Monday, October 1, 2018
BlockchainKid asks the question:
“Perhaps someone could confirm or correct my understanding of Bitfinex voting. My understanding is that Bitfinex has said they will only vote tokens based on how users on their platform have voted for BPs. Presumably this means they don't cast votes when tokens have chosen not to vote via their platform? I'm unclear about whether Bitfinex have articulated a stance on how they vote tokens held for liquidity purposes. Assume they don't vote these as they are needed for liquidity and the 3 day unstaking period doesn't help with this. Presumably Bitfinex the exchange and Bitfinex the BP also own some of their own tokens outright. Have they said if/how they vote these? My guess is no. If what I've said above is accurate, I suspect what is actually happening is that a very low number of Bitfinex users are actually voting. And the numbers coming through on charts like the ones on EOS Authority website are largely driven by voting of tokens Bitfinex owns outright”.
Rick Schlesinger - EOS New York writes:
“Bitfinex Ballot - EOS Block Producer Voting. Please note that you have to select 15 Block Producers, of which 5 have to be in the range from 22 to 150. Odd rule. From what I understand speaking with @prdn0 last week, the votes are somehow aggregated across their set of proxies. So you can't actually choose your own unique slate unless you're a whale(?). I'm still trying to understand how the ballots map into the proxies exactly. When the Bitfinex proxy first came online, their voters were voting for less than 5 BPs. They instituted the rule to increase more diversity and ensure standbys get a fair look.”
Nate D - Aloha EOS responds:
“As it is, it really isn't possible for the votes to be accurately applied.”
BlockchainKid writes:
“According the to Authority chart, I'm counting about 45 different BPs being voted for by Bitfinex. It just seems like a low number given that presumably so many people are voting.
Because they don't count until a 500k eos threshold is met. What is the reason? Administrative difficulty?”
Rick Schlesinger - EOS New York gives his point:
“They are trying, is how I look at it. With the lack of usable hardware wallets and DEXs right now, I give Bitfinex a lot of credit for helping people in these early days. They were the only exchange requiring a minimum number of BPs to vote for to increase network security. I'd like to see Huobi do something similar. (or we all just move to owned private keys :) )”.
Kevin Rose - EOS New York writes:
“The one thing I wish we could have, as a Block Producer, is some kind of mature feedback loop from token holders. Not just the shift of votes, but actual intent, to indicate why people do what they do.”
Paolo gives his point:
“I can ask around, usually I think that there must be a good reason for whales to vote for BPs big amounts and usually they match with the most active BPs (in terms of contribution to the ecosystem) but might be due to other reasons that I can't easily know. I try to advocate the fact that not voting for the best players effectively is weakening the network but not easy for me to know if there are other interests. One problem that we see is that we have 200k users that hold EOS on the platform. We can do an opt-in system but really my problem is about security and administration. Handling even 20k accounts can become painful and expensive in terms of development”.
Samupaha writes:
“I think I already proposed this a while back, but my favorite voting system for exchanges is that they create a separate account for every voter. All tokens will go there and get staked. Customer is given only the voting key, not active and owner keys, which are still in the possession of the exchange. Now the customer can vote with his key as he likes, but the tokens are still in the exchange.”
Announcements:
Katie | @eosasia | myeoskit.com gives links to the articles:
Oct 1, 2018 Statement: EOS Public Blockchain Governance.
EOS ASIA ACQUIRES THE EOS GO BRAND TO HELP EDUCATE THE BROADER BLOCKCHAIN Community.
She adds:
“☝🏾 our team has acquired the eosgo brand. We will do our best to live up to the high standard set by the eosgo team - Go EOS!”.
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
DataJunky | GenerEOS writes about voting processes:
“It doesn't make sense to have tokens on the exchange and not be voting. They're staked anyways, it's just a waste to opt out of voting. If the token holders knew that, they'd vote. There's airdrops that are incentivising voting like. Patreos
Poorman tokens etc. They're all missing out on the benefits of voting.”
“Maybe an interesting analogy:
If EOS is digital property, we assume it has attributes of any property such as the need for maintenance. If you don’t maintain your property, such as a house or piece of land, it usually starts to corrode or otherwise fall apart. Perhaps we should apply that same principle to tokens/wallets that aren’t voting whatsoever (whether staked or not).
It’s interesting that we apply a similar idea via vote decay, which embarrassingly I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the nuances. But in this case (voter decay) the penalty for not to staying engaged is high and in many ways I understand the reasons.
We could see voting as plumbing of a house - except this plumbing starts to go to shit in a week (decay)... whereas in the former case, if you don’t take care of plumbing (don’t vote) it maintains its power but goes unused... maybe the plumbing has some really bad water running through it... okay I’ll stop with the analogies.”
Kevin Rose - EOS New York about REX:
“REX when it’s available. As an exchange, I’d focus on how to enable REX participation and distribute REX fees. Otherwise there may be an exodus. If I were a token holder and I could either A. Hold my tokens on an exchange and earn nothing or B. Have my own wallet and earn, is choose B. By enabling this feature and figuring out how to distribute REX fees you encourage voting. This excludes active traders and focuses on those who take advantage of the “custodian” aspect of exchanges.”
Ryan Bethem - EOS42 replies:
“Until then chintai will allow token holders to make profits off otherwise idle tokens and increase vote count via chintai proxy. Different model but similar end goal and result. And much sooner. Maybe not what bitfinex wants though (exodus)”.
Kevin Rose - EOS New York replies:
“It will be more difficult to entice token-holders to keep tokens on exchanges over a long period of time as their utility increases.”
Ryan Bethem - EOS42 asks:
“Likely. Would you include leasing as utility?”
He gets positive answer.
Douglas Horn | Telos writes:
“The big problem with exchanges voting tokens for their customers is that there is simply no way to reasonably discern the good actors from the bad because they are all executing votes that have not been voted or proxied on-chain.
Without assigning any blame, I say that the processes of ensuring that the intentions of the beneficial owners can never be ensured when voted in aggregate accounts. This is against the core principles of the representational democracy of DPOS.”
Joe agrees:
“Yes. How often in blockchain do we hear "don't trust, verify"? Regardless of what we're told by exchanges about their proxy voting systems being mathematically provable and therefore trustable, in the cold light of day we're unable to verify these systems in any meaningful way. As a result we have to trust them to be doing the right thing. I don't follow this logic at all.”
Khosi (eosafricaone) Morafo eosAfrica gives his point of view:
“As an African, I am so impressed with Block.one today. What B1 has done will make our advocacy work that much easier. Mainnet really needs to come to the party because when the events are over, BP teams in Africa need to keep the EOS fires burning. We cannot do that if mainnet voter does not invest in our ability to do so. Block.one seems to have recognised that Africa may hold very little in terms of token or tech but Africa is the lowest hanging fruit for adoption. I really hope that the Mainnet voter start reasoning their voting activity with EOS adoption in mind.”