Bitcoin Forum

With the eos launch just happening it seems like it’s getting a lot of attention. It worries me that there are only 21 block producers because that’s so few people that need to collude to just do whatever they want. A way around this is that you could start your own eos network but that would be at least somewhat costly to set up and smaller fragmented networks are less secure than one big one. Also you’d have to convince people to join your network.

Did I miss anything? I find this deeply concerning   

It fucking is. And it is a huge, huuuge problem. Blockchain is meant to deal with extreme edge cases, which rarely happen, if at all. For the most part, you can trust centralized services, as long as they profit from you and are somewhat known (like Paypal).

Bitcoin and blockchain is designed with the edge case that, for whatever reason, this trust is breached. But since this resilience is not visible, is bought with massive performance issues and it doesn't happen on a daily basis on regular projects, regular users with little to no understanding of the underlying technology and knowledge about why it fucking exists in the first place flock to projects which basically use "blockchain" as a buzzword and sell you your "a server and 20 backups" solution.

And it works because nothing will go wrong for a really, really long time. Why should it, block producers have absolutely no incentive to screw over their userbase. But what happens it that changes? Let's say, some state knocks at their door and asks to blacklist this and that address? Yeah, exactly.

This is why this sucks so bad and this is why this is such a big problem.

EOS investors should be more concerned in how the SEC classifies EOS. Ethereum is not a security under the SEC's guidelines because its coin distribution after coin offering is decentralized, EOS is not.

Also collusion is very easy in EOS. The blockchain freeze proved that the 21 Block Producers, like a board of directors in a company, can all talk and can decide what to do with the platform. I reckon there is nothing wrong in that, but as an investor, you should know that EOS is not decentralzed and the SEC's classification is unknown. It might be a security.

I also think that the SEC's definition of EOS may not be very good. Currently, most EOS are in the hands of a few people.
Moreover, after the main network of EOS is online, various problems often appear, which is very dangerous.

it's strange  because there kind of isn't any point. whats the difference between AWS and EOS? EOS is open source, you're just trading off on who runs the show, it's not "by the people". I think people get caught up in the whole "it's on the blockchain" but it "also has the 1million tps". EOS sacrifices what makes BTC/ETH good but also doesn't have what makes an actual centralized platform like AWS/google cloud good.

sheesh

I know that there can be 100 nodes in the EOS network, which means that it is quite centralized, for example, the government can determine all these nodes and try to influence them somehow, so EOS is only conditionally decentralized in my opinion.

They try to solve the problem of scale but sacrifice decentralized function. Nothing new.

I don't know if it is centralized(but in my opinion it is, but I am diletant at this question so :)) but that fact that the majority of coins are stacked in a few wallets says that it is risky idea to invest. Especially now, when this year-long-lottery ended

Many users continue to Express doubts about the success of the resource. Although statements about free transfers and regulated scalability may well be true, it will not be possible to verify their authenticity. According to the well-known stock analyst and DEVELOPER Chris de Rosa, the EOS project is completely detached from reality and should not be taken seriously. The followers consider this platform a new milestone in the history of cryptographic money and call it "new Ethereum".

Heh, exactly.

It's somewhat funny actually. It's kinda like someone took a look at a decentralized network and said "you know what would make this way more efficient? Servers."

I mean, to some degree, there is merit to this. For businesses, it's probably preferable to have someone they can hold accountable for whatever comes up. But all in all, this is falling back into the old tracks without realizing it.

I think to a big degree, the problem is "regular" people getting into crypto. The first wave were cypherpunks, ultra-paranoid, over-the-top security nerds. They understood the whole "there's no such thing as too much security" deal.

Regular users don't. They log into facebook on their work PCs, they use the same email address for everything.

I mean, they don't even make backups and then cry when their harddrive fails, because every harddrive fails eventually. And they were told this over and over.
What do you expect?

And the experts, those that understand the system are mere Kassandras, doomed to predict failure that's not going to come because market incentives keep even the crappiest system afloat.

21 block producers were selected from the voting of said millions.
But gods knows how many people voted for it. And again now its just 21 block producer.
Handful of people controlling the 10billion $ coin.
These people are entities can totally be influenced or controlled by a single entity or their local governments.
That would certainly compromise our expectations.

They are killing themselves as well as investors somehow.

I really hope they can look into what they had done and try to salvage the situation. Going the reverse way is like Ripple which is not widely accepted.

Yes is just like the ripple. Where you have very people controlling the affairs of so many especially in financial system, it leads to manipulations to suite the very few and business associate. Centralized coins have this in common.

https://twitter.com/ummjackson/status/1007659548176314368

https://github.com/EOSIO/eos/blob/37ce45c0b60d2710569c2d1a9229945cc0e855a9/governance/constitution.md

this is my favorite detail.

if you don't move or use your eos, or whatever the actual coin part is called, after three years they take it back off you and redistribute it. i don't see how that's possible but there it is.

If you don't move or use it at all after 3 years or is this to do with the transition from the ERC20 coin to their own coin and blockchain? Seems very ridiculous to have a usage requirement every 3 years. Good to see they're using their 4bn dollars well and making smart decisions  ??? :o

it's nothing to do with coin transitions. that's happening right now isn't it?

i have no idea what they're thinking with this. people are saying it can be voted out of existence. why is it there in the first place?

Well, I kinda played around with the idea of an negative interest coin before, but that was very different. It was meant as a means to incentivise users to actively interact with the network (like, when you have a PoS coin with low interest, you might want to keep users on their toes to keep staking)

I mean, I somewhat get that you might not want to have dead coins lying around, but all in all, this is not a good aproach to a "problem" which is not a problem at all.

Does anyone know how many EOS tokens does Dan Larimer control? It might be that he has set up a team of people he knows to join the ICO phase. Besides that, Block One already holds 10% of all EOS tokens.

That gives us the question who voted for who to be EOS' block producers? They might be controlled by one group of people connected to Dan.

Does they even have an option to choose from. Though they make it sound democratic. These all 21 block producers were pre-prepared. They certainly have some connection to the founder Dan Larimer. Whether the connection is just as a friend or colleague or an employer and employee would make the difference.

Yes - it's happening right now. I wasn't sure if you were saying that coins that aren't transitioned within 3 years would be reclaimed (this I could understand)

As for what it actually is, the logic is quite simply non-existant. There's little to no reason for this as ttookk has rightly said. They're trying to fix something that isn't broke. If someone wants to buy a bunch of coins and sit on them for 10 years that's their prerogative. It happens with every currency in the world already. It won't stop anyone who wants to do this, they'll just log in every 3 years and make one transaction. I guess all it will really influence is lost coins from lost wallets or dead people.

https://steemit.com/eosio/@eos42/eos42-statement-on-block-producer-decision-to-freeze-7-eos-accounts

and there's more.

i guess we shouldn't be getting worked up about this as not everything wants, or should, adhere to the principles of crypto, but then again there's little to no point in bothering with any of them if you become just another database. in this case it's a multi billion dollar database.

@European Central Bank. I would not criticize them if they announce that they are a centralized platform. I reckon the code is law idea was not a good one in any case. In law, the recourse of human intervention as a choice should always be open.

EOS is not marketed as a centralized platform. And that they are marketed as a blockchain solution implies some things, which might not, as we suspect, be true.

Such as immutability or censorship resistance. I think pretty much everyone has boundaries, like a barrier that says "I don't want people to use this technology for this". In fact, I think I have quite a lot of them, including almost every illegal activity (darknet stuff and such). Do I think this makes it right to ban/censor/prevent certain transactions? It's difficult. Looking at specific cases, I'm inclined to say yes. Looking at the repercussions of those actions over the whole system, my answer is "definitely not".

I'm looking at the Steemit post above and I think "Someone's going to be really happy that they'll get their money back. Good for them!"

On the other hand, there's a comment in the comment section of a poor guy who bought one of the locked accounts. Yes, he probably shouldn't have. But you know, someone before him probably shouldn't have entered their private key in some phishing site.

Finding justice in a juristical system is a tedious and complicated process. We are kidding ourselves when we think, some block producers are able to make such complicated decisions. ANd while you might say "they are only freezing the funds, they are not the ones making the ultimate call", their actions have real world impact, as can be seen in the comment above.

Accounts are complex things. What if part of the account's activity is legitimate? Like, a hacker sends his funds to an exchange. the block producers realize it too late, ask the exchange to freeze the tokens, but the exchange decides not to comply. Would it be ok for the block producers to freeze the exchanges wallet, affecting hundreds, if not thousands of uninvolved people to force them to comply?

This is very, very difficult legal territory, and saying "the code is law" where it is applicable, is actually a stroke of genius. Because, really, it's more like "the code is the laws of physics" for that system. To change them would mean to risk the integrity of the whole system.

Plus, there is governance. Ethereum forked. Bitcoin integrated segwit. I think building any type of governance structure into the blockchain itself is wrong. You want governance to be as slow and clunky as possible, because you only want to change things when you really, really have to.

In general, believing that you could replace laws by code is foolish. But when it comes down to certain cases, like "who has how much money", you shouldn't count on large groups of people. What if they decide that maybe for their taste, you have a bit too much money?

Sorry for my rambling, I hope it was somewhat understandable what I am trying to say.

this is a great post.

soon enough the people who try to adjudicate this stuff will realise all they do is create more turmoil and uncertainty. it's a slippery slope and one that sends you sliding faster and faster.

bitcoin refusing to do squat when you yourself screw up seems brutal, but it's also totally pragmatic. the alternative is just too messy. 

either be decentralised or be centralised. if you try to faff around in the middle you're gonna come unstuck and soon.

https://twitter.com/ferdousbhai/status/1010206359688753154

more good stuff here. this time around people aren't even being told why they've been ordered to block transactions.

I think once the centralization occurs the EOS, helps the people, investment and the currency in one field wherein the convenience and excellence in process will be easier and more convenient than before.

What?

Guys, where are you coming from? This is literally like you looked at blockchain technology and thought "wouldn't this be way easier if we had only a handfull of servers?"

Right now, you could actually use a Google spreadsheet with writing permissions for 21 people and have two backups at AWS and Alibaba, because, guess what? At least 18 of the 21 BPs use either Google services, AWS or Alibaba.

Remember how blockchain was supposed to get us away from companies like that? Yeah, I guess not.

This EOS shitshow makes me seriously mad. Go play your little make-believe games somewhere else.

you're responding to a probable bot.

EOS is the biggest joke this bubble has spat out and in the years to come it's going to be regarded as a peak of the madness.

EOS is going to hang itself. no point in getting worked up about it as long as you didn't fall for it.

Decision making is one of the most important ones and what's important is who's in control.

EOS is decentralized through voting. top 21 of thousands of block producers form a temporary panel. Any action they do can be undone via voting other block producers in. (at which time fired block producers loses income for up to rest of time - enormous opportunity cost)

This is why everything like protocol changes, freezing of accounts, and so on has time delays like 30 days to give voters time to react:

Like many things, the discussion is entirely subjective.

If you compare EOS to a large scale meshnet, it's centralized. If you compare it to a system which relies on a single organization, it's decentralized.

The better question is whether or not the current level of (de)centralization is sufficient to accomplish the goals of a particular project. Not everything needs to be distributed across a ridiculous number of nodes. I think that the biggest argument from the "it's centralized" camp comes from the fact that the vast majority seem to think of cryptocurrency as just that, a replacement for centralized currency systems. What is best for something designed to be a currency is not going to be what is best for a utility token focusing on a different use case.

find it strange how eos was priced so high even before launch https://www.coingecko.com/en/price_charts/eos/usd
now after launch the price struggle

you can find their sources in the github it is open-source,so if you get anything from the codes you will understand what are they doing and waiting for

This is the theory. In practice, this doesn't work. Go take a look at what happened with Lisk. Right now, you have two groups voting for each other, dictating who gets to be a delegate. All the smaller accounts vote for them as well, because they want to get a piece of the pie (most delegates are pools, another huge problem).

What makes it even worse is that the only instances getting more EOS without paying insane amounts for it are the BPs (and maybe the guys who voted for them), who obviously use it to secure their positions as BPs.

Combine that with the overall apathy in systems like that and you have something which might be even worse than a centralized service: a political structure in all its glory, with built-in bribing features.

and the top wallets can totally, absolutely dominate any vote.

i know many of them are exchanges holding user funds, but that doesn't stop the exchange having their votes. and i think it's safe to say that beyond exchanges there are enough EOS insiders who've retained enough power to stop anything they don't like the look of.

There's still a lot of room for eos to go up, and I think it could reach $100, because eos has a very concentrated distribution of tokens and a lot of money.

but eos is 2.42 usd