LONDON (Bywire News) - Since EOS broke away from B1 two men have been front and centre of its development: Yves La Rose with the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) and Dan Larimer, founder of ClarionOS and architect of EOSIO. Whatever happens to EOS over the next 12 months, these two men will have had a big hand in making it happen. So, when they sat down with ENF Communications Director Zack Gall on the Everything EOS YouTube Channel last night, people were understandably taking notice.
The working relationship
Top of the agenda was how these two big dogs are working together. To some, it can seem as if EOS has two separate and at times competing heads. On the one hand, there’s Yves La Rose with the ENF and on the other, there is Dan Larimer with Eden 2.0 and the new white paper.
For La Rose, the relationship appears obvious. They are both, he says, working together to a certain extent and supporting the ecosystem. They do have overlap but they are different. While the ENF represents the token holders working on chain-wide solutions, Dan Larimer is one of those token holders working on his own applications, with his team work on designing and building Mandel. All of which are happening at the same time.
He said, “We’re in a new era where you can have multiple teams working on improving EOS."
“It’s the first time we’re in this position. Prior to this, everything was being filtered through B1. We now have the opportunity to fund multiple start-ups at the same time and having them all work on different competing ideas and see which one will ultimately win and bring everyone else up.”
This is, he says a “new era that we have not been [seen] before, and there will be stepping on toes and there will be some tensions because we’ve never been here before. We’re figuring out the process of what that will look like in real-time.”
From Larimer’s perspective, he is, as ever, working on ‘security, life, liberty and justice for all,’ as set out in his book 'More Equal Animals'. He is trying to crack the question of decentralised governance and how you can reach a consensus among a large group of people in a way that doesn’t result in a de-facto dictatorship around the incumbents – whether that’s the exchanges, API nodes or anything else.
“I want a user experience for my own platform built on top of EOS which is seamless and people enjoy which is still decentralised,” he says. “I’m working with the ENF and Yves to identify rough points on the EOS network which are preventing me from delivering that seamless user experience and my belief is it’s also preventing other applications from delivering the same seamless user experience.”
Much of ClarionOS’ focus right now is creating Mandel which he describes as the ‘future of EOSIO’ and is being funded by the ENF. They are building and releasing that for the community. His company is working on contracts like this as well as their original business of creating a viral social media platform in which everyone can participate.
The question he’s often facing, though, is why he’s not focusing on the things certain people would like him to work on. It’s a trend that Zack Gall says he has seen in the comments on blog posts.
“Dan posted one of his blogs and there’s all this feedback with people asking why you aren’t working on EVM,” he says. “EVM is being worked on right now. EOS Argentina is contracted to build it. It will be released sometime before summer. Dan is not EOS. There is a lot of work being done in parallel with Dan.”
The best example of this is the six working groups currently in development that are focusing on core issues, crucial to the development of EOS such as APIs, recovery, auditing and, of course, the EVM. It’s a world away from the environment in which B1 worked in a silo with the community not knowing what was happening. Now, everything is out there in the open. From the outside, it can look chaotic and there are, as La Rose acknowledges, plenty of ‘growing pains’. However, this is a process that he believes will ultimately move the network forward.
“It’s happening in real-time it’s happening right now,” he explains.
“That is the process. There are going to be growing pains because we’ve never been here. What we have to figure out is how do we have multiple teams working on multiple things at the same time?”
It’s messy, and difficult to do in parallel and there will be tensions with people working on similar things proposing competing ideas.
“The alternative is waiting for somebody else to pick up the slack and one entity doing everything,” he says. “We’ve been there with B1. It does not work.”
What they choose is an environment of multiple people innovating to move them forward more quickly than before. With that speed, they lose efficiency and create tensions between teams. In this world, some people have more influence than others, but it doesn’t mean their proposals will be applied unilaterally. They are all open to feedback and will all live and die on the sentiment of the community. When people like Dan Larimer, make a proposal, people sit up and take notice, but even then the network will decide whether to adopt proposals or not.
“I’m trying to eat my own dog food. I’m building a business and it’s a for-profit business. I’m trying to build a successful killer app to solve real-world problems and uses EOS network as the best tool for doing the job,” says Larimer. “If it’s no longer the best tool, then I have to consider what’s best for the business to accomplish the ultimate business goals. I’m not the only business which is having to make these decisions.”
In other words, if EOS can’t do the job, and another EOSIO derivative can, people will move there.
“We need lots of ideas and see where people follow,” he adds. “If others have better ideas than me I’m happy to adopt it. If there’s another community standard that’s getting traction that works I’m happy to adopt it. I also can’t wait for two years for a community of people to reach consensus to deploy something. That’s not sustainable.”
Getting and giving feedback
Much of the frustration which exists, La Rose suggests, revolves around feedback processes. How can people deliver their feedback and what impact will it have?
For Larimer, feedback is crucial in everything he does. It starts with kicking ideas around in private with his team. Once beyond that stage, he writes a blog post which he uses to organise his ideas.
Because of who he is, these blog posts generate plenty of feedback all of which he obsessively reads, using that feedback to adjust, refine or in some cases completely change his proposals. This is a democratic process in which ideas are floated and can be changed. There is no single head of the network, but many people working on many different things. It can create problems and there will be friction between entities, but this is the way forward for EOS.
There is, then, a misunderstanding that comes from the way in which EOS worked under B1. Back then, it was a top-down process with the community being dictated to. As a result, the community often views leading figures such as La Rose or Larimer in the same light. They are EOS, what they say goes.
The truth is they are part of a wider constellation which includes the ENF, ClarionOS, Helios, Pomelo, the working groups and countless other developers who are working to make EOS better. It’s a process of chaos and creation that is transforming the EOS landscape. While it can be messy, and it can create tensions, developments are happening now which will make EOS better, stronger, more efficient and more competitive.
(Written by Tom Cropper, edited by Klaudia Fior)