LONDON (Bywire News) - As users of EOSIO here at Bywire we’re watching closely its development and find it useful when someone “in the know” publishes their opinions.

One blockchain developer and blockchain technology consultant who has worked with EOSIO software, Jack Tanner, has done just that sharing his “worst issues and best features” of the EOS Public blockchain.

We also recently looked at EOSIO’s potential to become a foundational blockchain technology and some of the blockchain’s opportunities and constraints.

The EOS Public Blockchain (EPB) is potentially one of the fastest chains created and has innovative solutions to-scale, which should cope with the growing demand. It has a lower cost model for developers and users and being compatible with older programming languages makes life easier for developers.

But the EPB and EOSIO software are still relatively new and must further demonstrate their transaction per second (TPS) speeds. The EPB must also answer recent concerns regarding governance and prove that its block producers can’t manipulate the network.

A developer’s technical perspective

Developer Tanner delved into EOS pros and cons from a more technical perspective.

On the negative side he raises issues of the block producers and governance, the price of RAM, resource rate limits, an unused high-inflation capital model, the 30ms transaction time limit, block finality, protocol upgrade centralization and smart contract upgrade limitations.

On the plus side EOSIO delivers programmable accounts and tokens, fast block processing and the ability to scale. Though limited, the ability to upgrade smart contracts is a huge strength as well as smart contract data management features, free transactions, and transparent protocol upgrades. Tanner says:

“Scalability and the low latency are unique EOSIO characteristics in the blockchain ecosystem. This, combined with free transactions and a few other usability features make it the most scalable, user-friendly blockchain that exists.”

It’s worth noting there are potential and proposed solutions to some of the EOSIO issues such as REX and vRAM from LiquidApps.

Let’s pull together some of Tanner’s best and worst features to continue an evaluation on the potential of EOSIO software and the EPB.

Block producers and governance

Though the EPB was designed in a way to give token holders governance over the block producers, it is, however, demonstrating that this mechanism may not be working.

Tanner also echoes concerns that block producers and token holder wealth are disproportionately located in Asia. This could mean that protocol upgrades are only approved if financially favourable to block producers, that cost-cutting is prioritised over development, and that changing the make-up of the EOS core 21 block producers becomes ever increasingly more difficult. Tanner says other blockchains using EOSIO software are developing election processes to reduce this risk, he said:

“The blockchain can still be trusted as producers are still financially motivated to produce blocks on time and according to the rules. Dapp producers and users can still trust that the blockchain will run as expected, but perhaps a bit less efficiently.”

We also know that Block.one CTO Dan Larimer tweeted the following just over a week ago:

“Today Brendan and I came up with an amazing solution to vote buying that will completely remove the incentive to buy votes. #eos governance will be decentralized, resources will be cheaper, and incentives will be aligned! More to come!”

Larimer last week released an additional set of governance proposals, aimed to redistributing the EPB incentive models, making it fairer and reducing vote buying opportunities. However, it is widely assumed that the Asian based BPs are unlikely to adopt any proposals which would reduce their dominance and income generation opportunities.

RAM price

As the price of EOS increases, or decreases, so does the cost of RAM on the EOS network even though there is no change to network usage and capacity. So, cost increases are passed on to EOS DApp developers. In contrast, Ethereum’s “gas” model allows its network to change resource prices letting it “adapt the cost of data storage to reflect the real cost to the network.”

Unfair resource rate limits

If the EPB begins to reach its transaction capacity users with less staked EOS are rate-limited first. This means those who are “poorer” on the network might not be able to transact. On other networks transaction fees exist and get higher to processes transactions when the network is busy, meaning everyone has a fair chance if they are willing to pay more. EOS doesn’t have this option as it offers free transactions.

Protocol upgrades

Tanner explains that to produce a block on the EPB or to agree a protocol upgrade (hard fork), or governance upgrade (soft fork), 15 out of 21 block producers need to agree. This means that the 15 could create a poorly behaving block, which leaves the potential for 15 out of 21 to collude against the network.

Recently some of the top EPB block producers have not produced blocks when they should have and one block producer even missed 100 rounds of produced block. Events like this threaten the stability of the blockchain but have so far gone largely unaddressed.

Smart contract upgradability

This issue appears as both a worst feature and a best feature in Tanner’s list. Though he says that the upgrading of smart contracts on the EPB has less flexibility than other systems:

“It’s important to also note that upgradeability is a sorely missed feature on almost every other blockchain (Ethereum, Hyperledger, Tezos…)”

For most EOSIO users upgrading a contract’s code follows the rules of the account permission structure for all EOSIO blockchains and these rules are predefined. In other blockchains token holders can be set as an upgradeability governance mechanism and this can be determined at the time of a smart contract upgrade.

On the plus side for EOSIO, says the developer, is the ability for all smart contracts, even system smart contracts, to be upgraded using a standard transaction through a smart contract.

Creating new blocks is fast but block finality slower

A new block on EOS takes just 0.5 seconds to create, however completely finalizing a block takes nearly three minutes. For smaller transactions it’s not so much of an issue.

For high-value transactions it’s important that users and exchanges wait for a block to be completely finalized and is irreversible before viewing the transaction as confirmed. This, says Tanner “compromises the 0.5s UX that is promised by EOSIO chains.” Of the fast block creation speed the developer says:

“The 0.5s block time is an extremely powerful feature of all EOSIO chains. EOS makes the user experience similar to that of using a payment card or a web app. Personally, after using Dapps on EOSIO chains I find it frustrating going back to Ethereum, let alone using Bitcoin.”

Though we’ve already covered some of Jack Tanner, aka @theblockstalk’s “best” features of EOS already, let’s look at the rest…

Programmable accounts and money

With EOSIO software, accounts and money are all “ground-level” features developers can work with. Tanner says:

“Building applications on the EOS network means that you have access to use and can program EOS and all other tokens on the network. Dapps can manage money via escrow and other financial primitives easily and transparently.”

In terms of adaptability, EOS users can also access different DApps with the same account. Vital when you consider how many different DApps we could be using as the blockchain progresses.

Protocol updates are transparent and simple

The delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) governance mechanism means block producers should work to ensure the networks sustainability by implementing fair governance upgrades. Upgrading of network rules in generation 1.0 and 2.0 blockchains can be time consuming. Fixing many issues in the EPB can be achieved by sending a transaction to the network that 15 out of 21 of the core block producers approve. Protocol updates, however, can be more complicated unless all 21 block producers quickly agree.

4,000 transactions per second (TPS) or more in practice

Promised transaction speed is a critical selling point for the EOSIO blockchain. We noted that EOSIO’s creator, Block.one, would need to clearly prove the claims of near 4,000 TPS for EOSIO to take the moniker of fastest blockchain. Tanner says:

“EOS scales to at least 4,000 transactions per second. This can be checked in blocks 11,302,923 and 11,302,924 on all block explorers. This busts a previous report that benchmark EOS to a maximum of 250 tps.”

He says that EOSIO’s maximum capacity is difficult to calculate but that live benchmarking on one testnet reached 9,200 TPS. And that:

“The throughput capacity of EOS is orders of magnitude higher than previous public blockchains and even higher than private blockchains like Hyperledger Fabric and coder can achieve between two counterparties (based on discussions I have had with developers).”

We’ve already discussed the developers last few points. Free transactions delivered by the EOS alternative staking model differentiates the blockchain from most other chains and is a better solution to encourage consumer DApp usage and propel blockchain’s adoption. This combined with EOSIO’s TPS and the ability for developers to program smart contracts using C++ make for some very attractive features to entice DApp developers and even enterprise projects to the EPB or to use the EOSIO software on a custom chain.

Tanner remains concerned over current constraints, especially RAM price, inflation and the influence of block producers. However, should the block producers change, and/or work to the overall benefit of the EBP effectively, then EOSIO flexibility makes for a relatively easy implementation of any fixes to other issues.

We spoke with Tanner prior to publishing this article and he kindly provided his latest opinion as EOSIO and EOS development continues…

“The EOSIO blockchain framework is currently the best software for running blockchains that support DApps and currencies. It has the best scalability and user experience, [it] is very secure and easier than ever to develop DApps on for businesses. The EOS blockchain, is a leading example of EOSIO chains but currently has major governance issues. Other blockchains running EOSIO, like the Telos blockchain, offer DApp producers viable alternatives to EOS that have the same capabilities but better governance.”

(Written by Melanie Kramer, key contributor Jack Tanner, edited by Michael O'Sullivan)

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