Hey everyone, and welcome to the new and improved version of my EOSIO ecosystem newsletter! I’ve decided to move everything over to Substack, which is a much better platform than what I was using before. That switch has also offered me the opportunity to change up the format of the letter a bit.
I’m going to start sending out the letter every two weeks, instead of weekly. That will give me a little more time to digest the biggest news and separate the signal from the noise. I’m going to focus on narrowing down the most important developments, highlighting those, and offering some commentary on each. Then I’ll add a list of links with things that are worth reading, watching, or listening to. I may experiment a little in the coming weeks, so feel free to ping me here or on Twitter with feedback.
In case you missed it, two weeks ago I announced that Aurora EOS and Greymass would be joining forces— we’ll be spinning down the Aurora brand, and I’ve joined Greymass as a partner. You can read the entire announcement here. Be on the lookout for some really awesome announcements from our team this month (follow us on Twitter and Telegram). If you’re currently voting for Aurora EOS, please know that we’ll be unregistering the node at the end of this week. We’d love for you to continue to support our efforts by switching your vote over to teamgreymass.
Thanks!
Myles Snider
REX is Live
The EOS resource exchange (REX) is officially live on the mainnet. What does this mean? Any EOS user can lease out their EOS through a system-level contract, and anyone who wants to use the EOS network can access bandwidth by leasing EOS for a much lower price than purchasing it directly. REX users also have to vote for 21+ BPs (or delegate to a proxy) in order to use REX, so it should increase voter participation, as well. If you’re an EOS holder looking to start using REX, EOS New York has you covered with an awesome tutorial here. There’s a number of really slick interfaces offering users the ability to access REX with Scatter, Ledger, and other wallets. If you’re a user of the eos-voter wallet by Greymass, you can download the latest version here for full REX support.
Now that REX is live, we’ll be able to collect some good data on how it affects the network, both in terms of resource pricing and voting. EOS Authority has a great page for REX data and statistics, as does Bloks.io. If you want to hear me dive into REX dynamics from an investor perspective, check out my latest podcast with Maple Leaf Capital, where we discuss that and much more.
The latest release candidate for EOSIO adds a new feature that will allow applications to manage resources (CPU, NET, RAM, etc) for their users, on the back end, without those users having to know about those things at all. This, combined with REX and other solutions like Eclipse, is a game-changer for user experience. Developers can now access cheap resources through REX, stake those for their users, and completely abstract away the complexities of blockchain. I’m especially excited to see what this means for some of the gaming apps that are coming online this year.
eosio.saving Burned
When the EOS network launched, the code had 5% annual inflation configured. 1% of that inflation was used to pay BPs, and the other 4% went into a smart contract called eosio.saving. The idea behind that contract was that it could be used as an on-chain treasury to fund non-BP projects that could bring value to the ecosystem. The problem was that there was no clear plan in place for how to allocate those funds. A lot of people (myself included) were fearful that having so much EOS accumulate, without a plan to distribute it, could lead to conflicts.
After holding a widely-supported on-chain referendum on the subject, the elected BPs voted with a 15/21 BP approval vote to burn the EOS that had been accumulated in the saving fund thus far. The EOS was officially burned, but the faucet itself was not turned off. So the funds that had accumulated since network launch are gone, but EOS will continue to flow into the account from this point forward. There are a number of other proposals in the works— to reduce the faucet to a smaller amount, to use the funds to create a worker proposal system, to eliminate the fund entirely, any many other options.
This evolution will likely happen in steps, beginning with this burn. While I’m glad the burn happened, I do think that some form of on-chain treasury/worker system could be very useful in the future. For that reason, I’m in favor of keeping the faucet open (perhaps at a lower rate) and exploring ways to allocate the funds. In the meantime, I’d like to see a yearly or quarterly burn of unallocated funds. I’ll continue to dive into this issue as the conversation progresses.
Rewarding Voters
EOS New York put out a really interesting proposal to reward voters on EOS. It’s clear that voting imposes a cost on EOS holders— they have to diligence BPs or proxies, and then they have to actually spend time to cast their votes and update them regularly. Yet there’s no reward for voting, and the only incentive to do so is to make sure that good BPs are elected, which protects the value of the network.
This alone should be a good enough reason to vote for anyone with a major stake in EOS, but the reality is that it’s not. I’ve spoken to large EOS holders (even fund managers) who weren’t voting because they simply felt that it wasn’t worth their time. Contrast that with networks like Cosmos and Tezos, which offer rewards to stakers that incentivize active participation. That’s surely part of the reason why custodians like Coinbase are prioritizing support for those networks with their institutional clients.
One of the benefits of voting rewards is that they would reward active network participants at the expense of passive network participants. Given that the security model of the network depends on active management by token holders, this seems like a good thing. I’m fully in support of this proposal.
Dan’s New Stablecoin
Dan released a mind-bogglingly complex new proposal for a stablecoin design. When I wrote about stablecoins back at Multicoin Capital, I identified 3 primary types of stablecoins: fiat-backed, collateralized, and non-collateralized (aka seigniorage shares). Dan’s proposal mostly falls into the second category (collateralized on-chain), but it adds new elements that make it among the most novel designs I’ve seen in a while.
I tried to do a write up to explain how this design works. It took me several times reading the article, a few conversations with other people who had read it, and some time spent drawing out diagrams for me to really grasp how it works. Frankly, the write-up I had didn’t do it justice, as it’s a lot better explained visually. I might try to put together an article with some graphics, or maybe EOS Weekly will beat me to the punch. That said, I highly recommend that anyone who is interested in stablecoins take a look at this and give it a read-through.
Interestingly, Dan mentioned on Telegram that Block.one would not be building this project themselves. Dan put a little bit of example code on Github, but he says that he’s leaving it up to the community to actually build something using this design. It will be interesting to see who steps up to the plate.
B1June
Block.one continues to tease their June event, but they’ve managed to remain extremely tight-lipped with regards to actual details. If I had to guess, I think we’ll see the debut of their long-hyped social network project (potentially called MEOS), and we’ll likely also figure out the strategic reasons for the event taking place in Washington, DC.
I’ll be in DC for the event. If you’re there, make sure to let me know!
Cool Stuff
Use dfuse to Easily Find Your Transactions
dGoods v1.0 — Public Beta Release
Watching and Listening
EOS Voter Podcast - Rick Schlesinger of EOS New York
EOS Voter Podcast - The Maple Leaf Capital Interview
EOS Weekly - Token Contract Security Risks
dfuse Video Series for Developers
Upcoming Events
B1 June - June 1, 2019 (Washington, DC)
EOS BP Summit at Tulip Conference - June 6, 2019 (San Francisco)
Support This Newsletter
If you want to support this newsletter, you can do so in two ways: cast a vote for teamgreymass, or send us a donation to eosvoter.x
Your support is much appreciated!