between Chinese nodes is the biggest threat EOS is currently facing.

In response to the growing public opinion campaign, Everi President Sam made a statement clarifying that no one left EOS and no one left Everipedia. Larry Sanger means that the near-geographical jurisdiction of all top block producers is worrying. This is obviously a governance issue, not related to any particular community, especially to Chinese users. The problem with Larry Sanger’s statement is that the words are not used properly and the timing is not good. Sam also said that everyone at Everipedia is working very hard and has released new software and front ends in the field, such as Prediqt, the forecasting market on the EOS main network.

This war of words ended with Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer (BB) and BM's "mediation", BB said that EOS is a community of global token governance for global token holders. The original intention of EOS is to continuously evolve and advance with the user community, regardless of race, nationality and region. BM also responded to "EOS SuperNode Centralization", saying that China's nodes are not a single person, nor a single entity. It may be said that all encryption is centralized because they are controlled by humans.

The debate has come to an end, but the problem of the EOS governance mechanism remains unresolved. Is the centralization of EOS the fault of the Chinese node?

Everipedia's fist does not seem to be on the door.

Node Centralization and Chinese Consortium

Regardless of the right and wrong, Larry Sanger's "Chinese consortium control one" is not without factual support.

One is that domestic nodes do occupy the vast majority of seats in the EOS supernode.

According to the statistics of the Odaily Planet Daily, in the seats of the first 21 super nodes, there are as many as 17 nodes controlling the Chinese team, and under the blessing of the EOS mines of each node, the minimum threshold of the super nodes is raised to 189 million. ticket.

The assault posture of the domestic nodes in the campaign not only made some foreign nodes such as EOS NewYork, EOS Authourity, EOS Cananda, etc., which had been in the early stage of the EOS main online line, successively dropped 21 places; and many alternative nodes The hope of entering the Super Node seat is even more embarrassing.

EOS BeiJing co-founder Sun Yushi once told the Odaily Planet Daily that the decline in the ranking of the nodes may be relative, and the total turnout rate is growing.

The second is due to the rule setting of one vote and 30 votes, there is no shortage of there is a consortium to control multiple super nodes.

Firecoin is one of the first "Chinese consortiums" exposed. In August 2018, EOSONE exposed the use of strong money, support strongmonkey, greencapital, cochainworld, eoschaintech, eossixparkbp, eosorangeeos, voldemorteos 7 spare nodes, with a monthly income of at least 1.7 million yuan; The Excel data sheet of the later "Fire Coin Pool Node Account Data 20180911" was circulated in the EOS circle, which confirmed some facts about the exchange of votes and the profit between the nodes.

After a year, the coin is still considered by the outside world to be the largest consortium in the EOS ecosystem. According to the block rhythm, an EOS enthusiast said at the beginning of this year that at least 6 of the top 21 EOS nodes were voted for by the Fire Coin. Now, in the top 21 nodes, there are still nodes supported by the Firecoin Pool, they will share the proceeds with the Firecoin, and they will enjoy the reward without contributing to the EOS network.

The OK Capital, which recently jumped to the top of the EOS node, was placed in the hope of competing with the Fire Coin Foundation. On August 14th, OK Pool launched the "Hero Pursuit" campaign to vote for those who contributed to the EOS network. The total number of votes is expected to reach 115 million votes, all for those contributing to the EOS network.

Chinese gene EOS

Looking back at the history of public chain development, EOS is indeed a special model. The founding team is purely overseas, but its rise is inseparable from the blessing of Chinese investors.

Li Xiaolai’s sentence “Without me, how can I have EOS?” is also understandable.

Without him, there may not be EOS today; without the enthusiasm of Chinese investors, EOS will not have such a large community and market value.

The story begins with EOS's ICO. At that time, after giving up its second blockchain startup, Bitshares, BM established a company called Block.One with a partner called Brendan Blumer and wanted to create it. A world-class EOS with a benchmark ETH.

Li Xiaolai, an investor who invested in BitShare Angel Wheel, also participated in BM's EOS. According to Caixin’s report, Li Xiaolai holds a 7% stake in Block.One and holds a 5% stake in EOS.

Since then, EOS has received $185 million in financing during the ICO period of just five days, with a market capitalization of nearly 5 billion, a sensation. This achievement is inseparable from the halo effect of BM, and it is also inseparable from the Chinese funds brought by Li Xiaolai’s “great flow” endorsement.

In March 2018, BM announced that EOS holders voted for 21 EOS super nodes. The super-node campaign, which almost covers all the mechanisms of EOS, the Chinese node has undoubtedly brushed up a sense of existence.

In the early stage of the election campaign, in the EOS main node campaign report released by the EOSGo community on March 22, the total number of nodes that met the campaign criteria was 35. At that time, the number of Chinese nodes was 8, the number of US nodes was 8, and the number of Korean nodes was Three, at that time, the number of participating nodes in China jumped to the top.

Since then, various capitals including Xue Manzi, Violent Gong Prince, Lao Mao, Yi Lihua, Ant Mine Pool have been announced to enter the EOS node campaign, and even more, there are self-proclaimed 4 billion Wenzhou gangs. There was a lot of hurricane and blood.

After the EOS main online line, whether it is to save the low-priced RAM & CPU hype, or to promote the EOS ecological DApp prosperity, can not do without the Chinese team.

Among them, the EOS Pixel, a pixel game developed by the domestic node EOS Asia, was sucked up to 800,000 US dollars within 9 days. The pixel at the center was once fired to 45,000 yuan, which successfully detonated the Dapp network on EOS.

It can be said that from the ICO to the super-node election, EOS can be listed on the second-ranked public chain, which is inseparable from the participation of Chinese investors.

In today's global market, it is undeniable that China and the United States are the largest blockchain market.

If the institutional investors are still on the two sides of the environment, the number of Chinese investors in retail investors may be far ahead; even from the developer's point of view, China also has a large number of programmers who are interested in blockchain and excellent. Polkadot founder Gavin Wood also admitted in an interview with Odaily Planet Daily that the proportion of Chinese investors is very high, and every time he comes to China, the meeting will be full soon.

The big environment is ahead, if even Chinese investors are not interested in the blockchain. This area may really be cold.

Is the Chinese consortium the ultimate reason?

The EOS with Chinese genes is deeply mired in the control of the Chinese consortium. It is the center of the dispute between the two: the domestic community believes that it is the Chinese consortium that has achieved EOS, and the foreign community believes that the Chinese community's node alliance is destroying EOS.

Here is a question worth pondering: Is the Chinese node the "culprit" in this controversy over EOS centralization?

The outside world often has an impression that foreign nodes may be more focused on technology and committed to community governance, and Chinese nodes are only capitalists. They did not contribute to the EOS community.

But maybe not. In fact, the Chinese nodes in EOS are very diverse. Counting domestic nodes in the EOS ecosystem can be divided into four categories according to their functions:

First, technical coffee.

Nodes that focus on technology are often established earlier and have joined or launched an EOS test network. Meet.one, EOS 42 and Oracle Chain are typical technicians who develop DApps and tools for developers and EOS users.

Second, the capitalist.

Capitalists are those that have great economic support. They are mainly exchanges, including EOS old cats, OK capital, and fire coins. The capitalists are also a group of controversial participants.

Third, community type

Refers to community-like nodes that interact with various EOS communities, share blockchain knowledge, and emphasize the benefits of EOS, such as Eos Gravity and EOS Cannon.

Fourth, water supply project

Refers to ecological projects that are deeply cultivated in EOS and provide water delivery services, such as Whale Exchange, Slow Fog, Hufu, Newdex.

It can be said that these nodes use their own advantages and layout in the EOS ecology in different ways. They are also expanding this ecology. It is difficult to kill them with a stick and say that they are harmful to EOS.

Second, the node alliance brought by the consortium is not a node that only exists in China.

Indeed, the alliance of wealthy nodes and the bribery of elections may lead to the binding of interests between nodes and even the case where one organization controls multiple nodes. Early in the early days of the EOS main online line, EOS community member EvolutionOS wrote in Medium that coin capital has controlled or operated more than eight of the 21 nodes.

However, there are loopholes in the rules and they are inevitably exploited. This also occurs in the case of foreign nodes.

EOSONE has also been exposed. The US node Bitfinex has a total of 13 voting accounts, and uses its 13 accounts to vote or withdraw votes for multiple nodes. It once rewrote the super node ranking pattern: 4 super nodes ranked up, 7 The super node ranks down, and 2 super nodes fall out of the supernode range.

DPoS mechanism is difficult to escape centralization drawbacks

This article does not deny the negative influence of the node alliance. The existence of operations such as “bribery election” and “exchange ticket” in the node alliance is indeed crowding out some node space that really cares about the EOS ecology, and “persuasizing” the entry of some foreign capital. .

However, all this cannot be attributed to the Chinese consortium. Perhaps the governance mechanism of DPoS has been doomed from the beginning.

In the DPoS mechanism, the number of tokens (money) determines the block nodes, which easily leads to the organization of the nodes in order to maximize the benefits. Bribery is often difficult to avoid; and the retail investors who have the right to vote often choose to sell because of the trend of interest. A more attractive node for profit.

Especially in EOS, the super node's honor mechanism often integrates too much attention and governance authority, and its competition is more intense.

In fact, similar to the dilemma of oligarchy, other public chains have also faced.

Lisk, a public-chain project that uses the DPoS mechanism, has become the "Imperial Mafia" in the world. In the Lisk network, there is the largest Lisk monopoly organization "Elite" and the second largest organization "GDT". Voters put pressure on voters to vote for all the votes in their hands to the trustees in their organization to get a full rebate. As a direct result, "Elite" has 54 seats among all 101 trustees and "GDT" has 32 seats.

Will the future of EOS be like Lisk? Block.One apparently did not give up the effort.

Recently, BM said in the telegraph group that he and the team are working on drafting a voting proposal. The types of voting considered include: the mortgage cycle; the current method; the combination of multiple types; a single one. The proposal adopts the one-currency one-vote system, and there will be some adjustments. Regarding the specific proposal, BM mentioned that 11 of the 21 BP nodes were selected by the mortgage cycle voting type, 10 seats were selected by the mortgage voting type, and the pledge for three days was a regular vote. BM indicates that the biggest problem at present is the trade-off between simplicity and decentralization. If community members are actively involved, the proposal is expected to be realized.

At present, the EOS Ecology is not to let Chinese investors get out, but to find ways to involve more diversified investors in the ecology. And, in the mechanism design, try to avoid the phenomenon of bribery between nodes, so that the interests of nodes and the interests of the community are more consistent.

Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer also said that the EOS governance issue is more complicated, but Block.One will not sit idly by and will choose to participate in community governance at the right time.

EOS's super nodes have always respected EOS founder BM.

However, in today's gradual formation of vested interests, Block.One even wants to improve, I am afraid to experience a storm.

Text | Aloe Vera Edit | Lu Xiaoming

Produced | Odaily Planet Daily (ID: o-daily)

We will continue to update Blocking; if you have any questions or suggestions, please contact us!