In EOS, there are “two forces” that are the most critical elements of the entire system: project parties and witnesses. Many people think EOS is “weird” because of the relationship between the project owner and the witness. The EOS project is led by BlockOne, a company founded by BlockOne’s CHIEF Technology Officer (CTO) Daniel Larimer, better known as BM (ByteMaster). BlockOne has repeatedly stated that it only develops EOS software and makes it freely available to anyone who wants to use it, and that it is not responsible for any EOS network startup. More difficult for investors to accept is BlockOne’s public statement that its CROWDfunded EOS tokens may not have any value or utility in the future, and that BlockOne is not responsible for the value of EOS tokens, which makes BlockOne not “credible” to many.

In fact, BlockOne’s announcement is intentional. As we all know, crowdfunding is strictly regulated in the United States. Once the tokens distributed by crowdfunding are defined by the US government as shares or securities of the company, they will be immediately defined as illegal fund-raising. Bitcoin is legally traded in the United States because it is defined as an asset, not a share. In order for EOS tokens to be defined as assets, BlockOne had to declare that it was not responsible for EOS tokens, nor for launching the actual EOS system.

BlockOne’s positioning gives more responsibilities and missions to EOS system witnesses. The role of EOS system witnesses can be understood from the following points:

1. Hardware resources

Any computer system is composed of software and hardware. BlockOne company provides software, while the hardware is provided by witnesses. Both parties perform their respective duties to form a complete computer system.

2. Community building

It is not practical for BlockOne to manage and build such a large community, while witnesses are distributed in eligible countries around the world to get to know local EOS token holders. While the witnesses are campaigning locally to attract votes, they are also building a local EOS community. Together, all the witness communities create the largest blockchain community in the world.

3. Community governance

In terms of community governance, the witness is the equivalent of a parliament, with each witness elected by local voters, much like a representative democracy in the West. The decision passed by a majority of the witnesses (two-thirds) represents the opinion of the majority of voters (EOS token holders). The Witness organization is the supreme authority of EOS. However, BlockOne officials can also balance witnesses, because BlockOne officials, especially BM itself, have great influence among EOS token holders and can sway voters’ votes. Moreover, BlockOne officials and BM themselves also hold a large number of EOS tokens. They can directly vote to influence the witness election, and both sides restrict each other.

4. Decentralization

From the perspective of the decentralization mechanism of EOS system, witness bears the mission of system decentralization. BlockOne companies are “centralised” and can in theory be heavily controlled. EOS Witnesses are scattered around the world, running and maintaining the EOS system, keeping the system ledger together, and maintaining the EOS community everywhere. Theoretically, the EOS system will not crash as long as there is one last witness left, and can be rejoined until the other witnesses recover. Dozens of witnesses + backup witnesses ensure a highly decentralized EOS system. It also ensures the redundancy and stability of the system.

5. Applied ecology

The core of a decentralized smart contract system is the development of smart contract (Dapp) itself. A smart contract system without lots of good DApps is like iOS without big third-party apps, the whole system is worthless. BlockOne’s official efforts are mainly focused on the development of the system, so the cultivation of Dapp development ecology requires, on the one hand, the establishment of funds by BlockOne to motivate Dapp development teams, and on the other hand, witnesses. The same is true of the CURRENT DEVELOPMENT of EOS. Many witnesses have launched their own DApp development plans, working with BlockOne’s foundation to foster the EOS developer ecosystem.

conclusion

Witnesses are rewarded for their contributions to the system. At present, the reward of witnesses is divided into block reward and vote reward, the former according to the number of blocks, the latter according to the vote at the election. The current EOS system inflation is 5% per year, and one-fifth of this is a witness reward. Based on a total of 1 billion tokens, 10 million tokens were used for witness awards in the first year. At $15 a unit, that works out to $150 million. This scale of rewards gives witnesses the resources to fund their own hardware expenses and continue to grow the EOS community.

BlockOne, EOS Witnesses, and EOS token holders are unique in the blockchain world, as they balance, support, and penetrate each other.

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