April EOS BP Meeting Recap

Introduction

The monthly Block Producer (BP) meetings are meant to establish regular communications between the top 30 EOS BPs and the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) to foster an open dialogue between network operators and custodians in support of the mutual development of the EOS ecosystem.

Meeting Overview

The meeting began at 1:00 UTC on April 12th, 2023. Twenty-three BPs attended the call, and a total of twenty-seven people participated in the discussions, which ran for one hour. The Interprefy tool was used in the call for synchronous translation to facilitate the free flow of information across multiple languages in real-time. 

ENF Communications Manager Beatrice Wang facilitated the meeting beginning with greetings to those in attendance, followed by an open call for questions throughout, an outline of the meeting format, and overview of the agenda.

Leap v4.0 rc3

ENF Founder and CEO Yves La Rose began by reiterating that development of the underlying EOS codebase, Antelope Leap, follows a Northern hemisphere Spring and Fall release cadence.

Spring Release (April-May) Spring releases will not involve consensus upgrades and so nodes may upgrade in their own time—ideally within one or two months of the release. Fall Release (September-October) Fall releases are intended to include consensus upgrades (i.e. hard forks). All nodes must upgrade in time before the activation of the consensus upgrade by the BPs, otherwise old nodes will not be able to continue syncing with the network. Either Spring or Fall releases can be a major version release of Leap. A major version release may have breaking changes in the Leap software.

Antelope Leap v4.0 focuses on optimizing node performance, improving block propagation, scheduling future snapshots, adding read-only transactions, and improving performance of EVM related functions.

Antelope IBC

On the topic of network upgrades, the recent upgrade by Antelope Coalition member blockchain, WAX, to Antelope Leap 3.1. was highlighted as this upgrade brings WAX into code compatibility with EOS along with Antelope Coalition chains UX, and Telos. Yves recalled the IBC account creation MSIG that was signed by EOS BPs two months ago, prior to WAX’s upgrade to Leap, and requested that BPs approve a new account creation MSIG to enable WAX and EOS to activate Inter-Blockchain Communication.

Hong Kong Update

Yves traveled to Hong Kong for the Web3 Festival and held meetings with many stakeholders in the region during the 9-day trip. Working out of the ENF’s Hong Kong office, Yves attended over 20 events.

Foresight 2023 Hong Kong Web3 Summit

Attending the Foresight 2023 Hong Kong Web3 Summit, Yves spoke on the main stage about discovering the next frontier for permissionless blockchains.

New World Development Company Limited

A meeting with New World Development Company Limited was held to discuss the potential of EOS integrating into New World Development’s suite of services, in particular their HK Dollars and green storefronts.

Invest HK

ENF Board Member, and member of EOS Asia—Dafeng Guo, as well as ENF PMO Phoumin Phieu of the ENF HK Office, along with Yves, met with InvestHK to determine how EOS can play a key role in the  future of Web3 development in Hong Kong.

“InvestHK’s vision is to strengthen Hong Kong’s status as the leading international business location in Asia. Our mission is to attract and retain foreign direct investment which is of strategic importance to the economic development of Hong Kong.”

InvestHK Website 

The reopening of China to Web3 through the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is a coordinated and strategic approach from all levels of government, and the ENF anticipates taking advantage of this opportunity. 

Cyberport

InvestHK’s Cyberport initiative is a hub for digital technology creating a new economic driver for Hong Kong. With investment and subsidies for Web3 businesses being made available through Cyberport, several key areas have been identified where the ENF may leverage programs to the benefit of EOS stakeholders. Such programs would include areas of employment, research, and land use subsidies for businesses, and non-profits such as the ENF developing operations in Hong Kong. The ENF will also help coordinate resources for others in the EOS ecosystem looking to establish themselves in Hong Kong.

Yves expressed his gratitude for being able to meet with EOS community members while in Hong Kong, as well as some of the BPs, Gracie Lau, representatives of DefiBox, the ENF Hong Kong team, and others in the EOS ecosystem.

EVM

On the eve of the BP call, the EOS EVM Mainnet Beta Launch was still in the works. The EVM has since launched, and while there is still much yet to accomplish before EOS EVM will be a fully fledged ecosystem, the launch has been a success! ENF engineers will continue working to develop new features.

New Partnership

It was revealed that there would soon be news of a strategic partnership that would be bringing external capital into the EOS ecosystem. Those details have since emerged with the ENF announcing a $60m+ strategic partnership with DWF Labs. This partnership will act as a strong signal that can open up additional deal flow and investment opportunities within the EOS ecosystem.

Upcoming Events

Yves will continue traveling to Asia a good deal this year, including for Korean Blockchain Week, and to Singapore for Token2049.

ENF CCO Zack Gall mentioned that EOS will also have a presence at Consensus in Austin, TX and is going to be hosting a side event along with representation from Telos, Blockchain Game Alliance, Upland, Helika.  Zack extended the invitation for others to join if they are able.

Q&A

Q. We are seeing a lot of new projects applying for grants. How can we improve the efficiency of the grants because otherwise it will discourage investors.

A. Improvements to efficiency can be made. Primarily additional resources may need to be put into the administrative needs of the program insofar as grant reviews go, which means adding engineers that are capable of making this kind of reviews.  

Additional efforts can be made in communicating what the ENF is looking for and setting expectations among potential applicants. The ENF encourages projects seeking funding to seek smaller initial grant amounts and build a track record. The grant framework is not meant for indefinite, ongoing funding, and projects should be looking to advance towards the ENV as that becomes operational.Q. About the Hong Kong Trip and also Paris, we’re seeing great progress on the business front, from the user side of things, do we have any new projects that can bring in new users to the EVM, or EOS native?

A. Yes, with the EVM launching, we’re going to have some projects launching in tandem, and we’re also talking with projects that are going to be porting over to EOS. Price action drives users, which drives success of projects, which attracts more users. Building more strategic partnerships, improving the user onboarding, documentation, and more wallets will satisfy the preconditions for more users to come to EOS. The ENF is striving towards blockchain made easy. 

From meetings with government officials in Hong Kong the ENF believes a big part of who will be successful in the region is whoever takes advantage of the aforementioned subsidies for staff, offices, research, and so forth. BPs and other business entities looking to strengthen their position in Hong Kong should reach out and learn how to get involved.

Block Producer Attendee List

Newdex GenerEOS EOSeoul OKEx Pool EOS Nation EOSflytoMARS big.one starteosiobp Blockpool EOSIO.SG hashfin Defibox BP eosinfstones EOSLaoMao EOSUSA EOS Asia eoslambdacom EOSphere EOS WIKI moreisfuture Greymass slowmistiobp EOS Titan

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