After a lot of FUD and chaos around the interim constitution and ECAF, Block.One and more specifically Daniel Larimer decided to put a new constitution for the referendum among the community members. For the community members outside the Governance channel I think, new constitution brought relief but the frequent contributors on EOSGov had mixed reactions.
The new constitution revolves around the "intent of code" is law. The previous constitution was more about bringing the real world legal structures to act against the abuses, thefts, vote buying etc.
I had been trying to learn how will "intent of the code is law" will safeguard the users on dapplication?
Few questions I had regarding the new constitution
- In case of deliberately missing articles from the dapps constitution, how will user claim against any threat?
- Are there any loopholes which need to be covered up?
- Could we survive without any arbitration forum on the base layer? or just on the dapplication layer?
The Answer: BONDS
What are BONDS?
Bonds could act as a collateral for Dapplication to bring more trust in the community. The Bonds will be staked on the EOS Network for the specified time. Any user in case of any damages could claim against bonds (Ricardian contract) which are subjected to arbitration and the forums will be mentioned in the bond contract itself.
For instance, take Block.One 100m tokens, we know they have staked on the network for 10 years, the community and the members trust them more as they have vested interest in the community. If they develop a dapplication on the top of EOS specifying its own constitution (Ricardian Contract) and user in case of any abuse could claim against the same bond. Won't users will trust the dapplication more?
But 'the bonds' will be the opportunity barrier for new dapplications....
From past seven days or so, the opportunity barrier had been a major concern for me, thankfully yesterday HeddieEddie gave me a little hint.
No 'the bonds' won't create opportunity barrier for any dapplication developer, instead, they would be better for the EOS ecology as bonds may help shifting towards a more distributed economy and the rest will be driven by free market competition.
Any dapplication developer no matter what his financial background will be able to develop, run and test the real dapplication in the ecosystem using the Chintai Tokens Renting Marketplace. He may post the dapplication without a bond in initial phases or may opt-in for very less amount with just objective articles in case he wants to establish more trust. But that's not all -
A developer/ dapplication team could as well take the investment from the community. Imagine a dapplication like ONO or maybe Decentraland with a convincing whitepaper and team. For filling up bond and getting more traction they could be looking for raising crowd-funds not as an investment but on a contract basis (maybe locked up for six years) in exchange for dapplication tokens.
The investor as he is the forerunner in funding the dapplication will get more tokens plus, his EOS tokens are his property (unlike Ethereum) which would be returned after specified years in the bond.
and the Airdrops....
I feel Airdrops are not the organic way to get the community working on a project. Maybe few token airdropped among the community member are good for ignition, but for the long-term dapplication need to have the vested interest of the community members so maybe skin in the game of early adopters.
I think and not pretty sure, but the investment raised for bonds could help them with the eyeballs and vested interest of the community members, eager to learn about the project.
Having said that, I feel with time dapplication developer will start turning away from airdrops. Tokens lying in the wallets won't give much value to the projects.
Arbitration and the free market!
How will the Dapplication bonds be enforced? Is there a mention in the constitution, how will disputes be handled on the base layer i.e EOS network?
What if a dapplication starts to compile your data and selling it, without any mention in the bond?
If one dapplication puts up a bond, use subjective terms on RC and mentions an arbitration forum to take care of disputes, will they be accepted for further evaluation on protocol layer?
Most of the disputes mentioned on dapplication layer could be handled on the basis of dapp constitution on the dapplication level itself. But how disputes beyond the dapplication constitution will be handled?
I still don't have an answer to all the questions, as they need some more clarity but as my understanding goes -
The basic dapplication need to specify all the code related issue on the Ricardian contracts, if the issues are subjective the dapp layer governance, RC needs to appoint an arbitration forum to take care of the disputes. Once resolved on the dapplication layer they are further transferred to protocol layer to be evaluated by block producers.
If this isn't the case -
I feel then we are heading towards Steemit
like platforms where intent of code seems
to work perfectly but are centralised dapps
with the facade of decentralisation.
Governance, DR will be needed for subjective
claims to tweak the changes accordingly.
My argument -
Ethereum foundation is working as intented by code,
I don't see any problem in that (maybe
they are centralised with few miners) but that
is subjective and is not creating any problem
for the investors/dapps. Soon they will be
having plasma/Casper, why are we even working for EOS then?
Eh? So Arbitration forum need to opt-in for arb forum themselves, won't they choose the worst or biased one?
That is where free market competition comes in, the dapplication for more trust will try to choose/specify the most authenticated arbitration forum where arbitrators themselves will be bonded. Moreover, the investors will keep a check on arbitrations forums like they check the paperwork before investing. Plus community and people will vote for dapplication to come as a verified dapplication in B1 wallets. That's the reason I think dapplication won't specify any bad arbitration forum or any forum which overlaps with the existing government. Most Dapplication will choose the arbitration forum which understands the blockchain and EOS governance methodology.
Choosing bad or completely overlooking dispute resolution will give other dapplication an edge, hence the dapplication will lose value in long run.
What else the Bonds could bring?
Vote Buying and Cartels
In my understanding, there are two ways to stop the cartel formation/ vote buying on the network -
They are-
- Reducing the incentives for Block Producers.
- Giving more incentives to the whales than BP are able to share.
Investment for Bonds and dapplication could help to incentivize the investors better. The FOMO and greed of the whales will help us diluting the stake of whales and transferring them to the dapplication with the vested interest.
It could even help the passive community members to withdraw EOS from the exchange and look for further investments.
The geographical advantages or un-decisive investors voting just for the sake of either their country's Block Producers or reward sharing won't make any sense. The atmosphere instead of getting whales votes will shift to developing more dapplication to remain voted in, and that is truly what EOS is looking for.
Worker Proposal Systems
There have been a lot of discussion around, how the Worker Proposal Projects be voted in.
As we now the most legit way to safeguard the WPS from Sybil attack is stake based voting. If you are thinking that won't be good as whale will start partnering with the project's founders and get their projects voted in, insteadOne ID-Account - One Vote be better, please read this and your views will change. What else log scale voting, QV voting, Reputation? IMO nothing could work without any skin in the game i.e stake.
The best way is to let the bonded account vote for WPS. With vote weight proportional to the stake in the account and inversely proportional to the bond has been locked in for. The dapplication with long-term -vested interest will have the maximum voting power and I think they are the best entities to choose a good project for EOS infrastructure.
It will bring more trust among the community members and only projects which are good for EOS infrastructure will get funded. _Not saying it could completely stop from high bonded dapplication taking the advantage, but IMO they will still be better than whales (who could even sell EOS within a month) voting for proposals.
Towards DPOB....
Delegated Proof of Bond, with Bonded accounts voting for the Block Producers like Worker Proposals, would make EOS a real Enterprise Operating System. :)
According to Dan, it's his long-term vision and we don't have the infrastructure for that as of now.
Additional
I feel Bonds need to specify EXITs in case the dapplication doesn't progress or fails. The EOS tokens needs to be returned to the members who invested in.
Bonds could be biased towards early adopters, with early dapps having more weight may be an upper limit could be set on dapplication in terms of FIAT, which dilutes itself when limit crosses.
Conclusion
The bonds will help with establishes reputation/ trust, dilution and transfer of EOS tokens in the hands of those who have vested interest. The bonds will help with governance and dispute resolution as a user could claim against them. Maybe few years down the line we will be witnessing the changes in WPS and Voting methodology towards Bonds.