EOS Alliance | Constitution Referendum Series | Summary | Week 3

EOS Nation
Sep 4, 2018 · 8 min read
Image courtesy of EOS Alliance

Recap of the Alliance open calls from Week 3, as interpreted by Martin Breuer (EOS Nation, Regional Director)

On Monday, September 3rd, 2018 1 pm UTC it was time to kick off the 3rd week of the Constitution Referendum Series of the EOS Alliance.

This week there will be a total of 3 calls at different times and with a focus on different language groups.

Call #1: Chinese & English

Monday, September 3 at 13:00 UTC.

Call #2: English

Tuesday, September 4 at 23:45 UTC / 7:45pm EST.

Call #3: Korean & English

Wednesday, September 5 at 12:00 UTC.


I joined Call #1 which I’m gonna summarize in this article.

The meeting was hosted by Thomas Cox and had a total of 27 participants.

After a short welcoming phase and an introduction of the general structure of the program, Thomas Cox introduced the guidelines for this weeks series.

After the calls in Week #2 were focussing more on the general role of a constitution, the calls in Week #3 are going to look at single articles in details.

Each breakout group was assigned to one article and the task was to examine the core beliefs and design principles of the article.

Also, whether or not participants agree or disagree with those.

Furthermore, participants were encouraged to find real-life examples and potential scenarios in which the article would come to use.

Tasks for the breakout room you can find here (Example for article 1)

In the following, I will summarize the findings of the breakout groups.


Group 1

Article I — No Initiation of Violence

“Members shall not initiate violence or the threat of violence against another Member. Lawful prosecution of crimes with the goal of preserving life, liberty and property does not constitute initiation of violence.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • A more exact definition of violence would be needed
  • Special concerns were mentioned about off chain violence (for example threats with gun violence) How to address that?
  • Besides, the group would like to see more focus on hackers i.e. stolen funds. This aspect should be clearly mentioned in the article

Group 2

Article II — No Perjury

“Members shall be liable for losses caused by false or misleading attestations and shall forfeit any profit gained thereby.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • While it’s easier to find evidence for any sort of perjury that happened “on chain” it would be quite hard to get proof for similar actions “off chain”
  • What are the means and methods to prevent users from getting harmed by false statements on- and/or off chain

Group 3

Article III — Rights

“The Members grant the right of contract and of private property to each other, therefore no property shall change hands except with the consent of the owner, by a valid Arbitrator’s order, or via community referendum. This Constitution creates no positive rights for or between any Members.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • The article should clearer defined on how people are empowered with their keys
  • How can the users rights be enforced in the case of theft or scam
  • Even if the article is meant to protect, it should also remind users of their responsibilities to keep their keys safe and read the specific user agreements carefully when interacting with smart contracts before they sign any transactions

Group 4

Article IV — No Vote Buying

“No Member shall offer nor accept anything of value in exchange for a vote of any type, nor shall any Member unduly influence the vote of another.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • Community members common intend should be thinking of EOS in longer terms
  • Vote-buying would only lead to a short-term gains
  • How can we execute such article and avoid the collusion of whales ?
  • How can information about collusion be disclosed?

Group 5

Article V — No Fiduciary

“No Member nor EOS token holder shall have fiduciary responsibility to support the value of the EOS token. The Members do not authorize anyone to hold assets, borrow, nor contract on behalf of EOS token holders collectively. This blockchain has no owners, managers or fiduciaries; therefore, no Member shall have beneficial interest in more than 10% of the EOS token supply.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • Originally the article was introduced (after legal advice) to prevent EOS from being classified a security and therefore stay in the constitution.
  • However, it was found almost impossible, due to the possibility of multiple or hidden wallets, to know how much one party actually owns, so enforcement would be quite hard.
  • Regardless of such difficulties, the group acknowledges efforts of i.e. the EOS Watchdogs to track ownership and transactions

Larry (EOS Cannon) then added that tracking accounts still doesn’t prevent collusion of different groups.

Shen Wang (EOS Pacific) , a former lawyer in a Wall Street Law firm, then suggested adding the word “outstanding”, which would result in “ … more than 10% of the outstanding EOS token supply.”

Tom mentioned that at the time of writing this article, it was technically not possible to have outstanding tokens. But now this is different so it should be added as Shen Wang suggested.

Group 6

Article VI — Restitution

“Each Member agrees that penalties for breach of contract may include, but are not limited to, fines, loss of account, and other restitution.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • Several real-life examples were found as for example a landlord that breaches the contract or purchasing 2nd hand goods without prior and thorough examination of the sold object.
  • In all these cases restitution was introduced for resolving disputes, more or less successful.
  • The group suggests informing everyone joining the system that restitution is in place and that it will be enforced
  • Furthermore, if community members agree on a contract, the restitution mechanisms should be defined and agreed upon beforehand.

After the presentation of Group 6, Shen Wang chimed in and suggested to exchange the term “Restitution” with the more accurate term “Punitive Damage”. The concept of Restitution would mean that in case of unjust enrichment the guilty person would simply need to return the benefits. Article VI though is clearly mentioning penalties, which potentially could exceed the value of the benefits. He also suggested that at the end of the article we should lose the word “Restitution” completely.

Group 7

Article VII — Open Source

“Each Member who makes available a smart contract on this blockchain shall be a Developer. Each Developer shall offer their smart contracts via a free and open source license, and each smart contract shall be documented with a Ricardian Contract stating the intent of all parties and naming the Arbitration Forum that will resolve disputes arising from that contract.”

Their findings, questions & suggestions were:

  • Each of the 4 group members accepts the concept of open source.
  • They find it to be a critically important concept of the Blockchain Community to incentivize participants.
  • Introducing Open Source to members new to the concept would show how open the EOS Community is.
  • The term “…makes available…” should be exchanged with “distributes”
  • The term “…shall offer …” should be exchanged with “publicize”
  • The term “publicized” should be also added in the following, which would result in “…and each smart contract publicized shall be documented….”

After all the break-out room reports were done the participants were given 2 minutes to type in the chat suggestions on how to improve the meetings in the future.

16:35:17 From [F][CN]D.ONE@GEOS : 时间可以短一些

16:35:26 From [CN/ENG]Jialin Li — USA : time control

16:36:00 From [F] [EN/CN] Martin Breuer — EOS Nation : Agreed ,1 minute before closing is a bit short

16:36:01 From [CN/EN]Siqi Yao-ECAF/EMAC : Set a limit to the time every group can speak?

16:36:09 From [CN][EN]larry ma-CHN : one thing to make it better — references for discussion topics

16:36:27 From [Host] Thomas — USA : Make the process better: clearer preparation and framing up of what the context is

16:36:33 From (F)(ENG) Paco Cabanillas(Spain)-EOSMediterranean : More time

That being done the participants were asked to type things they found especially positive during this call.

16:36:55 From [F][CN][EN/CN]Weifeng Jiang : Group discussion is very good

16:36:58 From CN/EN-EMAC-Achilles [F]CN : topis good

16:37:03 From CN/EN-EMAC-Achilles [F]CN : topics

16:37:03 From Myra F EOS Alliance China Mandarin : Today call is great. We have lawyers inside the group can give professionals lawyers. Help us understand more of the constitution

16:37:04 From [Host] Thomas — USA : I greatly valued the seriousness and the focus that people brought to this work

16:37:07 From [F] [ENG] Kevin Wilcox : Enjoyed hearing everyone share similar concerns

16:37:22 From (F)(ENG) Paco Cabanillas(Spain)-EOSMediterranean : Finally having community debating and discussing what will be our constitution

16:37:24 From [F] [EN/CN] Martin Breuer — EOS Nation : assigned articles are good… no cherry picking

16:37:35 From [CN/EN]Siqi Yao-ECAF/EMAC : Professional perspective from a lawyer is great.

16:37:38 From Myra F EOS Alliance China Mandarin : I never understood the English before. The Mandarin call really help me understand better

16:37:56 From [F] [EN/CN] Martin Breuer — EOS Nation : Shen wang was a great source of input

16:38:01 From CN-Yi Wong-EosStore : group discussion learn more legal terminology.

As you can read many participants found Shan Wang’s (professional legal background) contributions especially helpful and Thomas Cox mentioned that he will try to get him involved in further in-depth discussions to improve the current constitution proposals.

Shen Wang felt honored. :)


Next up was the call for action to prepare for the coming calls.

In closing, I want to personally thank all participants for all of their input.

Being on these calls I’m learning a lot not just about EOS but also about the people involved.

I think with the referendum tool being almost finished we’ll have vivid discussions ahead.

If you want to become a facilitator watch the video of the recent training (HERE)

If you would just like to join the daily chat discussions on telegram go (HERE)

Or on WeChat add Myra: dandan891230

See you on the call next week.


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EOS Nation

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Top 21 Block Producer on the EOS Mainnet blockchain. eosnation.io

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