As much as everyone wishes this wasn't... this is actually a real President
Identity in EOS
Only days away from the launch of the EOS mainnet one of the big hot topics amongst the Block Producing Candidate community is identity. After many months of interacting with the community, building a reputation, spending blood, sweat, tears, and possibly large amounts of money everything is boiling down to identity and votes.
Our previous steemit post Name Bidding and Premium Names on EOS highlights how names work in the current version of the EOSIO software. Account names are required to be 12 characters long and shorter names will have a powerful place in the EOS ecosystem and must be purchased by auction.
Who is real?
Meet @dan. He's done lots of cool stuff!
Meet Joe Scammer. He's a douchebag.
Block Producers who have spent so much energy on their identities are rightfully concerned that after the mainnet launches fraudulent block producers may register names that are similar to their own and attempt to trick voters.
This has always been a difficult issue, and companies like Google, Facebook, and Twitter have had to create identity verification processes to seperate the frauds from the real people. The processes themselves have had their own controversies and hick ups and raise many questions for the EOS community:
- Should voting portals be required to provide some layer of identity verification?
- Should block producers individually raise awareness of their account name and public key and trust that voters won't be fooled?
- Should block producers take the name debate more strongly into their own hands?
The boot process
During the boot process of the mainnet the group of block producers involved have direct control of the "eosio" account. This is a privileged system account that can "do anything it wants". At the end of the boot process, when all system contracts have been loaded and the ERC-20 snapshot has been converted and verified the "eosio" account becomes the property of the community and can only make changes based on the governance model.
Some block producers propose using this short window to grant themselves "special names" that are shorter than the 12 character limit, or perhaps have a "bp" suffix or prefix. The idea behind this is that fraudulent accounts will be unable to mimic these special names and the community can be rest assured they are voting for legitimate producers.
The reasoning goes like this: if genereos intended to register genereos1111 as our official block producing name, this small window in time might allow us to be represented as genereos or bp.genereos or genereos.bp. Now when Joe Scammer comes along and creates genereos1112 the community will know he's a fraud.
That's not fair!
The concern with this approach is that the block producers who participate in the boot process in the final selected mainnet have given themselves an advantage. Everyone else must abide by the 12 character account name, and everyone else must participate in the name auctions to get a shorter name.
The other concern is that should new block producers who enter the community weeks, months, years from now be entitled to be awarded a short name? Are they forever at a disadvantage to the "founding" block producers?
Some block producers argue this is a necessary evil to protect their investment, identity, and protect the community from fraudulent block producers. Others disagree and feel everyone should be placed on an equal footing.
Our stance
Team GenerEOS believes that boot block producers should not receive a special advantage by participating in the boot process. The boot process is an altruistic community endeavour to bring a functioning mainnet online - not an opportunity to gain an advantage over other members of the community.
What do you think?
We would love to hear what the community at large thinks about this. The decisions made by the boot process that ultimately becomes the mainnet will have long lasting implications and legacy.
- Should the founding block producers deserve an advantage such as short names to protect their identity?
- Should the community rely upon voting portals to filter out the scammers?
- Should everything be as fair as possible?
Please open up this debate in the comments and in your favourite telegram channels.
The mainnet goes live June 3rd and these decisions need to be finalised soon!
About Us
GenerEOS is a social enterprise block producing candidate with a mission of promoting and supporting scalable and highly reliable block production whilst giving back block rewards to charities.
Based out of Sydney, Australia, GenerEOS is founded by a team of like minded blockchain enthusiasts with diverse backgrounds and a passion to make a difference in the world and fostering the spirit of generosity by giving back.
Public Presence
Website: https://www.genereos-sydney.io
Steem: https://steemit.com/@genereos
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/FfqLYBDQkv5vSkiLsh34IA
Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/GenerEOS
Github: https://github.com/generEOS
Medium: https://medium.com/@generEOS
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/generEOS
I think the initial "boostrap" producers should have "throw away accounts" that people don't vote for, everyone, including the initial producers, should have to register an account and a producer by the same method.
In my boot process there would only be 1 initial producer to supervise the election, but the community seems to want 21 initial producers. Either way these initial producers should not even be registered to vote (and don't need to be registered in order to become initial producers).
Thanks for all your brilliance and dedication, mate. If you ever find yourself speaking with Satoshi, please thank him for me too.
This makes a tremendous amount of sense. I don't understand the benefit of 21 initial producers over one or vice versa. I hope someone can explain it. :-)
100% agree with this statement.
Thanks for the support mate :)
Not sure if this is helpful, but:
1- I lean towards simplicity and keeping everyone, including BPs, on the same footing as far as identity is concerned. Yes, there is more of a risk for fraud, particularly at the launch, but providing the initial BP candidates with a special name at launch would be an unfair advantage over the years.
2- As a possible compromise: once a Block Producer candidate earns enough votes to either become one of the 21 BPs or is voted to operate in a standby mode, then that BP could earn a unique identifier to the name. In other words, if you’re operating as a standby node or as one of the 21, you’ve earned the “.BP” suffix, for example. This could be written as a smart contract.
I hope these thoughts contribute to the discussion, and please let me know if I’m off-track. I’m really trying to learn and contribute to EOS.
I am open to discussion but these are my initial thoughts regarding the questions you are asking:
Should the founding block producers deserve an advantage such as short names to protect their identity?
Why not - reputation is super important when it comes to this and it seems that the founding block producers will have put in the time, energy and money to merit being distinguished from the other BPs. They are the ones who are going to "push the baby out", so to speak, so I think it is fine if they want to have a "mom" or "bp" or some other prefix/suffix that speaks to that.
Should the community rely upon voting portals to filter out the scammers?
Do you mean that you are wondering if the community should require verification of voter identity?
Should everything be as fair as possible?
By fair - do you mean equal? Because when people talk about fairness, it is usually about a fantasy based on subjective opinions. Which often seems to require that the those who are early adopters or more talented, or stronger, or smarter give up the advantages achieved by being who or what they are. This is by no means fair, though it might make things seem more equal.
This is an electoral and governance system that depends on legitimacy and credibility. Can you imagine if electoral registrars gave themselves special status in an election because they helped to facilitate it? Starting block producers would be undermining the legitimacy of their own candidate blockchain by including special status for themselves in it.
If the rate or price of the name is fixed, they could "pay for it later." Giving early adopters only a slight benefit, yet preserving the integrity of shorter names by giving them real value.
I would say: "Do your task properly and the world will thank you for it, take advantage of your position while doing it and... you might erase whatever good you do, if not worse"
But that's just me.
Agreed. As much as tje somutuon makes sense. It also gives a weighted advantage to bps who take part in the boot process.
Great questions! We are dealing with this very thing right now.
We recently changed our name. It wasn't a huge change in how the name reads but it is in it's meaning. We went from EOS Sweden to eos sw/eden. There is a BP candidate who decided to use our other name.
Our CEO met with their team in Stockholm to figure out what was going on. They said it was a mistake and would change it right away. Later that afternoon they filed a trademark in Sweden for the name. Why hadn't we filed a TM? Well, because we knew we would rebrand. That being said, it is pretty strange to want the name of another BP - or a name that is even CLOSE to what another BP has. Because that will lead to voter confusion. We have continued to have discussions with them. Their response has been, "we aren't doing anything illegal." They then said no one will be confused because "We may not even be competing with them (for several months) as we are yet in pre-planning phase." In another response they said, "We are not ready yet and I assume SW/Eden is already ready and producing blocks in test networks."
So they are not in a position to produce blocks and yet, if they were somehow elected to a funded back-up position, they would be receiving an EOS payment by the community to do a service that they are at this time incapable of doing. If you sit in an exit row on a plane (to get that extra legroom), you are explained your responsibilities. You have a duty to preform in the unlikely event that the plain has to land in an "unconventional" manner. You get the extra legroom because you are willing AND capable of opening the window. If you can't mange to do that, you shouldn't be sitting there.
It is considered fraud to receive money for a job that you cannot actually do. If I take money to represent someone in court as a barrister or lawyer and I am not actually a lawyer, I could go to jail.
By their own admission, they are not ready to be a block producer and yet they could conceivably be on the ballot. AND because their name is very close to ours, they could also receive votes intended for us.I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they have no ill intention whatsoever.
A thought to consider; it would be possible to require anyone who wants to run for BP to prove that they can produce blocks. An idea that has been floated for sometime is a Performance Testnet that would be built post launch. This will be a place for standby producers and those would like to run for BP to validate and show that their hardware is “production ready”, so that the EOS Community is guaranteed that any new BP can handle the load required. This would keep out almost anyone who has fraudulent intentions or is not ready to produce blocks.
How does this answer the question of names. If you want to run for BP and can produce blocks in a testnet or the Performance Testnet, then you can get the BP suffix (or prefix) for your name.
This would also honor your own stance that boot block producers should not receive a special advantage by participating in the boot process. In addition it would mitigate some of the potential for fraud in the future.
At network creation the boot node will need this power to load the necessary system contracts and snapshot. Once this is done eosio control is transferred to the governance system. The community is devising several verification methods to be sure that the boot node did not abuse this power by inserting custom code or manipulating the snapshot prior to selecting a network as the mainnet.
This is a great question. We all need to form consensus on a way to validate which node should be selected. Currently the BIOS Boot page is peer reviewing candidates based on launch drills but this does not cover the entire BP community.