Advertisement : I wrote this proposal in a rush. English is not my first language and I don’t moderate my language. I’ve been to the US, live in France but grew up in other country. I speak French, English and Spanish. I will continue to improve this proposal in the days and weeks to come. This is a serious proposal but, will it be taken as such ? I hope so.
Why EOS ? Because of its innovative nature, specially around governance. DPOS is an interesting experiment that has shown its pros, cons and limits. Now, innovation on EOS comes back with the official break between Block.One and the community, the creation of the EOS Network Foundation, and the development of EdenOnEos with Dan Larimer behind it.
Dan, the artisan behind EOS, is an ingenious man that never stops to innovate. His concrete work is far more interesting than his political views and ideals (he has not enough background in sociology), and that’s cause of his pragmatism. Recently he’s been working on fractal democracy as he recognizes the problem with DPOS, his own innovation, and other forms of governance in blockchain and in general.
Why me ? I have some background in sociology and psychology, at least more than most of the crypto-geeks out there, including Dan itself : he doesn’t understand very well the difference between right and left and clearly when he speaks of capitalism, communism, life, liberty and property, and free market, he’s just spreading a well known (by sociologists) liberal speech based on anti-comunist (and leftist, for americans, generally speaking, is the same thing) propaganda and cheap economical beliefs. For the last 6 yers I’ve been exploring different blockchain projetcs, listening and reading discussions and remained just as an observer. I am not a genius, probably not even so smart. But I’m frustrated cause I see there’s a hole in the crypto-sphere and no group or individual that I know of are working to try and fill it. There’s a reason as to why this hole exists. Blockchain innovators and developers come from a specific sector in society. There’s a pattern. Certainly they are not sociologists, historians, anthropologists or philosophers. They are mostly geeks – I say it with respect and admiration - with little background on economy that think they understand the world, it’s problems and its solutions (blockhain, sure), better than anyone else. Sure, I do caricaturize, but I think we need it to be able to work better and include people from other disciplines. Most of the development happens in the US. This is not just a detail. When it comes to conceiving a system, political ideas and values matter. I write these words from another country, different culture, where the concepts left, right, tax, state, regulation, redistribution, social protection, etc, are understood in a different way, cause of a different history. I invite all the people from the cryptosphere to study just a little bit how this country works differently from the US and why. You will learn a lot, for me it was a revelation. If you do it accompanied by a good wine from Côtes-du-Rhone, a Baguette Tradition and a slice of any fromage (real cheese, by the way), and while listening to Barbara, Jacques Brel, Boris Vian, Edith Piaf, Gansbourg or Georges Brassens, you would appreciate a lot more the exploration.
Let’s take the idea of free market, for example. Any serious person that studies psychology 101, Philosophy 101 and Sociology 101, would immediately detect a serious problem with the concept. An unregulated market is not free at all, specially because power is centralized. Who owns the media ? Who owns the resources ? Who has a lot of social, cultural or symbolic capital (another french exploration that you might and should be interested to : Pierre Bourdieu) ? If you want no regulation at all, then it is not a free market that you want. This problem precedes the state. A regulated market is not a free market neither, but it could be a more fair market. That’s what humanist people want. A fair market is regulated by a fair system. States don’t necessarily do a good job but it is generally better than no regulation at all. The regulatory system is not going to disappear but it evolves. As Dan is well aware of, we need protection against the so called Pareto principle, among other things. Blockchain and cryptography in general allows us to design better systems, more transparent, secure and not so centralized. It raises the standard for transparency, reliability, efficiency and it makes us to rethink power, value and, ultimately, property.
So, I want to share an idea with you and hope to get your feedback. It is more than an idea, it is a political direction which it is not necessarily in contradiction with the EOS community or Dan’s vision. I utilize the word political the ancient way. For oversensitive, sectarian people, and for those that are sure of themselves, maybe this proposal is not for you as I will touch where it hurts : value, property and another concept that I prefer to unveil later, so you don’t get too scared or ill.
With no further advertisements I go straight to the subject. Let’s take EOS. There’s a problem with governance. Fractal democracy and other measures will provide a way better system. For now, the big problem is that governance depends on stake, and that stake is ridiculously unequal so that exchanges, large companies or rich individuals will ultimately have a lot of power. Yes, I know, delegated proof of stake is not exactly the same, but it is still corruptible by stake amount. Nothing new. Pareto principle. What do we do ? And here I allow myself to hit where it hurts.
Let’s make the first blockchain, the first DAO Pareto resistant and fair by default !
- By default, no user/identity is allowed to hold more than x % of the total supply. X will be defined by the community and by a fair process. What’s the point of owning 80% of the total supply ? What’s the point of having 50% of the stake ? What about 30 % ? or 20 % ? In a free market, it is possible. Well, fuck the free market! Me, and most people want a fair market. Imagine Elon Musk owning 40% of the Earth’s resources ? I repeat, fuck the “free market”. For one, it’s an illusion. It is not free, it is unregulated which is not the same. A “free” market is only free for the powerful, for the whales, for the bankers, for the bourgeois.
- Exchanges : to be able to operate as such, they will have to be validated by community, otherwise they can not hold by default such amounts of tokens.
- To be able to do that, we’ll need to develop a way of validating identity by the network itself and with time and reputation so that any user can only have one verified identity. A user could have multiple accounts, but all of these accounts are linked to this identity. Reputation will be valued more than stake. Buying something is easy if you have the resources, but building reputation takes time and you can loose it very easily, no matter who you are or what your stake is.
- Only verified identities can vote.
- Vote is anonymous and no one is able to know who votes for who. Vote buying, not possible.
- One-identity-one-vote
- Older identities with more reputation have more weight but not something as ridiculous as 30x !
These ideas around BP management might be obsolete
- To become a BP, a multisig of different identities is required. You can own and run the hardware, but to approve or disprove anything, like updating the software, etc, a BP would need the approval of X number of individuals. I’m sure that there are better ideas out there on this.
- Bps are selected based on reputation (reliability) and vote.
- Bps cannot vote for themselves or for Bps that are too related (network analysis)
- As the profit of a successful business on chain increments, an algorithm regulates it in a way that the network remains Pareto-resistant and fair. Real time taxation if you will. What happens with this capital ? (Another way of redistributing value is through X% of inflation.)
- UBI : If we develop a viable economical model for a Pareto-resistant and fair network with real time “taxation” that redistributes value to all users, network usage will explode ! People will get attracted cause it is fair, it makes possible to do fair business, and you get a UBI or a re-distributional allocation, what ever you wanna call it.
- We need trustworthy, fair, decentralized stablecoins. And most importantly a stablecoin not stable in price but in purchasing power !
- The token will be valued cause users will know that it runs in a regulated, fair system where there’s no whales and no 51% attacks. Any active and verified user gets a portion of the value created on the network, not based on stake, just maturity and reputation.
What I'm proposing is to implement a sort of “ideal state” on the blockchain. A “state” designed and controlled by its members. It will not be perfect, but it will be light years away from what we’ve seen until now. Fractal democracy is fundamental. Lets work together !
Take a while to ruminate this proposal. It is the fucking killer function ! If a network applies this idea it will be way bigger than Bitcoin, Ethereum or any other project cause it would be the first most fair, most transparent, most efficient, most reliable, most humanist system for community organization ever created. For current states, the standard for all these attributes will be raised. What’s the downside ? Whales will not be happy. Greedy people that don’t care about community will not be happy. Power freaks will not be happy.
Well, for the first time we have the opportunity to reverse reality. Nowadays, a few percent own most part of the resources, and that has to change. Blockchain and cryptography in general can help us.
Am I a communist ? I don’t care what you think about me. I am a humanist. For people like me, markets must serve humanity, and not just the 1% of it. For that to happen, we need regulation. Lets create together a fair way to regulate ourselves. That’s what blockchain is about. If not, I don’t see its value.
For you, with love
Casanova