Growing a blockchain ecosystem is hard. Growing a blockchain ecosystem with an onchain governance mechanism is even harder. When the spectulative aspect of token markets is stripped away, one is left with more serious community building and ecosystem growth.
Although such blockchains as EOSIO have made major leaps towards community building, we should continue to explore better ways of community-led ecosystem growth.
The difference between a decentralized blockchain project ecosystem versus a distributed Internet service platform is that right as the blockchain infrstructure is completed, the future of the ecosystem is left in the hands of its community. The growth of the ecosystem is aligned with the community’s incentive to push the growth. If the community does not take initiative, who will? If there is no incentive for the community to participate, don’t expect anyone else to help out either. That’s the beauty of decentralized ecosystem. It’s autonomous, independent, and more importantly voluntary, sustained through community efforts.
Theoretically, that’s how it should work. However, there are many aspects of things that must go right to create such a beautiful autonomous ecosystem.
First, short-term thinking must not be the lead the growth. SpaceX, Tesla or The Boring Company, none of which would have existed if Elon Musk had been a short-term thinker that focuses on the short-term profitability of the companies rather than pursuing the long-term visions of sustainable energy, a multiplanetary human race, and a more effective transport system. Legendary founder of global e-commerce giant Amazon, Jeff Bezos, shares the same type of thinking, shown through his annual report to Amazon’s shareholders. “The value of a company is not the current market value it holds, but the future value of the market it is investing in.” The same thinking holds true for a decentralized ecosystem. Technology changes over time, but the philisophy of growth holds through all ages.
Instead of constantly looking for new changes, focus on the age-old wisdom that stands true with the passage of time.
The design of many blockchain ecosystem encourages short-term thinking and the leading force of the ecosystem hence focuses on short-term gains. The phenomenon is evident in the result produced. If the ecosystem encourages long-term growth, then the leading actors in the ecosystem should be the ones that best add long-term value. If the ecosystem is myopic in design, then the ones that prosper best in it are the short-term speculators. It’s easy to spot.
One can argue still that so far still the best blockchain ecosystem is still the Bitcoin blockchain. The Proof of Work mining concensus algorithm is still the most robust way to incentivize decentralized miners to be active growth leads. The simple incentive mechanism leaves little room for malicious actors and short-term speculators to disrupt long-term growth.
Later ecosystem mechanisms, however, albeit innovative in design, tend to leave more room for short-term speculations. Delegated Proof of Stake gives faster network speed and wider ecosystem participation opportunities than its POW predecessor, yet exactly how it balances the short-term survival and the long-term growth of the ecosystem remains to be seen. Unlike in POW, not all Block Producers in the network are active value-adding. In fact, the sustainability of the network design (tokeneconomics etc.) could fundamentally compromise any effort to long-term growth.
Incentive must be right. The most value-adding Block Producers of the DPOS network are not selected as the higher-ranking Block Producers. This is a factual misalignment of incentive of such DPOS network design.
And if we look at the development trend of the incentive design of the blockchain ecosystem, the rise of ICOs in 2017 did not prove to be a positive impact. The large percentage of token distribution to the project team and the dominant premine culture lead to the quick demise of a large number of blockchain ecosystems.
EOSForce wants to reverse this trend. This is our commitment to the community and sustainable blockchain growth.
However, we will not blind ourselves from reality with ambition.
Although EOSForce did not have an ICO. Nor did it raise any investment rounds through token distribution. We does inherit some of the tokeneconomic features from the EOS project created by Block.One. We still have the inflation model. We have made a great number of changes to our tokeneconomics. We adopt a 1-token-1-vote model. We give some of the BP rewards back to the community. And we are undergoing constant community discussions to improve our economic model. Over the past 6 months, these changes have made our mainnet governance superior to other mainnets in many aspects.
We are not perfect yet, but we are making progress.
So what’s our latest commitment to the larger EOSForce ecosystem?
Together with all the EOSForce Block Producers, we would like to create an governance environment that only rewards the most value-adding communities/BPs. You see, EOSForce sees all of the aforementioned issues in the original EOSIO design. We would like to change things up a bit. In the EOS Mainnet, many top BPs are ghost BPs that do not really add value to the ecosystem. Many really active BPs do not remain at the bottom rankings simply because they do not have the funds to get enough tokens for votes. Yet they are the most active ones in the ecosystem.
Today, EOSForce communities announce that we extend our open arms to those Block Producer communities that add value yet find it hard having a voice in the larger EOSIO ecosystem because they are not the most financially superior. If you add value, you will get the recognition and reward you deserve from the EOSForce community.
With a 1-token-1-vote model, EOSForce has effectively eliminated vote-buying. With a voting dividend sharing mechanism, the EOSForce voter participation rate is consistently above 90%. With a community of token holders that value long-term growth, voters are not blinded by short-term interests and vote for those BPs that focus on DAPP development, community engagement or developer growth.
Most importantly, BP community discussions are always on-going at EOSForce as BPs try to create the best network environment for long-term growth and the solutions needed to realize that goal.
Over the past months, we have reached out to many international Block Producers community with such stated mission statement of ours. The support we have received is truly encouraging. From the DAPP Developer Contest to our daily community growth, EOSForce has gradually shown to the larger blockchain community its unique commitment to the blockchain industry. With such energy, EOSForce expects a great community coming into being.
Our community-centric way of growth needs input from a diverse array of communities. If you are interested in making a difference in the blockchain industry and see things as wrongs to be made right, be the first one to join EOSForce’s young and exuberant community. We’re ripe for disruption!
For more information on joining the EOSForce ecosystem:
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