With Nearly $200 Million on the Line, EOS Is Building A Voting System

There's an account on the EOS blockchain with $35 million worth of tokens in it that no one can touch - and its balance is growing constantly.

At the end of EOS' first 12 months as a live blockchain, this account will be worth close to $192 million, assuming the recent EOS market price of $4.79.

The EOS blockchain network was incomplete when it went live in June, with much of the functionality stipulated in the network's "Constitution" and white paper remaining unbuilt.

A key aspect of the EOS protocol was, according to the white paper, "a defined governance process" which avoided other blockchains' "Ad hoc, informal, and often controversial governance processes that result in unpredictable outcomes."

While the white paper doesn't mention referendum voting, the EOS constitution explicitly requires the process for making decisions that affect the entire network, like setting up a system to spend the eosio.

At the same time, a group known as the EOS Core WPS Working Group is developing the "Worker proposal system" or WPS, a mechanism described in the EOS white paper that would be used to submit proposals and allow token holders to vote on whether to fund them using tokens from the eosio.

According to Orchid Kim, a community builder at the block producer candidate EOSYS and a member of the working group, creating the referendum voting mechanism and allocating the savings to future projects is the only way "For EOS to live up to its expectations."

Some community members disagree with Kim arguing that EOS should ditch the WPS and the token inflation that funds it.

Because the system is based on the one-token-one-vote approach, many of those both inside and outside the EOS community see accounts with large numbers of tokens as determining the outcomes of votes.

Much like the debate around the WPS, there remains a continued debate around the EOS constitution, which is currently in "Interim" status because it has not been ratified through a referendum.