EOS New York MeetUp - Full Q&A With Thomas Cox

@eosnewyork put on a wonderful event and wrote up their great summary here

A quick thanks for making the event possible to them, my mind was racing for days following the MeetUp and I'm more excited than ever to take part in the EOS ecosystem.

They put together some great coverage of the event, but I wanted to make sure the entire Q&A was put out in a narrative style/context. I did my best to leave in the audio for questions when the microphones weren't acting up, and did my best to preserve context with my text when the questions weren't audible. If you asked one of the questions, please feel free to jump in and I'll tag you within the post. Without further ado here is the entirety of the Q&A..

EOS New York MeetUp #1 - Questions and Answers with Thomas Cox

The first question was related to mechanisms of preventing a bad actor from creating a smart contract, receiving tokens, and then not delivering on the intention of the contract while trying to take off with the funds. Thomas’ response gives us a bit of insight into how arbitration built into the network constitution might handle the situation.

A follow up asks how block producers make money and Thomas walks us through how the network inflation is set and distributed to BPs and Stand-by BPs.

The next question was about the EOS VC criteria for investment. Thomas took a deep dive on this one.

Sam asks the next question about the actual speed at launch, and whether the number of 21 BPs is sufficient to avoid centralization.

The next answer might be the biggest piece of news/info we’ve received on how an eos.io network might actually be booted up. (Note: Thomas is working on a Medium post to clarify this as some information has changed.) Thomas lays out a plan on how the genesis block will be compiled to start a brand new chain. He also assuages some concerns of bad actors and whether 4 months is enough time for trustworthy block producers to be identified and spin up to work on the network launch. (Note: Thomas is working on a Medium post to clarify this as some information has changed.)

The next discussion centered on the possibility of bad actors to amass large stakes and vote for Block Producers that would harm the network. Thomas does his best to explain how it would be difficult, and serve no real interest as well as the importance of voting.

Next is some further clarification from Thomas on how the BPs are compensated through inflation.

An audience member raised concerns that the amount of VC funding might crowd out smaller dApp companies and it will be hard for non-VC funded dApps to compete. Also a concern that early air drops might give too much power to early holders of EOS before the main token distribution is concluded. Kevin reminds everyone that Everipedia will be EOS NY’s next guest.

Next Thomas talks about how bad actor BPs can be mitigated and whether there is sufficient incentive to act poorly after receiving votes from token holders.

As we dig deeper into governance and voting, an audience member wonders if the 6 month lock up is worth it for token holders and whether BPs paying for votes can be policed.

Thomas also mentions a book by Elinor Ostrom about groups managing common resources. It's safe to say that Ostrom guides a lot of Thomas' baseline assumptions and ideas for EOS Governance.

We dive deeper into governance but with a concentration on implementation and how BPs signal their vote to change/improve the chain. Thomas describes the public and transparent 30 day BP Vote broadcast.

Thomas makes a quick clarification between the BP network change voting and general token holder voting.

Tragedy of the commons is often discussed in supporting shared resources, but often all the interested parties are equal. Thomas shares how this might apply to the more diverse community within EOS.

A bit more clarification on voting lock up and how many tokens will actually be used to vote. Thomas also gives a prediction for how much of the network might vote.

Fun aside, crowd chooses more question time with Thomas Cox of Block.one over drinks. #dedicatedcommunity.

When posed the question of what are the use cases by our AWS Host, Thomas had those in the room developing dApps stand up and give a 2 (sometimes 3) summary of their projects/ideas for utilizing the EOS blockchain.

In order:
Political Party
Local Marketplace
Wallet/Keychain Management
RPGs (Role Playing Games, not Rocket Propelled Grenades)
Transparent Voting
Exchanges
Collectible Marketplace
Automotive Marketplace
Browser
Insurance
Hiring Platform
Game Development
Storage
To Empower Writing
Securities Lending
Advertising w/ Privacy
Retail Things
Layer to trade in game objects, save games, licenses, accounts between multiple games.

Ryan continues the governance discussion with a Wall Street analogy regarding regulatory capture and how that can be avoided on EOS.

Some further clarification on how voting will work and a brief discussion, continuing the ongoing talk in the EOS Governance channel about whether identity will be necessary on the EOS network.

Dave asking about security and wallet availability on EOS main net.

Greg asks about whether a large bad actor can accumulate enough to attack the network. Thomas works through how difficult and expensive this attack vector would be and reiterating why paying for votes is a bad idea.

Next, Thomas walks through some basics in response to a developer question about basic resources and storage.

Thomas doesn't dive too deep into an answer here, because he isn't allowed to discuss token value, but I wanted to include Jason’s points. He has a theory that EOS Token value is based on the following: Value of Future Air Drops, Speculation, and Value of Future Processing Power.

Audience member wary of latency asks whether B.1 will have any say on BP location and Thomas gives his answer that educated voters will likely be taking location distribution into account and that B.1 will not have a direct say in the matter.

This post took a bit longer than I imagined, but here are EOS New York’s closing remarks and an invitation to future happy hours and Feb. 22nd MeetUp.