Foreword
What are some of the hottest topics emerging in the crazy world of EOSIO in Jan 2019? BOS, market fluctuation, EOSForce 1-click blockchain, developer issues, resource/governance models? Surely there’s simply too much going on with EOSIO to keep up! No worries. EOSForce founder Cyborg has recently answered all of the above questions with a Q&A in the EOSForce community! If you are one of those who missed the community Q&A, you’re in the right place! In this article, we have organized his thoughts on all of the above topics! Let’s take a look.
Note: credit of the original compilationgoes to eosou.io volunteer Boming Su.
Translation provided by EOSForce Core Team JC Zhang
Straight Words on BOS
BOScore is supposedly led by a top Chinese-based top exchange. It has an interest group on the EOS Mainnet blockchain. So they launched this sidechain together. Some of the ideas of BOS are actually not bad, the Guaranteed Minimum Provision feature is actually a very good idea.
However, the biggest risk of BOS is that it does away with the EOSIO’s concensus mechanism, in order to reduce the confirmation time to the Last Irreversible Block. EOS EMLG and EOSForce could both do this. The reason why we have not done so [at EOSForce] is that the visit traffic between nodes will climb up immediately and cause the cost of nodes to rise. So BOS’ concensus mechanism would actually cause the cost of nodes on their network to increase, even higher than EOS EMLG.
At the same time, the issues of 1-token-30-vote model that plague the EOS community and the zero-voter incentive model carry huge risks for BOS as well. The codes of BOS give off an impression that they were in a rush, and many EOSIO codes were just copied and pasted line by line.
As for their token distribution/ICO model, I personally agree with the arguments presented by the founder of EOS Laomao, Laomao himself, in his personal Wechat official account (for platform restrictions we are not posting its link directly in this article).
Right now Brendan Bloomer is pushing 1-token-1-vote and voter incentive models, but the gaining support among communities is difficult. The current Block Producers have 3 categories: 1. exchanges that use idle tokens to vote for themselves; 2. BPs that are voted by the exchanges; 3. the last category is those that are elected purely through community voters. However, the 3rd category forms a very weak voice in the ecosystem. Without consent from one of these groups, Brendan Blumer would have a hard time pushing a change in the constitution. Moreover, I have talked with BPs from EOS, and they’ve told me that the current issue is not necessarily on the 1-token-30-vote or the voter dividend, but on the resource model.
Where’s EOSIO Tech in the Overall Market?
Many designs of EOSIO are laid out for the future development for multichain and crosschain. EOS development teams without long-term experience would have a hard time telling it, and every time we make changes we take a lot of caution.
When it comes to 3rd generation blockchains, EOSIO is still better than other blockchains. But the 1-token-30-vote has spoiled the good vibe of the ecosystem and turned it into exchange BPs and whale BPs playground, and the resource models on EOSIO have been problematic too.
Take REX and the Byzantine fault tolerance update for example. These updates go beyond the ability of regular teams. For EOSForce, they’d still take us a big chunk of a year to make such updates. So except for the Block.One team and our team, many developers now might resort to TRX. But actually experienced developers know that TRX’s resource model is even more unfriendly to develoepers, certainly worse than EOS. Seeing this challenge on the developer side, if the EOS DAPP development stories told on social media are true, EOS token price would have gone to the moon long ago. So that’s why we say that the current gambling and small game dapps on EOS are not solutions to the problem. Solutions exist outside the box.
Once Again about Resource Models
Their (EOS) resource model needs to be changed, or many BPs will not be able to make it, mainly also if a lot of DAPP developers go away. EOSForce uses transaction fee and dividend rental to solve the issues of RAM and transactions. Still, from what public blockchain’s current performance, the future will definitely be multichain + crosschain. One single chain cannot possibly run that many dapps.
The deterioarating state of gambling dapps
Those gambling dapps actually need not be on EOSForce. As you can see, most of them merely have a life cycle of 2 weeks and have brought negative influence to the ecosystem. Many users have lost a lot of their assets they have earned just on gambling dapps. Probabilistically speaking, in the long run, you would always lose. When the winners liquidate their assets, the EOS token price is negatively affected as well.
But actually, TRON’s resource model is the same as EOS. It’s in fact similar to EOS overall except for the virtual machine. But its resource model is inferior to EOS, and developer cost is high than on EOS. Its sole advantage is its intermittent price increases with whale pumping the price. This has led to rise of gambling dapp on TRON. The delusion this creates is that people think the ecosystem of TRON has gone up, and so TRX price has gone up. These two are actually not correlated.
One more point on this, the platform loyalty of developers on TRON is actually very low. Developers on EOS for example, when the liquidity of their EOS DAPPs drops, they move to TRON. This kind of incentive is unsustainable. Developer teams themselves are not that wealthy, so after a pump and dump, they can only resort to high-liquidity areas. Ontology for example does exactly that — moving from chain to chain for short-term liquidity. For real application developers, if your blockchain does not have good experience, everything would not go long-term. Just like earlier RAM speculations. Do people still do speculation on RAM prices?
Our view on building developer community
Status quo of blockchain developers
Full-time blockchain application developers are very small in numbers. The existing developers usually have a lacking understanding on blockchains.
However, International developers from non-Chinese regions do not care about political correctness. They come for solving problems. The reason why our international communities have grown is that many users, developers, and BPs have noticed and join the EOSForce ecosystem.
Our focus on the international community
From the perspective of EOSForce, our main focus now is to grow our international developer community. The Chinese gambling dapps developer teams only harm the ecosystem. If you have received mining dividend from dapps on EMLG Mainnet before, you know that the survivability of these dapps is usually 2 weeks. The process is usually early investors exploiting late-comers. They don’t have a mechanism to attract new users.
A good quality of international developers is that they want to solve problems. They put long-term problem solving before short-term profitability. That’s why our main focus in on the international community. Just now I said that the Minimum Guarantee Provision of BOS is actually a good feature. I’m not sure if they have finished the coding, but we also have an equivalent provision on EOSForce. We give 8kb of RAM to each account. We see many of the advanced features that more and more mainnets on EOS have the same fundamental logic. Our advantage is we have finished coding this.
In addition, Chinese EOS DAPP developer communities are no long that aggressive in many aspects. This is typical of Chinese-based groups even though the Chinese-based blockchain projects themselves are still leading in the industry. That’s why our international focus has brought activity to our global presence.
About 1-Click Blockchain Launch
ForceIO is launching very soon!
In the weekly reports we published earlier, we have announced the development of ForceIO, and we have announced our multi crosschain network. Soon we will put forward that any DAPP developer team will be able to use the ForceIO program to launch a blockchain. It can be a public blockchain similar to EOSForce or EMLG, or an enterprise blockchain. The program is catered for all resource models and governance models.
So from now on it will be easy to launch a blockchain for average users. Launching a public blockchains like BOS will no longer be an inhibiting threshold. People can launch a blockchian just like they launch an ERC-20 contract on Ethereum. Only when launching blockchains becomes accessible for developers will we see the significant applications being developed on blockchain.
The logic behind this is: when launching public blockchains is 1 click away for everybody, speculations on public blockchains should go away, so what people do next is settle down and build useful applications. The future of the blockchain industry will be packed with new public blockchains.
Early this year we said that we will support BCH. The reason we planned it was that some services work better with Proof-of-Work. So with our resources, we will aim for 1-click POW network launch service in Q2 or Q3 2019 too.
Which blockchains does 1-Click Launch support?
The 1-Click Blockchain Launch program supports EOSForce, with very fast transaction speed for homogeneous crosschains and sidechains. We will also support EOS EMLG, as well as public blockchains like Ethereum and Bitcoin.
Interblockchain communications have several popular solutions. We have two stages of development. The first one is EOSForce-homogeneous blockchains. That is, the nodes in these blockchains install the same plugin and establish trust and security between them. This is suitable for homogeneous blockchains, but the disadvantage is installing the same plugin could encounter resistance.
A Million Dollar Solution
The other solution is to completely decentralize sidechains and crosschains. This is a cutting edge technical challenge in the industry at the moment. A lot of international teams have not made the breakthroughs on this. We are looking at 1 to 2 breakthoughts in Q1 and Q2 in 2019. That’s why we are looking at supporting heterogeneous blockchains as well.
The simplest example application is when you play a dapp game, if you are playing an EOSForce mainnet game on EOS EMLG, you need to sell your EOS and buy EOSC and then play the game. You might make a lot of EOSC on the game, but if the EOSC price plummets, the EOS you exchange back might not cover what you made in the game. If we play the game through an interblockchain network with powered with crosschains, you stake your EOS on the relaychain to EOSC — this is equivalent to effect of staking it on EOS mainnet — you get the equivalent of 10 EOSC to play on the dapp. It uses the EOS you staked. When you exit the game, you can unstake your EOS and retrieve the EOS you earned in the game.
Great User Experience
The advantage of this is that you only need to complete settlements on EOS while your contracts are run on the EOSC chain. For the users, the front-end interface has absolutely no signs of that. On the other hand, if you conduct transaction settlement on EOS chain as well computation of contracts, it gets congested.
Relaychain 100% Community Mining — No 1:1 Airdrop
The relaychains in the interblockchain network will have nodes i.e. BPs as well. The token distribution of these relaychains will be 100% community mining, rewarding only those who contribute to the network. No premine distribution will be reserved for the team either.
Tokeneconomics in the IBC Network
The mechanism that incentives the EOSForce core team is: 1–5% of the mining reward each day goes to the core team account. One part of this will be paid as the salaries for the core team, and the other part will be for EOSForce mainnet airdrops for the community. This is under development and the distribution model is in design. However, it will be implemented through mining/blockc producing and no premine will be allowed.
Why 1:1 airdrop premine is bad
1:1 airdrop is flawed in its logic. Anyone without any proof of work can receive tokens in this model. The airdrop we call in the EOSForce community is from the 5% of what the core team makes and we give it to the community. But our bottom line is that you cannot get 1:1 for doing nothing. EOSForce Mainnet users have historically received that premined rewards. That actually has no more significance. Many launching mainnets nowawayds have 1:1 airdrops, but we see more and more so that do not.
Where EOSForce Stands in the IBC Field?
In the ForceIO multichain network, the latest technologies will be deployed on EOSForce Mainnet. Average developers will choose the EOSForce Mainnet for definite reasons. And they will launch a sidechain on EOSForce as EOSForce grows.
Earlier I explained the token mapping process. It is launched on EOSForce Mainnet and settled on the sidechain. The EOSForce Mainnet blockchain is where the settlement takes place although developers can choose to run transaction settlements elsewhere. The rationale is to only run computation and smart contracts on the sidechain due to resource limits. The relaychain is the bridge between sidechains and the EOSForce Mainnet blockchain.
The Historic Burden of EOSForce
A lot of the prominent figures in the EOS ecosystem are good friends with me, but due to some arguments we had earlier, they have yet publicly supported EOSForce. But this is not the important point. What really makes a token valuable? Demand. The reason why EOSC and otehr cryptocurrency prices increase slowly is because of the low demand. That is, demand from the developers. Unlike older blockchains, EOSForce has been around for less than 1 year. EOS has been in existance for 2 years, Ethereum 3 years, Bitcoin a whole decade. So their community is really large. It is normal for these long-standing ecosystems to have large dynamics.
The opposition to the EOSForce Mainnet early on was that people thought we would divert value from the EOS. Similar to ETC, even though they have done close to nothing, their price would rise. It’s diverted value from Ethereum and from Bitcoin. However, EOSForce started at a negative score, so all we are doing right now is to bring up the negative score.
BOS vs EOSForce
The brand impression BOS goes for is different. By definition, they are a fork, but they claim to be a sidechain. They do not suffer much community resistance other than its ICO because they have a large group of communities around it. But what we need to remember is what makes a blockchain good is its developer experience. In this respect, EOSForce is better than other blockchains. EOSForce’s TPS is higher than any other blockchain with fast transaction speed. That’s why we are now focusing on developer experience.
So we continue to upgrade. That’s why we do not spend as much resources on publicity. Publicity is for the useless gambing dapps. We want to focus on developer experience. We do not aim to attract enterprise dapp developer teams. We start with global medium-to-small developer communities.
Next up we are focusing on developer tutorials in English and Chinese. Developers do not care much about meetups and publicity conferences. They develop much more interesting stuff on their own than the gambling dapps given the right resources. We will provide those resources.
Comments on other developer teams
With respect to development strength, some of the best teams in the world include Bitcoin core. They are relatively conservative in terms of development, and the overall community is rather conservative too. They do not want to make Bitcoin into a peer-to-peer digital cash but a digital gold. Another team with similar traits is the Copernicus team of BCH. They have in-depth research in POW and DPOS, but have not released their findings due to political reasons.
Another team that’s very strong is BSC, the team behind Craig Wright. Their proposals are good and their development capability is find, and they ave POW miners support. Others include Cardano and Polkadot. They are strong in terms of development, but they are very slow. The rate at which they update their codes is inadequte to the amount of money they raised if this comparison makes sense.
Demand for Enterprise Blockchains
Another growing demand is enterprise blockchain. Transparency in assets in Business-to-Business needs enterprise blockchains to verify. This demand has huge potential with obvious advantages. I think if it uses stable coin to as a solution, the asset can solve the transparency issue completely in the contract.
On Token Price
Many teams control the token price in consortium with whales, but everyone knows this is no long term solution. Although the EOSForce team did not do an ICO and is not that wealthy compared to others, but we can still pull that off based on the current EOSC price. But we understand the unsustainability of that deeply.
From another perspective, the reason why people believe in Bitcoin is its decentralized nature. Even if the core team shuts down, the blockchain will still run. On the other hand, centralization would result in direct obliviation of the blockchain if the core team goes bankrupt.
Decentralization on EOSForce
From the 80% genesis lockup to the adjustment on the inflation rate, the decision-making is completely driven by the community on EOSForce Mainnet. The EOSForce core team has dedicated very minimal expenses on the governance level and the community takes full control. On the other hand, community of other blockchains have no say in the matter and can never make proposals.
I think what our focus should be next is learning from the communties whose developer atmosphere is epecially great and what kind of applications they want to do and how we can attract these develoeprs. Then we make improvement on our blockchain. Even though EOSForce development force is in good shape, but issues on governance cannot be solved on our own. We need community effort.
Blockchain growth & market condition
Many blockchains rely on speculative indicators for growth. They will artificially hype up the indicators that rating agencies use. If they look at the account number, they create accounts on their own. If they look at the transaction number, they spam transaction counts. I think the growth on EOSForce is actually the normal one. Our international community grows at a 10% rate weekly.
Many speculators came in EOSForce at the times of market hype and bought the token at a very high price. I don’t think this is what a rational investor should do. With the current market condition, as more speculators leave, the community is starting to discuss things from an economic viewpoint and not for pure self interest.
The current issues of the blockchain indsutry are not faced by EOSForce alone. BPs on EOS EMLG do not make a profit these days from the reward nor from developing dapps. The same goes for BCH. Good applications should not have to rely on token price to prosper. They rely on the performance and accessibility of the blockchain.
For example, a question is if Bitcoin does not have 3Mb in its blockchain, could it grow? Is it still depending on the 3M/block? If it were not for the revolutionary fundamentals in the whitepaper, it would not have grown until today. Blockchains with centralized token price manipulation have died in masses. EOSForce will not repeat the same mistake. The current token price warm up is totally due to the community. If we were controlling the price, I would not be chatting with you guys here.
What can EOSForce ecosystem members do?
I think what all people should do in EOSForce ecosystem is to participate in the discussion of governance, not just as a token holder. Without discussions on governance and applications, blockchains die.
Blockchain has not just been in existence for 1 or 2 years. It will be influential to industries for decades or even centuries to come. Currently if we only care about self-interest, we only hurt the existing users. We have a shortage of new users right now. Even the top three exchanges only have a fraction of the users they did. We must get rid of the short-term token holder speculative mindset.
EOSForce, as the first fork or sidechain on EOS, price estimates would definitely be more promising than others. We will continuously iterate responding to new demands. We will also cooperate with the commuity and international BPs. We also thank our partner MathWallet and our Korean communities.
I think that’s enough for today. Our plans for 2019 are way more dense and ambitious than the previous year. If you have any question, contact with us or with BPs, in Kaokao Talk or Telegram.
Contact EOSForce
Twitter | English Telegram | Reddit | Github |Korean Telegram
EOSForce blockchain explorer: https://explorer.eosforce.io/#/en
Wallets
https://github.com/eosforce/wallet-desktop
- EOSC token is distributed in accordance with the EOS genesis mapping. You can activate your EOSForce genesis account here.
Scatter 10 has minor compatibility issues with EOSForce blockchain. Join the Telegram Channel here: https://t.me/Scatter. Visit the Scatter website at: https://get-scatter.com/
Exchanges
Bitforex | Akdex.io
