EOS Dispute Resolution & Arbitration Working Group — Recap Sept 3–7 & Plans for Sept 10–14 & ECAF Update
Community Call Roundup
This week, we hosted a number of expert community calls. Their summaries are as follows:
- Community Call with Moti Tabulo, Head of ECAF (Mandarin/English)
Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2wLQSitSBw
- Moti is a tech entrepreneur
- He clarified that dApps on EOS can employ their own dispute resolution system, but that ECAF provides a default for those who did not otherwise choose a DR method themselves.
- He envisions various dispute resolution bodies like ECAF — EMAC is one. They may vary by geography or special interest, but you may end up with many.
- There isnt a framework at the moment that delegates which dispute resolution body would handle which dispute if there are cross-border transactions.
2. Community Call with Jongsoo (Jay) Yoon — Attorney, Internet Dispute Resolution Expert & Board Member of Creative Commons (Korean/English)
Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iu8_cBl5WzI
- Must consider efficiency of arbitration process. Thinks scaling will be biggest issue.
- Does not believe there is difference in cultural sensitivities for dispute resolution, not difficult to find tools to solve common issues
- Arbitration is not often used in Korea — its a highly specialized tool of alternative dispute resolution (ADR). Needs additional forums for specialized issues. The question of forum will be a big issue.
3. Community Call with Colin Rule— Former VP Dispute Resolution, Ebay/Paypal and ODR expert (English)
Listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AWXaZt5afG4
- Colin is a proponent of having dispute resolution as a base layer because it offers a powerful competitive differentiator. When you undermine trust, people will find other alternatives.
- ‘Buyer beware’ isn’t good enough. 20 years it was already predicted that ‘the power of technology to generate new disputes is dwarfed by the power of technology to resolve disputes.’ Healthy marketplaces have 1–3% of transactions that result in a dispute.
- On ‘code is law’: Yes, code is law, until it isn’t. You still need redress. It’s not good enough to say ‘if the code is good enough we wont need dispute resolution”
- A saying in dispute resolution, “We fit the forum to the fuss.”
- E-commerce platforms learned a lot about ODR in the early internet days, and blockchain should learn from those lessons.
- Should consider having a third party consult/build the infrastructure to avoid waste of resources, address the problem more quickly, and piggyback off expertise that is totally devoted to this problem.
- On building an ODR platform: you don’t build it and you’re done — you need to maintain it.
- Trying to pay the problem away leads to perverse behavior and doesn’t resolve the dispute. People start engage in riskier transactions, scams, and people are still indignant about bad actors that exist on the platform.
- There are many models of fee-structuring and who-pays-for-the-dispute.
- Need to think about power imbalances.
- A fair dispute resolution system rewards good merchants.
- Foundational question for EOS: What do you want to be? Trust can be a powerful differentiator for EOS.
ECAF Stats Report
ECAF reports the following statistics for filed disputes:
Full report available here.
At this time, ECAF has 6 volunteer arbitrators, and seeks more. You must go through a nomination process to become an arbitrator.
Next week
Continuing on our community calls with experts, the Working Group is organizing the following calls:
- Join Community Call with Amy Wan (Chair of EOS Alliance Dispute Resolution and Arbitration Working Group; Attorney; Founder of Sagewise) and EMAC (English): Monday 1400 UTC. Zoom link: https://zoom.us/j/384310165
- Community Call with Dr. Andy (Anyu) Lee, ODR in China Expert (TBD)
- Community Call with EMAC representative (TBD)
