The development team behind EOS sister chain, Telos, have been working hard behind the scenes in an attempt address the many issues which affect the EOS blockchain. The latest announcement from the Telos team is quite a big one and addresses something which EOS has promised since their ICO but failed to deliver thus far: arbitration.

What is Arbitration?

Simply put the arbitration system which is meant to be implemented in the EOS blockchain system is supposed to act as an autonomous and objective body which settles disputes that occur on the blockchain.

The type of issues which would generally be handled by the elected arbitration team are, for the most part, user errors and hacks which have resulted in a person being locked out of their account. While this is not the only thing which the arbitration team are able to rectify it is the most obvious example of their purpose. It must be noted that, in order for a user to reclaim a lost account, the person who is making the claim would need to prove that they do in fact own the account, cryptographically.

An example of cryptographically proving you own an account would be, if your genesis account was stolen and you still had access to your Ethereum address which stored your genesis EOS tokens. If that were the case you would be able to sign a message with you ETH address which proves you do in fact own the associated Telos account.

So when is it due to come into play?

The exact date which will determine the initialisation of the arbitration contracts is up to the current elected block producers of the Telos network to confirm. The current proposed timeline (waiting for BP confirmation) will see the arbitrator nomination process begin on the 4th February 2019. This is the process which will allow the Telos community to step up to become an arbitrator.

Once the pool of arbitrators has been concluded there will be an on chain vote using the SQRL wallet. This vote will be what determines who is actually elected as an official Telos arbitrator.

What’s next?

Simply put, if you wish to step forward as an arbitrator then you need to head on over to the following Medium post by Telos BP, Goodblocks: https://medium.com/goodblock-io/telos-users-guide-tutorial-telos-arbitration-ecd803c0d50

The above article also explains how to vote on arbitrators which you feel would be worthy of your support.

If you would like to see the current pool of proposed arbitrators, as well as what is required from one, please follow the following link: https://telosfoundation.io/arbitrators

Other than that, sit tight and wait for the announcement!

Happiness.