Addressing the issues

We at Lumi Wallet are deeply interested in the development of the EOS blockchain, that’s why we are implementing it in our own product and thoroughly monitoring all the news related to it, month after month, so that we can give to you, our readers, the most comprehensive EOS Digest out there. But our likings can not stand in the way of an open discussion of the problems that have been haunting the blockchain lately. That’s why in this issue we’ll focus on topics that should be addressed, such as a stalled development progress, falling prices, and a deadlock in the voting discussion.

Block.one News (Updates on 1.8 Upgrade and Strategic vision)

The most important news from July from Block.one was the stable release of EOSIO Version 1.8.1. This exact release introduces the foundations needed to facilitate the activation of the consensus protocol upgrade. These mechanisms will allow a two-thirds majority of active block producers of EOSIO blockchains to activate features individually to modify the protocol rules when completing the upgrade.

The release marks major enhancements for EOSIO and paves the way for the future improvement of the network, but for that to happen, the majority of block producers have to go through a change of protocol rules and alignment for the upgrade to be successfully deployed.

And additionally, the previously introduced State History Plugin has also been promoted to a stable product that is ready for use in production environments.

In the previous digest, we reviewed the first part of a four-part series on EOS Strategic vision, the article focused on the vertical and horizontal scalability of the blockchain and Block.one’s plans to maximize its efficiency.

To date, they have released two more, EOSIO Strategic Vision Part 2: Tooling EOSIO for Developers, and Part 3: Blockchain users.

The first article focuses on enhancements for developers and the tools that help them build.

“A smoother experience for developers means a clearer path to building a more robust and diverse blockchain ecosystem that provides users secure applications to fit their needs.

Developers make this diverse ecosystem possible, and to help them deliver, we’re dedicated to improving their experience on EOSIO.”

Initiatives that were outlined:

– Graphic User Interfaces

– Advancing the Universal Authenticator Library

– EOSIO SDKs for Java and Swift

– Debugging Smart Contracts

– The EOSIO Testnet

– Scalable Documentation Platform

– High-Resolution State Tracking

– Enhanced Smart Contract Functionality

The second one focused on blockchain users and improvements to the EOSIO software suite to enhance and ease their experience.

"Reducing friction for users of blockchain applications will go a long way towards supporting mass adoption. Users need access to secure, simple, and familiar interfaces in order to confidently use blockchain systems. Towards that effort, strides have been made by our team to develop and propose security standards for interactions between authenticators and applications built on EOSIO-based blockchains"

Initiatives that were outlined:

- A Consistent Front End

- Enabling WebAuthn Support

- Enhanced Resource Management

- Decentralized File System

After these three articles, it seems that the developers’ vision is clear, so the only thing the community and price graphs on exchanges are waiting for is the faster implementation of these strategies in life, which are expected at the beginning of autumn.

News Bulletin

EOSfinex, a high-performance exchange built on EOSIO, has finished the testing of its system and announced the full launch on July 25th. And then postponed it again for a couple of days, to quickly add some fixes. Not a big delay, considering that the beta had been live since March. Since the 30th it has been live and open for trading. The project announced more updates coming in the weeks after the launch and the start of open-sourcing the foundations of the exchange.

PredIQt, a decentralized prediction market built on EOSIO, announced the launch of their testnet MVP. Through the PredIQt MVP Beta, users are able to participate in markets and test out of the functionality of the product. However, In order to use the PredIQt testnet MVP, users will need to get a Kylin testnet account. It can be created for free via Kylin faucet using Scatter.

KARMA, a “social media for good” on the EOS blockchain, released a new website on July 23rd. The renewed interface came on time, as Karma has been gaining momentum with product updates as well: they announced a contract update, after which users won’t have to worry about CPU/NET/RAM anymore, because now the only fee for transactions within Karma will be the RAM fee for in-app KARMA token transactions to users without them.

Dfuse, the blockchain API company, has added EOSDT, Equilibrium’s stablecoin on EOS, as a payment option. Now developers can pay for their services using EOSDT.

Liquidapps, the Dapp Network services company, announced Liquidlink - the first decentralized solution that allows inter-blockchain communication between the Ethereum and EOS blockchain. Basically, it would allow the operation of any dapp on Ethereum, with EOS speeds. However, the project is still a work-in-progress, but the testing of the tool is already open for developers.

WORBLI, a financial services ecosystem for projects on the blockchain, announced a couple of partnerships: first, with the innovative company AIKON, which will bring their product ORE ID to WORBLI, which will allows users to quickly sign up to applications using traditional Oauth providers such as Gmail and Facebook. And second, with dfuse, which will integrate their tools and allow for the construction of new applications on top of the WORBLI network. If the first one was intended to bridge the gap between decentralized applications and common users, the second one is dedicated to developers.

EOS in decline

Let’s address the elephant in the room: this Summer was harsh on EOS prices. Like it or not, cryptocurrency traders and investors have a short-sighted view on the success of given coins and are reactive to any news related to them. The current decline and steady low pricing of around $4-4.5 for EOS (as compared to around $6 in May) can’t be written off as just the usual fluctuations of altcoins that happens because of Bitcoin shifts. EOS has its own agenda and the price forms according to it.

The current price limbo, without any major ups or downs, is a result of three factors that we already covered in our digests. To sum them up:

1. #B1June Overhype

The #B1June announcement was long-awaited and the lack of information from Block.one on what exactly will be announced gave birth to a lot of conspiracy theories and over-expectations. The social media Voice, in that regard, was not as big as everyone had expected. It might be a big success for Block.one in the long run, but for now, it just does not live up to the high expectations that the majority of investors had at the moment, and the reactions in the crypto community are rapid and usually don’t look at the bigger picture. The good thing is that Block.one surely does, according to their steady development schedule and detailed blockchain development strategy. But next time, they’d do better to not underestimate the imagination of the crypto crowd and lower false expectations beforehand.

2. Interspecies struggle

It exists. In the summer, a couple of articles and research papers were posted targeting the weak sides of the blockchain, sometimes fairly, sometimes on the verge of deliberate bias. EOS, from the beginning, was the target of controversies, but the previously mentioned marketing miscalculation opened its soft underbelly to critics, opponents, and doubters. The positive aspect of it is that the community convincingly responded to most groundless attacks and backed up the favorite platform. However, not all criticisms were produced by mere spite: some vital issues of the ecosystem were addressed and in line with the general sentiment regarding the lack of good news other than scheduled news on product development, this also contributed to the current state of the EOS price as well.

3. Governance

The most important distinctive advantage of EOS is now its sore spot: the topic of the Asian shift of block producers and the overdue voting reform stays relevant. However, in spite of the urgency of the problem, there has been no real progress, aside from discussions and several votes without a global result. It is tempting to say that there is a bright side, but the problem stands afoot, threatening the very future of the blockchain, yet it seems like the problem hasn’t been seriously addressed outside of the community. But at least the community is concerned with it day and night, and this is what it has come up with:

Voting Research

There are dozens of ideas on how the voting system should work, but the main divide now lies in the opinions on Vote-Buying (Voter Reward if you’re looking for a more neutral term). The bonus for casting a vote by an elected BP might be a good thing, as it has to get the BP more deeply invested in EOS. And if they are invested, they have to support the best interests of the blockchain. The vote-buying as a practice can’t be eradicated, so it has to be controlled one way or another.

Opponents of this concept point out that it is an unethical practice and is equal to direct vote manipulation, which can lead to a competition for the votes. In the end, the votes would be directly bought and sold, which means that only BP’s who have more funds, not the ones with the best interests of EOS in mind, would have all the control over the governing decisions.

So, what is the optimal voting method to solve those issues? Which one can balance the danger of cartel formation, the shady dealing of votes, and allow the blockchain to maintain a healthy rotation of Block Producers?

The answer has yet to be found, but finally, there are noticeable advances in the search for it: EOSAuthority collected most popular ideas on voting and ran simulations of them.

Here they are:

The simulation of One Token One Vote, where the vote weight is divided by the number of BPs the account votes for. The idea proposed by Dan Larimer on Telegram. The fundamental idea is to apply One Token One Vote first and then apply a special formula to adjust a given BP’s vote weight. Quadratic voting, where the vote weight is based on the square root of the total staked amount.

This can be considered a big step from lazy reddit and telegram discussions and gives a good visualization of existing propositions.

The EOS influencer Colintalkscrypto shared these three major “schools of thought” in his poll on twitter, and the results at the moment point exactly to one thing: any proposed system is better than the existing one.

The darkest hour…

Is right before the dawn. At least, we hope so, for the great EOS community, for the enthusiastic developers on the blockchain, and the common users of crypto. While there are people caring for the case, the solution to many problems still needs to be found. And it looks like nobody is going to give up, from Block.one to the tiniest dapp developer out there, so we’ll continue to cover the latest news and controversies in our bi-weekly Lumi Wallet EOS Digest.