EOS CTO Proposes Rehauling Constitution as Disputes Over Governance Continue

Chief Technical Officer (CTO) of blockchain protocol EOS Dan Larimer has proposed rehauling the project’s existing constitution to limit so-called arbitrators’ powers, in an EOSGov Telegram chat today, June 27.

Larimer’s proposal comes in response to recent controversies surrounding the structure of governance on the EOS blockchain, in which three distinct groups work to ‘keep one another in check,’ as defined by the project’s current constitution.

These three groups in the EOS ecosystem are the so-called Block Producers (BPs) – the equivalent of miners on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain – the arbitrators (EOS Core Arbitration Forum (ECAF)) and Token-Holders.

The ECAF in particular has drawn criticism over the reportedly opaque nature of its role and powers, thrown into relief by a series of mishaps that have occurred since the EOS mainnet first went live June 15.

In the recent Telegram discussion, Larimer argued that “forcing people into an unknown arbitration system for undefined reasons is a fast way to cause people to run.

He proposed that arbitrators’ role should be limited to cases where there is a “strong foundation with very clear and defined failure points that can be arbitrated” – in his opinion, only where there is a “code - intent mismatch.”

June’s arbitration mishaps have caused an outcry from prominent crypto industry members, including Charlie Shrem and Nick Szabo.

One recent incident saw the Block Producers reportedly receive an emergency ECAF order to refuse to process transactions for 27 accounts – “pending further review of the claims by an Arbitrator,” with the “logic and reasoning” for the order to be posted at a later date.

On June 24, EOS BP New York said it could not “with confidence execute any subsequent statements claiming to be a valid ECAF opinion,” after a further – apparently fake – ECAF order had been issued.

As Dogecoin creator, Jackson Palmer, remarked on Twitter yesterday, Larimer is effectively today suggesting to “scrap[...] the entire [EOS] ‘constitution’ and start[...] over.”

Crypto persona WhalePanda said the proposal was basically “a similar governance model like $ETH where the foundation bails out big losses/hacks/DAO-ish events... but more centralized.”

Since going live this month, the EOS network has faced technical issues, on top of the furore over arbitration matters.

EOS is currently the fifth largest cryptocurrency on CoinMarketCap, with a market cap of $7.2 bln. The coin has seen an over 4 percent growth over the past 24 hours to press time, trading at $8.07.