On EOS Blockchain, Vote Buying Is Business as Usual

MODERN TIMES: Once a no-no, the buying and selling of votes is now seen as an accepted part of governing the world's eighth-largest blockchain. (William M. "Boss" Tweed image via Metropolitan Museum of Art)

Buying votes is a big no-no in traditional democracies, but on the worlds eighth-largest blockchain its become an accepted way of doing business.

A new service makes it easier for EOS block producers, the nodes elected by holders of the cryptocurrency to validate transactions on the network, to share their block rewards with those who voted for them. The service, known as Genpool, was introduced this month by GenerEOS, which itself is a block producer candidate.

Back when EOSIO, the software powering the $3.7 billion EOS chain, was just an idea, the crypto community debated whether delegated proof-of-stake, or DPoS, would lead to validation candidates effectively bribing users to support them. (DPoS is a consensus mechanism that limits the number of node validators to a fixed set.) Early on, the EOS community believed it could prevent such activity.

"The Genpool platform is a zero barrier to entry free market ecosystem, connecting proxy owners with voters that are looking to support quality Block Producers (BPs) while being rewarded with a percentage of the additional BP income, GenerEOS said in a Medium post announcing the service.

While similar services have launched in Asia, Genpool appears to be the first in the English-speaking EOS world explicitly designed to help token holders find the best payouts for their votes from block producers. (Like bitcoin miners, EOS block producers are rewarded with freshly minted cryptocurrency for recording transactions on the public ledger.) In short, Genpool lets EOS holders get paid to participate in governance.

To critics, this fulfills longstanding fears that in a system where governance is delgated, the richest will dominate. Permitting payments makes it even easier for the wealthiest to cement their position.

There is nothing stopping a validator from acting is if it were more than one entity, allowing whales to hold multiple spots on the governing council of block producers, effectively mounting a Sybil attack, the research team at the Binance cryptocurrency exchange wrote in a report released Feb. 18.

"A single actor may register multiple block producer accounts and multiply their voting weight at a negligible cost, the report said. Simultaneously, having multiple BP entities allows [that actor] to allocate more block rewards to voters, increasing the competitiveness of the underlying actor."

Binance stopped withdrawals of eos tokens in late January, when it saw instability on the network, possibly due to upgrades to the latest version of the EOSIO software released by Block.One. Other exchanges such as Upbit and OKEx paused withdrawals at the time.

Genpool will probably sound a little convoluted to those who aren't well versed in EOS, so hang tight.

To recap, every eos holder has the option to stake their tokens to the vote for block ...

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