Telos Weekly Report — June 28th, 2019

Historic Governance Amendment Voting

This week we (finally) launched voting on the TED Plan (Telos Economic Development Plan). No blockchain has ever attempted to modify its governance documents in this way before. There are a few things that are really exciting and new here.

First is the fact that we even have governance documents and that they are stored in Telos IPFS storage controlled by a voting smart contract. This contract (eosio.amend) allows anyone to propose new text for any of the governance documents by proposing a different clause. If the voters agree by 55% yes votes (ignoring abstain votes) then the new clause will replace the old one for that document. So that structure and smart contract-control is unique.

The other unique piece of this is that it is voted by all users, not just core developers, or validating nodes (miners or BPs) as on most other chains. On Telos, the token holders vote and the core developers work to create code supporting that vote. (If the core developers don’t do this then another group can come in and be paid by WPS to do it instead.) The block producers ultimately adopt the code to change how the chain operates. Like the core developers, the block producers can be replaced by the voters if they don’t fulfill their wishes. In this way, Telos is the first blockchain to truly put its community members in charge of the future of the chain.

I hope we can get this message out into the broader crypto world because it’s pretty epic. EOS failed to do this and ended up tearing up their governance document and replacing it with another based solely on the decision of the block producers. (EOS did conduct a non-binding, off-chain poll of users, but that’s not an actual ratification process.) The only blockchain project that’s really close to this is Tezos. (It’s kind of crazy how our names are just 1 letter different. That is truly unintentional.) Tezos also conducts voting to change its governance and automatically replaces governance based on community vote. The difference is that on Tezos, the change being voted for is in the form of actual code. This is a very interesting and valid way of approaching code changes. The smart contract control and user voting are similar and clearly Tezos and Telos are the leading governance chains around. But there’s an important difference philosophically: who should determine the proposed future of the chain? By directly voting on proposed code changes, Tezos maintains the power over the chain in the hands of the developers, since most voters don’t have a clear ability to discern the value of one piece of code over another. On Telos, the governance describes what the community is agreeing should happen and once adopted, the developers go to work modifying the code to match what has been agreed. Then the block producers can accept or reject the changes. At each step there can be checks and balances and the voters ultimately hold the power to replace those who they feel are not backing the process. To me, this puts and keeps more power in the hands of general users who may not know C++ programming but do have strong ideas and life experience about how political economies should operate.

A bit more about the TED Plan: the objective is to free up tokens reserved for exchange customers but never actually claimed. This war chest would be put to use for the benefit of all participating Telos users in a number of ways. First, it would end inflation on Telos for as long as the fund lasted. It would also send significant amounts of Telos into the REX rewards pool to pay a meaningful staking reward — certainly the highest in EOSIO. Other funds go to increasing the monthly funds for the worker proposal system, the Telos Foundation, making block producer pay more sustainable, and funding economic development work such as hiring professional market-making services to improve liquidity in TLOS trading pairs.

The TED Plan only draws funds from the Exchange Token Reserve Fund gradually so that exchanges still have the option to claim tokens for their customers as long as those funds exist. The Telos block producers can also reduce the amounts drawn each month as the TLOS price increases in order to extend the life of the program. I am hopeful that this will let Telos thrive by funding a lot of important functions and by giving crypto investors a great reason to hold and engage with Telos: great yields in a technically advanced chain, without those yields coming from inflation. These strong fundamentals will give people a solid reason to purchase TLOS and stake them into REX, thus taking them off the market and increasing the TLOS price. This helps ensure that the TLOS tokens funding these other functions don’t just get dumped on the market with no one scooping them up. And the Telos block producers maintain the control to rapidly dial down the numbers at any time if some unintended consequences make the results go dangerously awry. I call that a good plan and I hope it passes. But regardless of the outcome, the very fact that we are able to determine this as a community is very important. Telos’s leadership in blockchain governance is not only for bragging rights, it means that we have much greater insulation against contentious forks than any project without such features. So please vote.

Go Telos!

— Douglas Horn

Ratify/Amend Voting

Last week, BPs updated the eosio.amend contract (aka Ratify/Amend) to allow any proposed amendments to be proposed for Telos voters. Thanks to the Telos Miami team for the fast update allowing multiple-clause Ratify/Amend Governance voting, now available with Sqrl 1.0.8, downloadable here.

Telos Economic Development Plan (#0)

Voting closes: Sat Jul 27 2019 10:38:43 UTC

Here are the proposed clauses to replace the corresponding clauses in the existing TBNOA:

Clause 10. Block Producer Pay

https://web.ipfs.telosfoundation.io/QmPST4wNwwvtt3uLLNYSF1iHJ6jKCrnLgtyRZzzT7GVEi4

Clause 23. Requirement to Opt-in as a Member

https://web.ipfs.telosfoundation.io/QmTjBNyskVN65qnkeiv74CeNu9moZXiEat9JGpga9GZHjp

Clause 24. Worker Proposal Fund

https://web.ipfs.telosfoundation.io/QmeqTSK2VpPpL53KHx425cbYJxxpor1C3BNQW4Bnt3MNuS

Clause 44. Resource Exchange

https://web.ipfs.telosfoundation.io/QmXSKApWscwp4FNzgE6GzX3LtXvfSFtY9Z6jRcQG6unN9N

Clause 49. Telos Economic Development

https://web.ipfs.telosfoundation.io/QmcStUZe5fLi4H5LDYEz9azyDLJRs8oU3R7ztwzP9KsTga

Yes: 727,623 | No: 0 | Abstain: 108,261

Worker Proposals of Note

Ending Soon:

Edxserverus: Telos Art, Design & Culture (#17)

Voting closes: Wednesday July 3rd 11:37 UTC

20,000.0000 TLOS in 1 cycle to ‘accounts.jc’ to fund graphic design work for designer Luis Eduardo from Venezuela who is building digital assets for Telos and SteemChurch.

https://ipfs.telos.miami/ipfs/QmYD1HC8dehHbPY8M5h1YiZpQiFDZS3Voc73DBYjtQa4g6/

Yes: 4,745,433 | No: 1,174,494 | Abstain: 5,824,705

Telos Marketing Proposal (#13)

Voting closes: Monday July 1st 20:56 UTC

85,000.0000 TLOS in 4 cycles to ‘marketing1o1’ for marketing to increase Telos awareness among developers, crypto and non-crypto users, and apps already on EOS.

https://ipfs.telos.miami/ipfs/QmdhqCNPyuB7wvnEiPCBmbnuM9XVg3mGrsiQFECE1emWT4/

Yes: 4,799,623 | No: 284,554 | Abstain: 5,001,095

Financing Vapaee.io DEX development and review video (#12)

Voting closes: Mon July 1st 16:20 UTC

140,000.0000 TLOS in 3 cycles to ‘cardsntokens’ to fund development and implementation of a new DEX for TLOS based tokens.

https://ipfs.telos.miami/ipfs/QmerVMzqgFxdWoaxjQybuUN2GT1T2fuENjHSQCoBF4S4cQ/

Yes: 4,472,765 | No: 639,710 | Abstain: 5,000,995

WordProof — Open Source WordPress Telos Plugin (#6) (3rd cycle)

Voting closes: Thu July 4th 07:43 UTC

300,000.0000 TLOS in 4 cycles to ‘wordprooftls’ to fund an open source Telos WordPress plugin. This is the third cycle of this Worker Proposal.

https://ipfs.telos.miami/ipfs/QmQXCG7EGfAaCAGsihu7hV2Kt6FDfq8C96upYKuwPJNsj9/

Yes: 412,400 | No: 838,312 | Abstain: 0

Ended and Passed!

SteemChurch Telos Expansion: resubmission (#4) (cycle 4 of 6)

Voting closes: Thu June 27th 11:51 UTC

15,000.0000 (6 cycles) to accounts.jc over 6 months funding for a Telos referral program, onboarding process, blockchain participation and ongoing community development in developing nations.

https://ipfs.telos.miami/ipfs/QmagTmLTob1kTUz47odnsLXtva96fmnpQyzPKjBdcpy9wC/

Don’t forget to re-cast your vote for WPs that last multiple cycles. This feature helps to keep longer-term WPs accountable for deliverables, and let voters decide whether they think the WP is still of value to the network.

This week’s active multi-cycle WPs include:

Telos YouTube and Website Promotion

Telos Marketing Proposal

Financing Vapaee.io DEX development

Telos Promotion and Outreach

Marketing Support for Telos Foundation Initiatives

SteemChurch Telos Expansion

If you haven’t downloaded the newest version of Sqrl (1.0.8), you can find it here. New updates from TelosMiami include a refreshed UI for re-casting your vote for multi-cycle WPs.

We believe the worker proposal system is a big part of what makes Telos great, and highly encourage you to make your voice heard by voting responsibly on the governance of this blockchain.

Here’s what happened this week:

TED Plan now available for vote on Sqrl 1.0.8

Telos Foundation Grant Program accepting applications for the next grant cycle.

Beware of fake Telos Foundation website scam

Teloscope Bot speaks 4 new languages

GoodBlock team set to attend Seattle DevCon Blockchain, Douglas participating in panel “Blockchain Gaming & esports will lead the road to mass adoption.”

TED Plan now available for vote on Sqrl 1.0.8

Last week, the Telos Core Devs passed the multisig transaction to update Ratify/Amend. This week the ballot has been opened, and users can now vote on any proposals in the “Ratify” tab using Sqrl 1.0.8! We also know that The Teloscope has just been waiting for the first proposal to exist to fine-tune the display and that Chainspector.io will soon display these proposals as it does worker proposals — probably early this week, in fact.

Voting on this plan is an important first in blockchain. Users, for the first time, have the ability to vote on the rules used to operate the blockchain thanks to the Telos Trail voting system. Whatever the outcome is, please vote on the plan and be a part of history. Voting will close on Saturday, July 27th, and needs at least 55% yes votes compared to no votes (but not compared to abstain votes).

“Please take a look and vote. Whether or not you support this specific plan, you are part of the first generation of blockchain that can be directed by its users, not just developers and block producers. This is a BIG DEAL and I hope that you are as excited about this as I am.”

If you haven’t read about the TED Plan yet, read up on the details here.

For the Telos User’s Guide article on Ratify/Amend voting, visit https://medium.com/goodblock-io/telos-user-guide-understanding-ratify-amend-governance-voting-600fd75a875f

Telos Foundation Grant Program accepting applications for the next grant cycle.

The Telos Foundation Grant Program is now accepting applications for its next phase of the grant cycle for development teams that need additional support for projects that benefit the Telos Blockchain community. The foundation awards up to 100,000 TLOS per month, split among applicable candidates that meet the criteria and are chosen by the review panel.

Applications must be built on the Telos Blockchain Network, built on EOSIO, and must mention the Telos Foundation Grant Program as a supporter on their website and social.

This is a great program for anyone who may have a development based project to aid Telos. The Telos Foundation grants are an alternative or addition to the WPS voting. For other terms and instructions, visit the Telos Foundation’s post here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/the-telos-foundation-grant-program-e7b1253d5368

Beware of fake Telos Foundation website scam

The scammers are back (do they ever really go away?). A slightly different URL is once again posing as the Telos website to lure in EOS users and steal their keys while trying to “claim” Telos accounts on a site. Of course, claiming Telos accounts was never necessary but it’s such a common concept in the crypto world that many people, sadly, don’t think twice. This also shows one of the big frustrations about trying to fight this kind of phishing: no matter how many times you try to stamp out a fake website, there are many more slightly different options to use instead.

Teloscope Bot speaks 4 new languages

Our friends at The Teloscope are actively adding new languages to the Teloscope bot on Telegram. You really have to admire the Teloscope guys. They are making two really great tools to simplify connection with the Telos network. Their Telegram bot makes it easy to monitor accounts directly from the chain. Better yet, it is a very simple way for any Telegram user to create a free Telos account. By adding languages, they are expanding our potential user base. Of course, their other big contribution to Telos is Chainspector.io which is quickly joining Sqrl wallet as an interface for Ratify/Amend voting on Telos including the TED Plan.

https://medium.com/@theteloscope/the-teloscope-bot-speaks-4-new-languages-172bc4c6dab5?postPublishedType=initial

GoodBlock team set to attend Seattle DevCon Blockchain, Douglas participating in panel “Blockchain Gaming & esports will lead the road to mass adoption.”

Seattle DevCon is this weekend and I will be speaking about Telos and GoodBlock’s gaming offerings and Telos-based platform. Anyone in Seattle should come out and join us.

https://cryptoslate.com/seattle-devcon-bringing-the-pnw-blockchain-community-together-this-saturday/

About the author: Douglas Horn is the Telos architect and whitepaper author, and the founder of GoodBlock, a block producer and app developer for the Telos Blockchain Network.

More about GoodBlock can be found at: www.goodblock.io

Join us on Twitter @GoodBlockio

Vote for GoodBlock on the Telos Blockchain Network @goodblocktls