EOS Centralization Woes Return as Block Producer Offers Money for Votes, and Are EOS Block Producers as well-off as we think in the current crypto market?
Steve Smith , a newcomer, asks:
Good evening all. The aim of my following questions, is to glean some insight and provoke discussion – with that in mind, I will ask the following question which I have asked elsewhere too, and have been suggested to post here directly:
While we are on the subject of unique voters – I’m curious as to what the thoughts on in respect to vote buying?
Is it even feasible to mitigate it, and if so how? I ask because the issue of buying votes has raised its head – so, if we have established voting systems in government that buy votes in the form of tax breaks etc, why would we expect it to be different on EOS, and where do we draw the line? Similarly, can we discuss the pros and cons of proxy votes?
They seem ripe for corruption and vote buying – I’m struggling to see a good argument for them.
Katie | @eosasia replies to him:
Welcome Steve and thank you for your questions posed to the group.
My personal opinion is that we are too young of a blockchain to meaningfully stop vote buying. While I think vote buying can harm the blockchain because it causes BP operations to give profits back to the community or whoever instead of reinvesting into their business, I cannot figure out how to stop it. Thus perhaps it should be allowed so everyone will have the same opportunity to compete via vote buying.
There are pros and cons to proxying votes but general community consensus seems to be that proxies bring more positives than negatives
Steve Smith writes:
Ok, so let’s think about it – if you can’t or won’t research individual BPs – and I admit I am a little apathetic in that respect – how do I make a rational judgment on who should take my vote?
Basically I am saying this system encourages bad actors to attract the proxies of people for the wrong reason.
Would you allocate your vote for your local MP to your neighbour who sounds like he researched the options? Proxy is just masking another problem – the paradox of choice…
Ryan Bethem – EOS42 repies:
(I live in the US) personally, I like to listen to experts. People that use rational thinking and adherence to facts over idealiogy. I listen to experts to form all sorts of opinions. when it comes to voting in our national and state elections, I seek expert opinions from groups I trust and make many of my voting decisions with said guidance. I still have to go physically vote because that’s how it works, and I enjoy it, but i essentially proxy my votes. I don’t have time to study the nuances of many aspects of US government.
One of the major issues is not having vote buying clearly defined and not having a way to enforce. Need referendum to actually get things going.
However, I think taking proxies out of EOS to address vote buying (which I think is intimately built into EOS code) would be detrimental. We’d lose participation and informed voting for starters. People setting up and running well informed proxies are vital.
Raman Bindlish – Investing with a difference writes:
I have personally helped 100s of people vote themselves. They finally got around and gave up. They assigned me proxy. They don’t see much value in picking same 30 as me and going around voting. I have 1500+ people proxying to me and I am always telling everyone to vote themselves. I have spent hours helping people create account and move tokens out of exchanges. It is difficult beyond a point for a 70 year old to go and do all that we are doing.. And trust me they want good for EOS and care about blockchain and DPOS
Yes. Vote buying will happen. But the whole idea is majority believes in the system and are trying to do good. Whales are also mostly looking after the system. After all they have invested in it. There are some bad elements. If we can get 100 million more tokens into voting ecosystem, these bad elements will drown out. Right now they are getting stronger. Proxy in my eyes very important way of spreading awareness about what matters and getting people behind community members who have public face and can be questioned.
Annabelle | EmpowerWomen.io posts:
The real question is how do you use blockchain, EOSio, and crypto to overcome this…? – Escaping the Global Banking Cartel – https://youtu.be/LgI0liAee4s
Tanish EOSMetal (eosmetaliobp) writes:
If the question is how EOSIO could help escaping global banking? I would say many tools are being developed all around the world to help getting into the crypto economy and use blockchain services (Bitgate looks awesome). As more and more people starts using the crypto services, we would see the exchange of money happening peer to peer without any banks or intermediaries.
He explained the concept of banking and hierarchy cartels really well. Which somewhat looks a lot closer to what we are experiencing in EOS in terms of voting. (voters apathy, playing with the rules, getting people on their side by votes etc.) so my question would be –
How we could stop such cartels establishing on EOSIO blockchain?
Announcements:
Steve Floyd – eostribe.io posts:
I will be transitioning out of EOS Tribe over the next 30 days and joining the @bitgate team as Chief of Product.
You can read more about it here…
https://steemit.com/eos/@eostribe/goodbye-eos-tribe
Tanish EOSMetal (eosmetaliobp) posts:
EOS Centralization Woes Return as Block Producer Offers Money for Votes
Excerpt: The EOS network is decentralized until it is not. A block producer for the EOS blockchain has publicly engaged in a money-for-vote activity. Starteos, as the node is called, announced that delegating its node as a proxy would allow users to earn a stable income in EOS tokens. As the node is originally a game launched on the top of the EOS blockchain, it also offered its potential delegates “the corresponding amount of general game tokens,” which they can use to play Lucky Fruit Slots Machine and [again] receive revenue in EOS tokens.
Tanish EOSMetal (eosmetaliobp) later posts:
“EOS Block Producer Survey” by altShiftDev https://link.medium.com/jwTAeDyEnS
Excerpt: Are EOS Block Producers as well-off as we think in the current crypto market?
Join me as I dive into the world of EOS Block Producers to find out how much they are paid, what it takes to run one and how they’re performing in this bear market.