Telos Network — Weekly Report — October 11, 2018

Telos Network — Weekly Report — October 11, 2018

“Someday” always arrives

This is the 13th weekly report for Telos, which means that this project has only publicly existed for one quarter of a year. And yet in that time we have built a robust and functional network, attracted many participants from the 100+ contributors in the TCG, to the 45 block producers on the network, to the hundreds of people around the world taking part in the community rewards program, and we are set to be listed on exchanges. (Note the “s” — keep an eye out for more official releases that didn’t quite make the weekly report!). At the start of this project, we were looking forward to that “someday” when we would launch Telos. “Somedays” always seem so far off and barely achievable. But someday has a way of becoming today. And for Telos, that could happen before I write the next weekly report.

You know you are close to the end (really the beginning, of course) when you must focus on small issues constantly and when large issues that do come up are major items. In a week when we voted to adopt many of our dense, boring, and vital governance documents, we also chased down issues like whether to change the key prefix from TLOS back to EOS (Yeah, we will probably have to do this for users and Dapps due to some outside code changes — more soon), exactly how much RAM to launch the network with, and how to best ensure that our voting system is not easily gamable (more on this in a day or two as well). These are the little things that come up because “someday” is getting ready to become “today” — or Wednesday, in this case.

We also received a comprehensive and thoughtful bundle of Telos Improvement Proposals (TIPs) regarding the economic viability for Telos block producers and ongoing development to remain viable once the network is launched. While it feels like some pretty big changes to add potentially a week before launch, and I wish these proposals had emerged a few weeks earlier, I guess it’s better than emerging a few weeks later, or not at all, provided that they are actually targeting a real threat to the network. Personally, I worry about people thinking Telos is trying to pull a fast one just before launch, but I’m more worried about the prospect of ignoring a real risk to keeping Telos economically viable for block producers and developers. If we really are setting up BPs to leave the network someday because it’s not viable for them to stay given our higher requirements and lower token supply, then we should take that seriously, because that “someday” will also eventually arrive. I don’t know the answer yet — or even if it is really a valid concern. I am focusing on pushing Telos toward launch. But I’m glad that there are others in the group are also proposing solutions for future problems. #GoTelos!

— Douglas Horn

Here’s what we’ve accomplished this week:

1. Forty-five Block Producers on the testnet (and counting)
2. BP Minimum Requirements document ratified
3. “regproducer” Human-language Contract ratified
4. Telos Blockchain Network Operating Agreement (TBNOA) ratified
5. Jan Smit confirmed as Interim Director of the Telos Foundation RAM Administration
6. Practicing the Telos launch
7. New Telos Improvement Proposals
8. Telos Foundation receives more board member nominations

Checklist Updates at a Glance

In-Progress → Functional/In Testing

TF RAM administration
Arbitration contract

Functional/In Testing → Complete & Tested

• Enforce BP minimums
• Telos Blockchain network operating agreement
• Telos foundation voting tokens
• Minimum BP requirements
• At least 40 BP candidates
• Two testnets up, public and private staging testnet
• Forty-five Block Producers on the testnet (and counting)

Forty-five BP candidates are currently producing on the Telos Testnet. This week we crossed an important threshold of the 40 BPs necessary to launch the network. Telos will have 21 block producers and up to 30 paid and regularly tested standby BPs. This deep bench of at-the-ready BPs greatly increases our network resiliency. While 40 BPs was never a hard requirement, it was promised as a launch requirement in the Telos white paper because it was an indicator that there would be community engagement and buy-in for Telos as well as sufficient BPs to keep the network running even if some candidates did not meet the standard. Currently all 45 BPs have either successfully produced blocks on the testnet or are in the process of being rotated in to do so.

BP Minimum Requirements document ratified

The BP Minimum Requirements document was debated and Ratified by the Telos Contributors Group with a final vote of Yes — 24, No — 0, Abstain — 0.

These minimum requirements are made up of disclosures, practices, and infrastructure requirements that ensure that the Telos block producers are positively contributing to the network. Telos block producers are decided by user voting, and without a set of minimum requirements, it would be difficult to ensure that a candidate who received a lot of votes was actually meeting the needs of the network. These minimum requirements are enforceable and BPs that do not meet them will be removed from the network until they are in compliance.

Read the full document here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/telos-block-producer-minimum-requirements-b38720421653

“regproducer” Human-language Contract ratified

The Telos Contributors Group also debated and ratified the “regproducer” Human-language Contract document with a vote of Yes — 21, No — 2, Abstain — 2.

The “regproducer” action is how a Telos member nominates themselves to become a block producer. In doing so, they must agree to abide by the human-language terms of the contract. This contract exists on both EOS and Telos and in fact, this is the only Telos governance document that is closely related to its EOS version. In the Telos version of “regproducer”, however, not only are actions called out as being prohibited, but there are penalties associated with them as well as a method of enforcement and acceptance of the requirement to enforce. Together these mean that any Telos block producer candidate not only understands what actions are not allowed, but also what the penalties for infraction will be and how those penalties will be decided. This greatly increases not only network security, but fair treatment as well.

Read the full document here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/telos-regproducer-human-language-contract-3f91bbab564

Telos Blockchain Network Operating Agreement (TBNOA) ratified

The TBNOA was debated and Ratified by the Telos Contributors Group with a vote of Yes — 21, No — 0.

The Telos Blockchain Network Operating Agreement (TBNOA) establishes the mutual rights and responsibilities of anyone participating in the Telos chain. It is analogous to the EOS Constitution, but takes a very different approach. The TBNOA seeks to give Telos members a clear understanding of what is allowed on the network, how it will operate, and what happens if something needs to be improved.

Watch the vote here:

Read the full document here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/telos-blockchain-network-operating-agreement-tbnoa-e3d3cd4f4831

An annotated “explainer” version of the TBNOA is here: https://medium.com/@teloslogical/telos-governance-overview-28a34dbb24e7

Jan Smit confirmed as Interim Director of the Telos Foundation RAM Administration

Jan Smit of DutchEOS has been confirmed as the Interim Director of the Telos Foundation RAM Administration with a Contributors Group member vote of Yes — 25, Abstain — 1 (Jan). Now that he is confirmed, Jan will work along with the Telos development, network-maintenance, and RAM working groups to understand the impacts of various RAM decisions at launch. As Interim Telos Foundation RAM Administration Director, Jan will publish non-binding guidance to BPs regarding RAM releases and will also set the TF published guidance price and buy or sell RAM reserves based on the PGP.

Jan has demonstrated progressive and thoughtful ideas about the subject of resource management in Telos and has proven himself to be a diligent contributor to the Telos community. A respected member of several working groups, Jan has also represented Telos at the London Hackathon and blockchain conference in September as part of the DutchEOS team, which was one of the original 12 organizations that participated in the Telos announcement. Jan has a background in investing and has agreed to be bound by the trading restrictions regarding secrecy and trading TLOS RAM on his own account or that of his organization while serving as the RAM Administration Director. He will make an excellent RAM Administration Director to guide us through the launch of the Telos Blockchain Network.

Practicing the Telos launch

The network, development, and stagenet working groups have spent this week practicing the Telos network launch under various scenarios. This includes functions such as injecting and validating the snapshot files, testing RAM allocation and pricing, and streamlining processes. The goal of these tests is to provide a clear, tested and practiced list of launch actions that any skilled block producer could follow. This launch process list is expected to be complete very soon and will be further tested by various Telos BPs who may participate in the launch.

Another function of these practice runs is to provide recommendations for system launch parameters, primarily the amount of RAM to allocate. System testing has shown that the initially proposed 4GB RAM and even 8GB RAM result in prohibitively expensive RAM prices. The group has had better results with 12GB and 16GB results which yield a good balance on price that means it will be affordable at launch without seeming excessively cheap so as to set off a “RAM grab” situation seen on the EOS launch.

New Telos Improvement Proposals

Eight new Telos Improvement Proposals for changes to funding pools and token distribution (TIPs) were published in the GitHub TIPs Repository this week:

• TIP-12: A mechanism for establishing director salaries for the Telos Foundation
• TIP-13: Lower the maximum airdrop in the Telos Initial Distribution from 40,000 TLOS to 20,000 TLOS per EOS wallet
• TIP-14: Increase the Telos Founders’ Reward Pool from 6 million TLOS to 25 million TLOS
• TIP-15: Increase funding for the Telos Foundation from 6 million TLOS to 20 million TLOS
• TIP-16: Fund a “give away” contest of 10 million TLOS
• TIP-17: Capitalize the Worker Proposal Fund with 10 million TLOS upon mainnet launch
• TIP-18: Frontload TLOS inflation schedule
• TIP-19: Set a 1-year expiration date for unclaimed TLOS in the Exchange Token Reserve Fund (ETRF)

TIP-12 was submitted by Adam Zientarski (EOS Detriot) and seeks to establish salary levels for Telos Foundation board and directors separate from operating budgets to add financial transparency. TIP-13 through 19 were submitted by Ian Panchevre (Amplified Telos) suggest a series of tokenomics changes to generally provide more economic sustainability to the Telos economy and revise token distribution in other ways because the crypto and EOS economies have changed from assumptions made in the white paper.

Any TIPs submitted will be discussed and possibly debated and voted after the established legislative calendar is complete. The TCG will vote next on Friday Oct 11, on documents regarding Arbitration. If that legislation passes, there will be time to vote for popular TIPs on Tuesday Oct. 16th. Community feedback is welcomed on any of these TIPs.

Review the full Telos Improvement Proposals here: https://github.com/Telos-Foundation/tips

Read about the Amplified Telos group of proposals here: https://medium.com/amplified-telos/introduction-amplifieds-telos-improvement-proposals-tips-13-19-6c67d3f69bb5

Telos Foundation receives more board member nominations

The Telos Foundation has so far received 14 nominations for the Telos Foundation Board, many of whom are Telos Launch Group contributors. We are still seeking nominations and are especially interested in applicants who are not in the Telos Contributors Group or TFVT holders.

Any board member nominations may be made by emailing hello@telosfoundation.io.

View the full list of nominees: https://telosfoundation.io/foundation

Join the Telos conversation and get more info!

Telegram: https://t.me/HelloTelos

Twitter: https://twitter.com/HelloTelos

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TelosFoundation.io

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/TheTelosNetwork

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/TelosNetwork/

Discord: https://discordapp.com/channels/466757729508261889/468500684858327040

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/telosfoundation.io/

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