Has the EOS Community Finally Reached a Breaking Point?

in #eos3 years ago (edited)

I, like many others, have spent years of my life invested in the EOS community. I'm passionate about on-chain governance, high performance blockchains, and sustainable global nonviolent consensus. In a world of deep fakes, political lies, science "facts" which change as often as the wind, and money-printer-go-brrrrrr financial fairy tales, the world needs the censorship-resistant, immutable truth that blockchains provide. Since 2018, the EOS Mainnet has been working towards the intention of becoming the global platform we all need.

But it's been a sh*t show. I'm not going to sugar coat it or hold back any punches. I've heard it said a few times in the EOS community:

Those who still hold EOS are truly in it for the technology.

All around us we see tokens that have grown 10X in value with the major tokens like BTC and ETH hitting new all time highs with EOS floundering, dropping in market cap rankings from the 4th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world to now outside of the top 25.

I woke up this morning to see this message posted in a Facebook crypto group I'm in:

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In the comments there were accusations about Brock Pierce, Dan Larimer, and Block One. I wrote this in reply:

I was just thinking how healthy it would be to have Brock and Dan do a fully transparent deep dive on the history of EOS and Block One. Clean the wound, so to speak.

I think people want this level of transparency, especially when billions of dollars are concerned. I wonder what would happen if it was actually given to them. Could they handle it? Would Brendan freak out and sue? Would the SEC respond? This, I think, would be really, really interesting. What mistakes were made? What lessons learned? What would be done differently if there was a chance for a do over? I think the whole industry could benefit from a transparent deep dive like this.

I've been thinking about this all day. I'm realizing just how bad things have gotten within the EOS community and, specifically, with regards to Block One. For those that don't know, I've seen first hand how a centralized company in a decentralized ecosystem can fester into a cancer which will eventually be removed by the community. I was a consensus witness when the Steem blockchain was Sybil attacked and the community forked to become Hive.

For me, this feels like déjà vu. Block One has consistently let this community down, and this community is sick of it. A rebel alliance is forming and some of them see Block One as the evil empire Death Star.

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Dan Larimer has completely left Block One. He is no longer involved in Block One at any level, and he's not the only one. I asked around and these are some of the other names I've been told have left (with rumors of others also considering leaving soon):

  • Greg Lee
  • Bart Wyatt
  • Sergey Metelin
  • Todd Fleming
  • Ted Cahall

These are core developers and key executives who have been with Block One from the beginning. It seems they are sick of it also. Some, I've been told, are even working with Dan Larimer directly because they still believe in the vision of what EOS and the EOS community can become.

Before I get into all of the reasons why people are so fed up with Block One, let's talk about some encouraging things first. Have you heard of EdenOS yet?

You will.

This is something which truly has the potential to change the world. Do yourself a favor after reading this post and follow this link to learn more. Read Dan Larimer's book More Equal Animals which you can get online for free. I read it in two days. It's that good and that important for the world today. It's a new approach to human governance and selecting representatives which could be a Magna Carta moment for our species. If you think I'm being hyperbolic, read it yourself and let's discuss the implications.

I personally think this is part of the reason why Dan left. He could no longer serve his mission "to create free market, voluntary solutions for securing life, liberty, property, and justice for all" while being hindered by Block One.

Why are people leaving Block One and why is the EOS community so frustrated?

Why are scathing glass door reviews like this being written by ex employees of Block One? Lack of leadership, lack of decision making, projects stuck in beta forever, and "the impression the place operates on whims and fancies" were all mentioned.

What has Block One been doing with all that friggen money?!?!?

EOS VC has been a total failure, from my perspective. I've heard heart wrenching stories from people I know who were strung along, in some cases for over 12 months (!!), thinking they would get funding which never materialized.

What about Voice?

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This was the big announcement at the B1 June event almost two years ago! When I go to the site now, I see a blank white page:

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Someone told me the site was gone and my content was gone. I checked on my phone today and see this:

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What the hell? Is this some kind of rug pull by a company reportedly sitting on around 240,000 BTC ($10B+)? Where are my posts or my Voice tokens? This was supposed to showcase the possibilities of the EOS technology and redefine social media. Now all my Voice content is gone. How can this company be trusted with anything related to the future of EOS?

Even their latest Staking Pool ideas are not being well received if you follow the chatter in https://t.me/eosstakingpools or read Brady Dale's take on it over at Coindesk. There's an ongoing disconnect between what Block One is doing on their own in EOSIO land (which is the generic software) and what is practical for running on the EOS Mainnet chain (which is where the EOS token and EOS community exists). They are too centralized and too disconnected from the community to effectively obtain buy-in to deploy something like this.

Block One doesn't operate transparently and, from the outside looking in, seems to be in a constant state of fear. Sure, they paid off the SEC, but what other government agency might come after their war chest next? Are they going to do anything other than preserve their own survival?

After a daddy daughter date with my youngest last night, I caught part of WALL-E with the kids and one of my favorite lines from the captain comes to mind for the EOS community right now:

"I don't want to survive. I want to LIVE!"

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I've been frustrated at the lack of action since January:

Click through on that whole thread for a full perspective of what I was thinking then.

We're sick of barely surviving with no direct support from Block One for the EOS Mainnet. When the community launched EOS (and I was part of that launch as a member of eosDAC), the community decided what the genesis would look like. We decided to honor the year long B1 ICO. We decided to deploy the chain with the 100M EOS tokens set aside and locked in the code for an organization that would continue to promote and support EOS. Not EOSIO, but EOS. Where is that company? If it's not Block One, who are those tokens for? They were vested for a reason based on an expectation that the significant funds raised from EOS investors would, you know, actually benefit EOS investors in some way.

Is there hope?

Yes! There may be more real hope for EOS now than there ever was before. I do believe Dan Larimer is an under-appreciated genius who has done more for blockchain technology than most people realize as the inventor of Delegated Proof of Stake which runs BitShares, Steem, Hive, and EOS, and has been a catalyst for many other resource-conserving consensus algorithms beyond Proof of Work (or what some call Proof of Waste as in wasted energy). Dan is now free to fully commit himself to building freedom. He's no longer constrained by corporate lawyers.

He might also be uniquely positioned to not only communicate to Block One just how bad things have gotten within the EOS community, but to finally get their financial support for the community.

As described in the latest EOS Hot Sauce that came out today:

On a recent Telegram voice chat, the community was excited to learn that Dan Larimer is currently discussing with Block.one about potential collaborations and/or funding options for Eden. Dan also confirmed that development for Eden is progressing at a steady pace and the community is eagerly waiting to learn more in the coming days and weeks.

There is hope. Block One still has a chance to avoid becoming the evil empire by instead partnering with the EOS community and donating significant financial support to EdenOS, the EOS community, and a reborn EOS Alliance. We want to believe Bullish and ProFi and every other promise that has come and gone from B1 will actually mean something to EOS someday. We want to believe, but we're not stupid and there are limits to our patience. I've seen many of my dear friends, some of the best minds I've ever seen in the technology space, move on to other projects because they could no longer wait for Block One to do something useful.

I don't want to throw Brendan or Block One under the bus. As I also mentioned in that Twitter thread in January, I have no idea what it's like to be responsible for billions of dollars. Neither do you.

I respect what Block One has done to create EOSIO technology. As the Managing Director for almost a year and a half now of the non-profit Foundation for Interwallet Operability which supports the FIO Protocol built on EOSIO technology, I owe much to what Block One has accomplished.

I'm also still part of the EOS community. I decided last month to vote with my resources according to what I believe in and that included selling ETH/BSC tokens for EOS. So far, that hasn't been a great financial decision:

But if I can't vote with my resources for conscious capitalism towards something I believe in now, then when will I ever be able to do it?

Myself and many in the EOS community are done waiting. Too many other opportunities have passed us by while we've remained steadfast and continued to build with no resources and no support.

Can you imagine what we could do together if we, as a community, were properly funded using a governance model described in Dan's book that actually works? EdenOS is going to prove the model with real people like you and me. Imagine what a dedicated group of community members who also want to build freedom could do with hundreds of millions of dollars considering how much they've already done with next to nothing?

This could change the world.

I hope Block One steps up to the plate to support the EOS community. There is no more patience left, and we will not just go quietly on in survival mode.

We want to live and thrive!

As I said above, please read Dan's book and check out everything going on with EdenOS.

Also, if you care about making cryptocurrency easier to use, learn about the FIO Protocol with these 4 super short videos on Coin Market Cap's learn and earn site: https://coinmarketcap.com/earn/project/fio-protocol

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Let's work together to create a world we all want to live in that includes resource conserving blockchains (tools for global, immutable truth) like EOS and efforts to make all cryptocurrencies easier for regular people through projects like FIO.

Thanks for reading.

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I was super excited about EOS back when it was launching but it has been an unprecedented disappointment....and its not because of the technology.

I think it basically got Trojan Horsed by corporate suits which has led to Block.One operating more like a holding (or HODLing) company than the VC champion that would build out a new ecosystem as it promised to do. Now that Dan has left I am more interested in some of the EOS clones (like WAX) which seem to be genuinely innovating and appear to be more agile. I've been hovering over the sell button for my EOS stake for months now but just haven't brought myself around to pulling the trigger yet.....

With their investors and advisers I feel they just want to be players in the new regulated financial blockchain, in the same way btc is being co-opted by the banks and financial institutions that shouldn't be. Sort of obvious by now. Having said that Eos still has a lot of incredible builders and the eosio itself remains a leader in many respects despite other technologies catching up. 2.1 is going to provide a level of resilience unmatched and ease of use is finally improving. Evm is coming to telos shortly. Pluggable consensus is amazing too. The coming ibc world will include many communities running on eosio. Having an eosio core development team funded by those communities will be key, and Eos mainnet can still be the centrepiece of that provided we advance the network ourselves with more urgency. Waiting for the elephant in the room has been what's holding us back.

Exactly. A well funded EOS community directing its own future could be HUGE.

I believe that Block one got too tied up in the red tape of trying to please the regulators and all that money they got became a big stone around their neck.
This was obviously not what Dan wanted, to have to seek permissions from the ones he is fighting against.
I was very disappointed in Voice, again because they were seeking permissions from the government to do things.
Rebels should never need to ask the evil Empire for Permission.
I will still keep my EOS as I look on it as a personal investment in Dan and the original spirit of EOS.

It is super difficult to have a successful project that is genuinely decentralised.

The the founding entity needs to disappear (BTC) or be forcibly removed by a decentralised community (Hive).

Very few projects have achieved this. Even Ethereum is substantially controlled by a single person (Vitalik) and a single entity (Ethereum Foundation).

It is fortunate that Vitalik is such a great guy and genuinely committed to decentralisation. But he would really need to disappear for the decentralisation of Ethereum to be complete.

The Swiss Foundation model he pioneered works OK but has a lot of problems and the Foundation continues to have huge power in most such blockchains.

Companies as blockchain founders are much worse than the Swiss foundation model because they have their own interests which diverge from the best interests of the blockchain over time.

Been controlled by a centralized entity isn't a problem for EOS.

Block One was never here for it.

The problem was that the community never got the memo and destroyed the ways to self-funding (the inflation % supposed to go to WPS, the early RAM and premium names fee etc) expecting that B1 would add their funds to growth the ecosystem.

It took 2 years of pain to wake up!!!

The decision to not go against Block One directly was rational for some people at the time. Now that Dan is part of the community directly, I think more are ready to make changes and be self-directed.

I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that with the FIO Protocol. You can see the community wiki here: https://fioprotocol.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/FC/overview

The centralized company that built the first version of the protocol essentially no longer exists and everyone works independently via active worker proposals evaluated by a steering committee with a budget approved by the foundation board which is selected via the existing board members through a straw poll vote by the token holders.

I gave up on EOS few weeks ago with half of my money gone. Around 10% of my portfolio. Reinvested that in Hive.

I think Hive is also an undervalued token. We take for granted how great it is to have a censorship resistant social media platform as the joke for our content.

This reminded the segment from John Oliver’s show about Block One and EOS from 3 years ago. Perhaps he was right in a way. It starts talking about Block One at 18:57.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=g6iDZspbRMg

While on one hand buying Bitcoin shows lack of trust on EOS itself, on the other it seems to be a great business decision.

In any case if such funds are not used to help the original vision to come true and ecosystem to grow, that shows corporate greed in action. I wonder if too much money kills innovation.

What is EdenOS? Is it going to be another blockchain or something on top of eos?

yes , lmao. block.one right after bitconnect hilarious. when I see this today I cannt believe I bought into it. OK I was really intrigued... Well at least I got in low so that managed to opt out low.
DPOS (at least) as managed in Larimers chains is a failure IMO. good for money cartels and easy to conquer (hive knows)

Easy to conquer? Sorry, but that seems ignorant to me. I was a consensus witness during the takeover. There was nothing easy about any of that. Multiple exchanges had to be lied to by Justin Sun and the 20% stake (which doesn't exist on Hive) had to be used against us. Without the dedicated work of teams of people like Blocktrades, above wouldn’t exist. Try taking over Hive and see how far you get.

thanks Luke for respond I follow you quite a while and know that you’re a dedicated and trustworthy witness. I am not into tech like you, more a normie. But a huge stake owned by a company is generic to a Larimer Chain (steem & Eos, don’t know if its also the case for BTS). Thus the stake is buyable by one person or entity and with some collusion and help from … CZ ... no decentralization left - easy! Sure it must be a hectic time for the witnesses and I know Hive has removed this critical stake so this can´t happen again … lets see what’s left in the tank (it’s no Larimer Chain any longer).
But this „accident“ could also happen to Eos too- right ? or false

EOS has less that 10% assigned to B1 and they will take 10 years to fully unlock

I don't think that it has much impact on EOS' fate

What did have impact was the lack of action from B1 and how long it took for the community to realize it

Check the links in the post to find out and read Dan's book. For real. It's worth reading.

Hive will eat EOS's lunch. EOS can't compete with Eth in terms of security and decentralization. And it can't compete with hive in terms of scalability.

It is stuck in the middle, a dPoS chain with smart contracts makes no sense. Hive's vision of being a layer 1 text dump for sidechains is the right way to scale vertically.

dropping in market cap rankings from the 4th most valuable cryptocurrency in the world to now outside of the top 25.

Interestingly few days ago I was making an analysis and mentioned EOS as a top 5 crypto as i used to know it, so I mentioned it with no thought whatsoever till I was corrected that EOS was no where near top 5, surprisingly...

Thanks for your transparency, this is the type of content I’m here for.

It is also puzzling to see that a project that could have had such funding and impact still had other battles to fight that weren’t lack of funds or professionalism...

EOS : "The days of creators being exploited by platforms are coming to an end."
Also EOS : Nukes all user content. (allegedly)

🤣

Voice, it was promised,but Voice was never on EOS

Yeah, this seems so insane to me.

I am also wondering what's going on with EOS and Voice. Maybe it's another proof that money is not everything. Block One reportedly has billions in Bitcoin which is probably both a blessing and a curse and creates an unhealthy point of centralization, we all know how disastrous this can get (Steemit Inc hostile takeover).

EOS problem is exactly the opposite, it has no money.....

The community believed that Block One was going to behave like any other "block chain foundation" created back in those days, that it will take to ICO money to help to grow the ecosystem.

Believing that the funding was sorted out, they destroyed all the ways to self funding (a % from the inflation and all the RAM and the premium names fees).

Three years later it is clear that when they said in the Token sell agreement "we are just developing the Software and won't have anything to do with launching, funding or operating a public network based on it", it wasn't just "legal talk"

I am out, I bought in early and held for a long time, but I found EOS to be difficult to use and there was very little guidance. The token went nowhere so I got rid of my EOS. Probably dropped it off a bridge into the river.

I dont know all the details about eos things, bur roughly I can say this.

For the big part of it its about the money. EOS as many of the coins is a speculative thing. People expected gainz. Asian markets especialy. With the main company out of it with billions of $$$, it almost feels as a rug pul. The SEC fine and probably a stop to development just on top of it.

I remember how excited you were about EOS and how people were hatting you for that.
Go, just join EdenOS.
You'll come back crying in a few years.
Dan's projects have no success. You should know that by now.
But Dan will of course make a killing, like always.

Ive somehow began to think it’s not a ‘Dan’ problem...but the people he works with,...look at Ned and Steemit, look at Brendan and Block one....

I think we'll finally be able to find out.

Did you even read this post?

I'm still excited about EOS. And I have been asked to join. EdenOS isn’t another blockchain or token. It’s an innovative way to organize humans for collection action and governance that isn’t corruptible via bribes or lobbies. Understand something before you discredit it as you may be discrediting yourself. Read Dan’s book and try to find holes in it. With political approval at all time lows, people want an alternative solution that works. Dan may have designed that solution. If he has, why wouldn’t you want to join also?

To say Dan’s projects have no success is idiotic while you’re literally using a blockchain platform he helped build. This technology works, unlike many other speculative promises made throughout the years by projects that are long gone. Eden OS has no token. Dan doesn’t need money. What he wants is a place and a community to build freedom.

I won’t be crying over this. ;)

You'll be disappointed and Dan as well because you live in a different world.
You both are dreamers and the rest of us are just sheeple.
We like to have fun with tik-tok, FB, and YT.

Amazing work!!!
It took years, but finally the community is realizing that EOS future is in their own hand and stopped waiting for Block One.

About Voice, they post a month ago that the community needed to grab their content because they were going to transition to the NFT world and wanted to start from scratch.

But the screen capture points, very clearly, out that, if they don't include a migration path to any public network from day one, they have full control of your content and are not an improvement over Facebook.

Good read thanks for the catch up... I never did use eos but watched plenty of podcasts to stay on top of things but they seemed to have went away.... but I did finally get into eos tech because of baseball cards on WAX. Haha

EOS to da Moon! :)

edit: meant to say good read, thanks