LONDON (Bywire News) - The EOS network is ready to sit as its own product lead, according to Yves La Rose, as he took to Twitter, to shed more light on why negotiations with B1 broke down and what happens next.
As you’ll see from our exclusive interview with La Rose, discussions about the future of EOS and the role of B1 have been ramping up for some time. These culminated in a breakdown of negotiations with the block producers voting for what many perceived as the nuclear option of preventing the vesting of tokens to B1.
At genesis, B1 had allocated 100m EOS to itself to be vested over a period of ten years. As things stand approximately 67m EOS of that remains.
This became a focal point of disagreement between the community and B1, as anger grew about what many token holders viewed as B1’s failure to follow through on the commitments it made in the $4bn ICO.
To the community, these were payments made on the condition that B1 provided support and maintenance for the blockchain. With B1’s contributions to EOS drying up, they believed they had the right to stop the payments and fork away from B1. The 21 leading block producers voted to stop this vesting unless B1 reached an agreement before December 7th. That agreement never came with the producers following through with their threat.
La Rose is now going public with what exactly it was the block producers wanted and why they decided to walk away. In a Twitter thread, he wrote, “The EOS Network, through its governing consensus mechanism was open to swapping the #EOSIO IP in exchange for 35m EOS. The network didn’t particularly want or value that IP highly, but it was essentially the only thing that was concretely being offered. The rest was aspirational."
He added that “the network was originally asking for an external capital injection in exchange for the 67M vesting EOS so as to remove vesting code completely, as this has been at the core of the failed expectations from the start. No more vesting, no more expectations. Better alignment.”
Stopping the vesting was seen as a last resort option – one which was even described in some quarters as representing ‘mutually assured destruction’ – due to all the uncertainty which would come with it. Such a move would raise questions about legal action, contracts and media sentiment. All those unknowns, he said, made the IP more attractive despite the community not particularly valuing it.
However, in a move designed to reassure the network, he now says most of those unknowns have become known. Moreover, striking out away from B1 brings with it a number of benefits. As things stand, he says, the EOS community does not own its own codebase repo or the IP of its own product base. These are held by private entities with their own shareholders to please. Highlighting the example of Matic/Polygon he claims, ‘a rebrand is relatively simple and a means to start fresh.’
It will also hammer home the message that EOS is not B1. To many B1 had become a weight that was doing more harm than good for the EOS network. Many of the other EOSIO iterations had been working to distance themselves from the brand. Starting fresh, he says, helps to bring them back to the table.
Most of all, regardless of what people might think about the past, he is keen to look forward.
“We don't have the luxury to turn in circles or slow down and attempt to go back,” he says. “There is so much work being done by tremendous individuals and teams, this should be the focus. The EOS community now sits as its own product lead.”
(Written by Tom Cropper, edited by Klaudia Fior)