I stumbled upon one of the videos by Vinay Gupta, discussing the fate of blockchain and how could blockchain change the world. He took an example of climate change and how blockchain (highly speculative) could help so that everyone could be the part of the change with equal voting.
He discussed the problem why climate change has not been addressed yet and what are the shortcoming of government and organisation like United Nations. Why have United Nations not taken the huge steps towards framing and implementation of policies? He discussed the voting representation and leadership in organization and vote representation of common people to address big issues.
He raised one important question and that is "Do people choosing the representatives have a direct say in this kind of system?"
Well, we all know in democracies we just elect one of our leaders as representatives who take all the decisions for us. It's not an ideal system as representatives not take everyone's vote in making decisions.
In ideal democracies, every major decision should be voted in the public domain but people would lack interest doing that, that's why representatives are elected.
The democracies have its own benefits and shortcomings-
A benefit like people have no more get into decision making and they have elected leaders to take care of that.
Shortcoming decisions taken by representatives are mostly for people who have voted for them. i.e it's the greed for "future votes" which drives the majority of leaders.
Coming back to Climate Change-
President Trump, after getting into power took back the support from Paris Climate Deal. The decision was much driven in order to create more jobs that are short-term goals instead of long terms effects were given priority.
The point here is maybe the majority of the "so-called" Good people residing in America maybe against the withdrawal but their voice goes unheard as they have given power to someone else to take decisions on their behalf.
Applying the same scenario on DPOS system-
We know the how the stakeholder elect Block Producers and the majority of people voice go unheard in the system.
Let's take Bot upvoting on STEEM for instance-
Majority of good content creators are very much against it. People with high stakes in their wallets and much power over the 'minnows' feels the other way around. The whole issue has been debated a lot of time and it never reached consensus on the blockchain.
Maybe I'm mixing thing right now, but isn't it a problem for STEEM ecosystem? (well I will be writing another post addressing it)
We can say STEEM isn't evolving and is no mood to bring changes. With no arbitration and constitution, the debate goes down the gutter.
I should jump on my next question "what if something similar happens on EOS?"
The voting mechanism is somewhat similar to STEEM, from latest updates which I recently got from the community is the introduction of Work Proposal System, distribution of surplus and limiting inflation to 1%.
Still, highest stakeholder has a lot more "say" than a beginner. The people or mainstream who lacked the opportunity of knowing about EOS in initial days will be needing a lot of money to have equal say on the platform.
High Stakeholders will be rapidly growing their stake using delegation and earning through them. And as we all know in the end Pareto will win cause for obvious reason.
If I go by @dan's blog his initial assumption was "Majority of Good People have Good Intention".There is one thing amiss, the majority of people are driven by greed as well. Even if we have 100% transparent block producers initially, who are giving their best to run the ecosystem fairly. What will stop "high stakeholders" from electing the bad producers running following their instructions?
The plutocracy has never done justice to the common man and the DPOS system is much similar biased towards the high stakeholders. Short-term profits and greed could disrupt the ecosystem and when people on top of the pyramid have invested their money to gain the maximum out of the startup, what will stop them from sway the system in accordance to their will/benefits/greed.
The system being followed reminds of Presidential Elections of 1896, the corporate plutocrats of that time were John D Rockefeller, J.P Morgan and Andrew Carnegie. If I am not wrong the time period 1890s was witnessing a protest from working class. The democratic nominee "Bryan" supported the working class. Plutocrats in order to fulfil the greed and keep the business going "fund" the Republican Nominee "McKinley" and threatened the workers of shutting down the industries if "McKinley" is not elected.
With high networks and stake in the economy of America, some plutocrats even bought the American President and swayed the people around according to their will. The majority of people/working class had good intention, true, but their voices were unheard in the elections.
Good Intention much like decentralization is a subjective term.
"Good Intention" in terms of what?
Decentralization in compared to what?
In real life, who wins the elections? The people who promise the most i.e elections are always run on greed. It may the jobs, the security, the prices or the economy.
On STEEM, who chooses the witness? The majority of people voting are whales, with only 6.73% of people voting for witnesses the majority of people upvoting are whales. If you think their no cabal formation, you need to why whales and hejin supporting each other first. The cartel formation in DPOS should not be ignored.
I know EOS is better and more decentralized than Ethereum and another similar blockchain. In fact, it's the best what we have yet in blockchain space. But the question is "will it remain the best?".
Is it the true decentralization which we all dream of?
Is the ever-growing stake in the hands of whales and Block Producers won't affect the EOS ecosystem?
Shouldn't the inflation and growing minnow base should give some power for taking decisions and looking at problems differently? Like STEEM problem is helping the early adopters but for minnows and new users, it's very much a problem which needs to be looked upon.
The stake voting even with its shortcoming is the best solution we have yet. 1 Vote for 1 person is not possible as whales could still create as many accounts they want. 1 EOS : 30 Votes or 30 EOS : 30 Votes holds the same percentage of voting and it's very much similar to STEEM. The ideal solution would have been KYC and introducing 1 vote for 1 people, but KYC is not feasible and could be misused itself.
The truly have a deep respect for @dan Larmier and knows that he is very much aware of all the problems. I even tried raising the voting issue in one of my previous post Voting on EOS and it's Challenges.
@dan hopefully will come up with the best solution keeping in mind the future problems and projects. Here what he did comment on the last post:
EOS is all set for a great launch in June, and that buys all of us some time. We all have equal say in the development of the constitution, let's together discuss the problems and take all the criticism constructively in the best interest of EOS future. We don't need another STEEM, we need something better. We don't need a platform which opens an opportunity for competitors to emerge when we together could work towards the best.
Criticism and different POV may help to grow the platforms manifolds, and ignoring criticism is imo is unhealthy for the future.
So what you think, how we could stop EOS going en route plutocracy and capitalistic way? How could we give/create equal opportunity for everyone in the community? It feels utopia I know but Bitcoin and blockchain also look like a utopia once and Satoshi did give all the developers a way towards developing dApps.
Disclaimer: The post is in the best interest of EOS community. The constitution and voting methodology under debate. The Community is putting their maximum efforts to solve the problems and I believe are very much aware of all the points. If you are interested in helping the community with Governance feel free to join EOSGovernance Telegram Channel - https://web.telegram.org/#/im?p=@EOSGov
My previous EOS posts-
Follow Me: @tanishqyeverma
Please comment and resteem, everyone ideas, opinion are important.
Hi, good analysis, and i've had many similar concerns until recently. But i believe with the announcement of Dawn 3.0 and the interblockchain-communication a lot has changed. Because this will allow a variety of governance structures to compete with each other. This should prevent a lock-up of the systems by whales, which is only possible in a monopoly situation, like the one Steemit currently still has. I've covered this in-depth in my most recent EOS post, in case you are interested.
Coins mentioned in post: