Introduction

Team GenerEOS Sydney is excited to officially announce itself to the EOS community for consideration as a pioneering block producing candidate in the launch of the main EOS.IO blockchain.

GenerEOS is a social enterprise block producing candidate with a mission of promoting and supporting scalable and highly reliable block production whilst giving back block rewards to charities. Our mission is to re-engineer the way funds are distributed to charities, through the introduction of fully transparent smart contracts and DApps.

This revolutionary way of bringing a community together as a co-operative is made possible by the EOS.IO software. We strongly believe we are at the forefront of a new era of bringing decentralised technology into the mainstream.

Based out of Sydney, Australia, GenerEOS is founded by a team of like minded blockchain enthusiasts with diverse backgrounds and a passion to make a difference in the world and fostering the spirit of generosity by giving back.

Team

Tim Weston

Partner | Business Strategy

Tim is an Entrepreneur and Engineer who was raised and lives in Sydney Australia. Tim successfully built one of Australia’s largest artist management and event companies: Audiopaxx and has worked alongside brands such as Red Bull, Microsoft, SFX Totem, OWSLA, Sony Music Entertainment and Universal.
Along with a passion for business and marketing, Tim gained extensive experience in the field of geomechanics engineering research working at Australia’s top University, UNSW as a technical specialist.

Tim has been a passionate blockchain enthusiast and evangelist since being interviewed by the ABC radio station in 2011 about his thoughts on Bitcoin and blockchain technology. Daniel Larimer and the Block.one team’s vision and mission strongly resonates with Tim, who has dedicated his focus on EOS.IO since the ICO launch.

Through his personal and professional experiences, Tim brings a unique skill set to the EOS ecosystem and has proven to be an inclusive community member, collaborator, and is passionate about continually supporting and growing the EOS community.

Nathan Rempel

Partner | Smart Contracts and Infrastructure

Nathan is a Systems Engineer raised North of the Wall (Calgary, Alberta, Canada) and is now living in the land of eternal summer (Sydney, Australia). With a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering Nathan has had a varied career including Video Engineer for Shaw Cable, Power Systems Engineer in Oil and Gas, Software Consulting, and most recently Systems Engineering for Solium, an international cloud based equity management platform.

Adhering to the best and latest principles of DevOps and Agile methodologies, and familiar with a wide range of tools and tech for operating and maintaining cloud based infrastructure and production software, Nathan is well equipped to support the GenerEOS team in providing best in class block producing capabilities for the EOS network.
Nathan’s varied passions include motorcycles, 3D printing, aquariums, Ethereum smart contracts, and just about anything “neat”. He brings a diverse, flexible, and highly adaptable skill set to tackle the known and unknown challenges of becoming a strong EOS community member, block producer, and DApp innovator.

Ralf Weinand

Partner | Block Producing and Infrastructure

One fateful Christmas Eve, Santa brought Ralf a second-hand book about programming in BASIC. However he forgot to bring the accompanying PC, which was delivered a day later. This unfortunate turn of events forced him (in the absence of any other Christmas presents) to start reading his new programming book and Ralf hasn't looked back since.

Ralf studied Software Engineering with Siemens AG and Allianz AG and later completed a Master of Computer Science at the University of Berlin and Fraunhofer FOCUS. In 2005 he was awarded a scholarship at the University of Technology Sydney where he met his current employer Polonious. Starting as a System Architect he soon became the Development Manager and later the COO of the company.

With over 20 years experience of IT in the Banking and Insurance industry Ralf has gained vast experience in architecting, hosting and managing mission-critical SaaS systems. He deeply understands the importance of high-availability, reliability, scalability and security. With this expertise, Ralf recently led the implementation of ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 Information Security and Quality Management Systems for his employer.

Ralf has been actively researching blockchain technologies and when he realised the game-changing potential of the EOS platform, he decided to focus all his energy on this one project.

Tom Fu

Partner | Marketing and Brand Development

Previously an admitted solicitor in the Supreme Court of New South Wales, Tom left his old life behind in the search for greener pastures and less paperwork. Now he has been an active digital marketer for over 3 years and is the COO of the marketing agency he co-founded.

With a global outlook and Chinese heritage, Tom has managed to build an impressive portfolio of multiple eCommerce stores using influencer marketing, social media branding and also pay per click (PPC) traffic.

Currently, Tom advises small and large business enterprises on their marketing and branding strategies including ICOs and existing projects on the Ethereum blockchain.

In his spare time Tom enjoys a cheeky day trade and posting about these adventures on his Steemit blog.

Tai Tran

Partner | Content and Community

Tai has over 20 years experience and in-depth expertise in advertising and media. He has worked extensively with post production, interactive media, broadcasters, Ad agencies and media monitoring across Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia and India.

With a passion for all things video, Tai excels at utilising technology to add value to his client’s workflows. A natural people person, Tai enjoys working closely with clients on all aspects of product process, design and marketing with a close focus on consultation, innovation and excellence in service to ensure a high return on investment.

Tai loves all things blockchain, especially the application of the technology in making the world a better place. He actively supports the meetup space in Sydney and conducts interviews of the Blockchain community on his YouTube channel.

Roadmap

Mainnet launch preparation

Testnets & BIOS process

During the initial testnet phase we have been experimenting with different configurations in Amazon Web Services (AWS) as well as Google Cloud Platform (GCP) environments. We’ve joined several testnets including Jungle and Scholar and currently, we actively participate in community discussions regarding different BIOS boot process options. Our team is researching and practicing the automated / scripted and fully transparent boot process proposed by EOS Canada. We are also exploring the alternative more manual / secretive / security-optimised boot process proposed by HKEOS, EOS RIO, EOS Tribe and other block producer candidates and individuals of the EOS community using Wiregard VPN and secure communicate channels like keybase for exchanging sensitive information (as well as a combination of the two options). We are fully prepared to go with either of these options and will continue to explore those and other BIOS boot processes with the block producer candidates community in readiness for the mainnet launch.

Failover & Load-balancing

Together with many other block producer candidates, we are discussing and researching different approaches for block producer-node failover and load-balancing solutions as there is currently no built-in support within the EOS.IO software to allow multiple distributed nodes to share the load of producing blocks. If multiple block producing nodes of one appointed or elected block producer are configured to produce blocks with the same signing key at the same time and broadcast those blocks to the network this would result in conflicts and the block producer would very quickly be voted out.

Yet, only having one producing node (which solves the aforementioned problem) is not a prudent setup for a serious block producer candidate who wishes to provide as close to 100% up-time (with no missed blocks) as technically feasible. Ideally, we would like full load-balancing support to be implemented by BlockOne before mainnet launch. As this option looks unlikely, we are also researching different approaches to overcome this issue.

Stay tuned for a future steemit post highlighting the various options and configurations we are exploring to tackle the failover and load-balancing issue.

Initial infrastructure & scaling plans

As with most block producer candidates our initial infrastructure set up for the mainnet launch day will look very different from what we envision as our medium-term ideal infrastructure. As a fully self-funded block producer candidate, we need to finely balance the computational, memory, storage and network requirement of the EOS.IO network with our financial risk appetite. We have therefore opted for a cloud-based approach in our initial endeavours of being elected as an EOS.IO block producer. This provides us the required flexibility and agility needed before and shortly after the mainnet launch at a calculable financial risk. AWS instance types 1xe and GCP’s n1-ultramem series allow us to scale our nodes to 4TB RAM, 160 CPUs, 2x2 TB SSD and 25 Gbit of peek network bandwidth in a matter of minutes. By the time the EOS.IO network requirements outgrow established cloud providers’ hardware options, we will be in a financial position to architect, implement and maintain our own server centres and customise them to the specific needs of the EOS community.

During our ongoing mainnet launch preparation and participation in various testnets, we are mainly working with small virtual server configurations (8 GB RAM / 2 CPU machines on AWS as well as GCP). For our participation in performance testnets (which are yet to be scheduled for after the official Dawn 4 release) we are planning to upgrade our producing nodes to 122 GB RAM / 4 CPU machines. We are also experimenting with auto-scaling options for our array of smaller size non-producing nodes.

We will determine our initial server size for the mainnet launch according to the results of our performance tests. Based on discussions with other block producer candidates we were initially planning to provision servers equivalent to AWS EC2 x1e.2xlarge machines for our block producing servers (i.e. 244 GB RAM / 8 CPU) in AWS and GCP. However, according to Dan’s comment in his latest Medium post, the starting config needs to be discussed with the community of block producer candidates. Dan is proposing to start with a smaller RAM configuration (e.g. 32 GB) to avoid speculation on RAM prices. This approach is supported by Team GenerEOS.

Infrastructure vision and latest work

Our plan is to implement cloud-based infrastructure in the short to medium-term. The diagram below demonstrates the infrastructure architecture that we are working towards. We will use AWS and GCP cloud providers to set up our redundant fail-safe infrastructure. A load balancer connects our block producer infrastructure to the rest of the EOS block producer network. Additionally, cloud provider internal load balancers will provide failover within AWS and GCP respectively. A detailed solution is still in development as outlined above.
Separate from the producing nodes, we will provide an array of non-producing service nodes which are fully load-balanced across cloud providers and are used to serve EOS users such as DApps and Wallet implementations.

Governance

Governance is the area of EOS.IO software that cannot be automated, but must rely on the unified cooperation of human interactions.
The inbuilt governance mechanisms within EOS.IO software will allow for the rapid expansion of the network and continually improving on the system that in turn creates a viral loop, exponentially growing the overall adoption of EOS.

Being a block producer holds great power and responsibility, in which we sincerely declare to endorse and accept the rules set forth by the community’s democratically agreed upon Constitution. We believe the governing issues should be subject to constant debate to continually improve EOS.IO for the community as a whole.

Jurisdiction - Proud to be Australian

Our headquarter is located in Sydney, Australia which is known for its political stability, transparent regulatory system, and sound governance frameworks that underpins its economic resilience. Ranked in the global top five on the Index of Economic Freedom, Australia’s effective governance provides a safe, secure operating environment.

Australia’s business environment is ranked 15th out of 190 economies. The Australian government, with its FinTech-forward agenda, has notably set out to engage in discussing and promoting blockchain technologies and their real world applications.

We will pay taxes in Australia, abide by Australian corporate legislation and work with government departments to shape regulation around the emerging blockchain technologies.

Structure

GenerEOS will be an registered as an Australian Proprietary Limited company and as such we will comply with the below responsibilities:

• Have a current registered office – A company must have a current registered office in Australia and must inform ASIC of its location.
• Have a principal place of business – A company that operates a business from a location different from the registered office must inform ASIC.
• Disclose personal details of directors – A company must inform ASIC of the name, date of birth and current residential address of directors.
• Keep financial records – A company must keep up-to-date financial records that correctly record and explain transactions and financial position. Larger companies have additional obligations to lodge financial reports with ASIC.
• Notify ASIC of key changes – Whenever there are certain key changes to the company’s details (e.g. registered office, principal place of business, directors), ASIC must be notified.
• Pay relevant taxes – These taxes include but not limited to company tax, GST and Fringe benefits tax

Transparency

All revenue and transaction history will run through a publically displayed ledger smart contract. Additionally, an interactive smart contract DApp will be developed that allows a selection of vetted beneficiaries to be voted upon by the EOS community. Activity statements, expenditure reports and beneficiary donation reports will be displayed at regular intervals for the EOS community to monitor.

Independence

GenerEOS is bootstrapped and funded directly by the founding team’s personal capital. GenerEOS is not influenced by any venture funding, therefore we can remain agile and free to move in the direction required by the community. GenerEOS will continue to be Australian owned and independent.

Collaboration

We believe it is a combined effort of the entire community to effectively run and govern the EOS.IO Blockchain. GenerEOS participates in open discussions with the community and the Block.one team on a regular basis to contribute to any current technical or governance issues. With the decentralised and open source nature of EOS.IO, the role of a block producer is to lead from the front, nurturing an environment where collaboration is encouraged.

Arbitration

GenerEOS will adhere to and support any arbitration ruling made by an appointed arbitrator. We will do all means necessary to ensure the ruling is carried out.

Against Collusion

GenerEOS will do all means possible to prevent collusion with other block producers and make any partnerships completely transparent to the community through regular reporting.

Against Vote Buying/Dividends

GenerEOS will not engage in any form of vote buying nor will it give dividends to voters and will do everything in its power to stop this occurring in the ecosystem

Community Benefit Outline

GenerEOS is a social enterprise block producer candidate who aims to give back 10% of its operating profits to charities. Our mission is to re-engineer the way funds are distributed to charities using immutable EOS.IO software.

Currently, to distribute money from donors to the designated beneficiaries involves traversing a long line of banks, NGOs, government agencies, law firms and other actors. This creates friction, delays, and adds cost leaving less for the designated beneficiaries. Oftentimes, money gets “lost” and ends in the wrong hands completely. Consequently, trust in charities is at all time low. This decline is due to three key issues: accountability, management and fundraising methods. We hope our innovation in this space will encourage creative solutions to global issues to streamline transparency and enhance the positive impact.

Projects

DApp charity pool of vetted beneficiaries

While GenerEOS aims to give back to charities, we want the community at large to play an important role in distributing these funds. GenerEOS will develop a smart contract and DApp that allows the public to vote on how to distribute the funds amongst a curated and vetted list of beneficiaries. To facilitate this we intend to distribute voting tokens - these tokens will have no financial value or benefit, we will give them away freely and they may be used to vote freely. The tokens may be airdropped, awarded for social media or community interaction, and any number of other means. We are excited to see the various possibilities this will allow, including greater exposure for charities, the EOS ecosystem, and the community at large.

Charity DAC

GenerEOS intends to expand the first iteration of our DApp by entering the Charitable DAC space and providing a system that benefits the community through efficiency and transparency. The community will be able to propose beneficiaries, specify funding milestones, provide new sources of funding, and track charitable spending. We feel this will be a tool that can help improve confidence in the mainstream charities, increase the awareness of and funding opportunities for lesser known charitable efforts, and allow the community to support what they are truly passionate about.

Incubator for Charity based DApps

GenerEOS will develop a dedicated incubator focused on creating highly scalable charity based DApps that are designed to change the fundamentals of Charity organisations. We will help entrepreneurs and engineers solve the challenges associated with running a charity based DApp by providing workspace, seed funding, compliance, mentoring, and education on the EOS.IO software. Our incubator will be based in Sydney Australia and will develop collaborations globally.

Community Engagement

Fireside Chat

Whilst GenerEOS will primarily give back to the community through our charity work we will also keep the EOS and wider community updated. Our Fireside chats will be a podcast themed update series that keeps the EOS community informed of EOS and blockchain related updates. This will be a less formal way for us to communicate with our followers and the EOS community on what has been happening in the space and for them to get a chance to understand the work we do as a block producer.

We will specifically cover these topics to ensure that you as the community stay engaged and informed of all the new updates and progress that EOS is making:

• Interviews and discussions with other block producers
• General EOS updates and news
• Airdrop updates for EOS
• Interviews and discussions with new projects on the EOS blockchain
• Exploring and breaking down complicated technical updates

Meetups

Team GenerEOS are active participants at Sydney’s Blockchain meetup events. Our Community and Content Partner, Tai, runs the Crypto Traders Sydney meetup, where attendees gather to discuss Crypto trading, Technology and other developments, including EOS, in a relaxed and friendly setting. Tai also guest MCs at the Bitcoin Crypto Sydney meetup attracts a different set of attendees.

Furthermore, we actively work at building our relationships with the other Australian Block Producer candidates, having helped promote their message on Youtube and and assisting with venue selection for their Sydney gatherings.

Community Presence

GenerEOS has participated in the EOS Jungle Testnet (Koala) and Scholar testnet (EOS Sydney) - see screenshots below.

Participating in the ongoing improvement and development of the aforementioned testnets has given us great insight into adapting to the changing conditions in the network. Actively supporting and working with other block producer candidates has been a challenging and rewarding experience that ensures a healthy ecosystem.

GenerEOS worked closely with the VP of product at Block.one to analyse modelling for - Block Production revenue analysis. This collaboration has given us a deep understanding of the economic and sociological factors that contribute to this unique ecosystem.

Public Presence

Website: https://www.genereos-sydney.io
Steem: https://steemit.com/@genereos
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/FfqLYBDQkv5vSkiLsh34IA
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/GenerEOS
Github: https://github.com/generEOS
Medium: https://medium.com/@generEOS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/generEOS