Why Telos(cope)?

In this article we will give you a glimpse into who we are and the reason to launch our block producer (BP) for the Telos network.

The Teloscope Block Producer is a joint initiative by a group of Telos enthusiasts and blockchain professionals from CTIC Centro Tecnológico non-profit foundation. Since the beginning of 2016, CTIC has been working with blockchain technologies.

For example, CTIC has developed several distributed applicactions or dApps that exemplify the potential of this technology. We have also participated in collaborative projects providing expert assistance in blockchain/DL technologies. And we are eager to spread blockchain acknowledgement at every opportunity, whether through meetings, workshops, articles or our regular podcasts.

For a newcomer this presentation can be a little misleading. Why a non-profit organization would run as a candidate for being, what is known in other blockchains, a “miner”? In order to explain this we must address some of the particularities of EOS, and explain what is the purpose of Telos.

The production of blocks in EOS is restricted to 21 nodes of the network, which are elected by the token holders. This system is designed to overcome the scalability issue while preserving a decentralized structure. In addition, it rewards those who contribute to the community with valuable content.

But BPs play a bigger role in the network than pure maintenance duty: they also “govern” the Blockchain. Every change on EOS has to go through a proposal that has to be accepted by at least 15 BPs. This effectively a complete power of decision to the 21 BPs, counting on their willingness to maintain their investment with honest actions.

Although producing BPs are constantly under election they might not be easily replaced by others. Rewards given to them are high enough to significantly increase their voting count as time goes by. There are also pockets deep enough to influence the elections. This can be appreciated on this Producers chart, where Bitfinex has an enormous impact in the top BPs election.

Overall, this represents a threat to the indepence of the network. In practice, its governance is controlled by groups whose only merits are them being well connected or having plenty EOS token reserves. The Mereos.io website provides a good hint into these problems, as it classifies BPs through various metrics. BPs with the lowest punctuation can be on top, while others that offer great resources to the community struggle to survive.

All of this problems have a difficult solution without a great shift in the direction of EOS. Something difficult to happen taking into account that changes that goes against BPs are less likely to be accepted. Apart from the obvious reason that reversing the current distribution of wealth in the EOS blockchain is impossible.

Luckily for those of you who are worried about this problems, Telos is a new blockchain whose purpose is to address them. Telos is not a fork of the current EOS mainnet, instead is a re-launch of the EOSIO software. This time the launch will be based on the same snapshot as the EOS mainnet but limiting the amount of tokens to 40,000. Apart from this, there are other measures such as encouraging to vote multiple candidates, distribute more evenly the rewards among the BPs or establishing a rotatory system that forces BPs to be always ready. These measures will surely promote BPs that are more aligned with the constant improvement of the network for the benefit of all the community.

Also it addresses some other problems such as allocating funds to incentivize development and preventing RAM to get too expensive. In conjunction, Telos presents itself as a fresh new start, with all of the EOS advantages plus the lessons learned in this months. All of them focused on improving content creation, which should be the core on every blockchain.

We are very sorry, but this is not another fork dance

As a result of the synergy between our blockchain activities and the good practices that are expected from a BP, we decided to launch The Teloscope BP. By hiring a digital transformation company specialized on AI, data processing and blockchain, we will provide a professional management of our Telos nodes, 24x7 supervision, and broaden our blockchain divulgation efforts to the Telospace. We expect to raise our reputation as a valuable actor for the community, and use it for engaging companies from our region in the Telos world.

We may be newcomers in Telos, but since 2003 CTIC runs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Spanish Office, so we know a thing or two about working with global communities.

If you want to support us in dynamizing the Telos world, stay tuned to see more content and vote for us on the mainnet launch!