Arbitration on a governed Blockchain: EOS’ disaster of Dispute decision

Some other week, some other squabble related to the beleaguered EOS blockchain. The platform that has recently sustained a spherical of criticism for its loss of decentralization and its underwhelming technical robustness is now going thru a governance disaster. The trouble partly stems, pretty sarcastically, from the shortage of the gadget’s mediating capability and centralized enforcement over the pool of Block manufacturers - twenty-one entities elected through token holders and chargeable for validating transactions under the Delegated proof of Stake consensus mechanism.

The modern controversy spread out because the EOS core Arbitration discussion board (ECAF), correctly the ‘judicial branch’ of the EOS surroundings, didn't handle a chain of alleged security breaches, prompting Block producers to take unilateral motion and freeze the endangered bills. The fallout highlighted immaturity of the gadget’s quasi-institutional shape, at the identical time exacerbating the EOS’ skeptics’ over-centralization concerns. despite the EOS token presently status as the 5th cryptocurrency by way of market cap, and its $4 billion ICO final unequalled to date, the builders and center network in the back of the project seem to be quality with large-scale experimentation with a live blockchain.

The crisis
On June 17, quickly after the EOSIO mainnet release, a Block producer EOS42 drew the network’s attention to the reality that the bills compromised for the duration of the registration technique ought to now be unlocked, putting some $15 million really worth of EOS tokens immediate. Block producers turned to the ECAF for steering, but after the arbitration frame fell quick of at once handing over an unambiguous choice, the network’s stakeholders have settled the difficulty thru a conference name. via a unanimous vote, they determined to ‘freeze’ seven suspicious money owed, that means that no transactions concerning those addresses might be processed.