The interesting case of EIDOS and the potential threat of “Waste Tokens” for DPOS Blockchains.
It’s clear by now that EIDOS has become to EOS what CryptoKitties represented for Ethereum minus the cute kittens. Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the potentially VERY Ugly that we can learn from this experience.
EOS was until recently like living in Blockchain Lala-land. Free transactions, super-fast operations, enough to play on-chain games with, and all of this done with 1–2 EOS worth of staked resources. All of a sudden, things changed, and we began to understand that the network resources can become truly scarce. Although I did try to find the positive side of this, this a hard blow for great DAPP developers out there than can’t afford to pay for their users’ CPU and are amazing products that users ACTUALLY use. Sense, Karma, Emanate, the PixEOS games, just to name a few… All stalled due to a smart-contract that isn’t even that smart…
EIDOS — “Enumivo Is Dead, Oh Shit!” or “Everyone Is Denied Of Service”?
From their website: https://enumivo.org/, it seems they named the token as the first, but judging by its effect on the EOS Network, I would argue this stands for the latter.
In any case, We GET IT!
Enumivo was a project that obviously failed, and now the guy who created this (who seems to want to remain anonymous) wants to go “Out with a Bang”. I would definitely say that EIDOS succeeded in creating a BANG for the Mainnet, and now it’s time to fire back.
The EIDOS “Mining” mechanism
Notice that the “” in “Mining” are there for a reason. EIDOS is not really mined, but is issued to any EOS user who sends any amount of EOS to the EIDOS smart-contract, along with the same amount of EOS that the user sent. Essentially giving the users tokens for spending their CPU on performing as many transactions as possible.
The term “Waste-Token” is also not a coincidence since the EIDOS token’s current utility is NOTHING but motivating users to WASTE the EOS Mainnet’s CPU.
The true irony is that while dedicated teams have spent months of full-time dedication to creating wonderful projects on EOS. the EIDOS contract is most likely a minor modification to the eosio.token contract. Probably even a single coding + deployment session, a quick edit to the website, and voila!
The Good
Congratulations Enumivo! you have successfully exposed a potentially major threat to the network, as we can see by the results of this CPU crisis.
This is a great way to show the community of what can potentially happen if a smart developers device a way to game the resource mechanism of EOS. Although you could have also deployed EIDOS on the Testnet and therefore make this a huge warning instead of a real crisis. Still, credit is due for pointing out where we need to improve, and the issues we need to address if a solution is to be found quickly.
I firmly believe that the EOS community will find a way to protect the network from such attacks, and eventually, this will be a very valuable lesson.
The Bad
As I mentioned before, Enumivo could’ve deployed EIDOS on the Jungle Testnet. Their decision to deploy EIDOS onto the EOS Mainnet shows that there are clear intentions to profit from this “project”. Enumivo holds 20% of the supply of EIDOS, making it their primary objective to raise EIDOS’s value.
Their incentive for having EIDOS grow in valuation might be larger than their desire to see the EOS Mainnet thrive and succeed, but “who knows?”.
This is not going away soon. Not only EIDOS is not going away, but CLONES are about to start popping up all around. Make no mistake about this, EIDOS might be the first, but this is too much of an easy-play for people who want to make a quick buck NOT to copy, paste, and deploy.
The Ugly, and the VERY Ugly…
Let’s think of EIDOS as a potential attack vector for the EOS Network. Meaning, let’s see if someone can harm the network through the use or purchase of this token.
Assuming I was a very large Crypto WHALE (hopefully one day) and I had incentives to make EOS value go down, especially considering EOS is a leading Blockchain Platform, the only thing I would need to do is BUY a TON of EIDOS, making it more and more attractive for users to “Mine” this token instead of performing other operations in the network. The premise is quite simple: “If I make EIDOS valuable enough, I can grind the EOS Network to a halt”.
If you think that $2.5B (current Marketcap of EOS at the time of writing) is a LOT of money for organized whales, powerful VCs, Hedge-funds, and even single-handed Crypto-Billionaires (I won’t mention any names), you are not aware of the forces that are in play in the financial sector and the Blockchain space.
This could also potentially happen to Any DPOS Chain, like TRON or other EOS Sister-chains like TELOS, WORBLI, WAX, etc. the VERY UGLY situation that this could potentially lead to is a “Resource War” between Blockchains, fueled by this type of Waste-Tokens.
It seems that we CAN see the EIDOS token as a potential attack vector to EOS, and given that this vector can actually be exploited, our only choice then is to DEFEND EOS.
“A system that cannot fight-off malicious organisms and disease is destined to die”
Not long ago, Tal Muskal from LiquidApps, who I greatly admire, proposed an interesting “ImmunityToken” solution as a potential defense against EIDOS. This token would potentially “fight-off” the EIDOS effect by rewarding the users with this token in proportion to their “Unused” or “Available” CPU. If this token receives a higher valuation than EIDOS, then it will be more convenient to get this token and “Save” the resources, instead of wasting CPU trying to get more EIDOS. But what happens when new Waste-Tokens come along? Will this “Immunity Token” be valuable enough to fight against a potentially growing trend?
Governance as a potential line of Defense
A potential line of defense against Waste-Tokens could potentially be built by the EOS Block Producers by effectively “Blacklisting” the interaction with smart-contracts such as EIDOS. But then, we would say: “What happened to Censorship-resistant?”. Every time that the Block Producers have been involved in solving these kinds of issues, the damage has been arguably greater than the original issue (See ECAF resolutions).
So governance as of now is not a viable option. BPs have enough DRAMA to go around as-is for now, let’s not throw this kind of task upon them.
Can we rely on the Exchanges?
An asset that is not liquid is not valuable, so if NO exchanges list EIDOS, then EIDOS is not Liquid, therefore it is worthless, and NOONE will Mine it. Problem solved! Right?
WRONG! Exchanges have one goal in mind: “More Volume”. If there is a market for it, exchanges will offer it. Period. Plus, if you have been anywhere close to being involved or even aware of the EOS Governance SAGA, you would know that most exchanges are NOT particularly looking after the best interests of the EOS Mainnet, and in many cases have been proven to extract value by leveraging their power and creating these “Sock-Puppet” BPs.
Evidently, exchanges are not a reliable defense mechanism.
So, if Block Producers can’t help us, and we can’t avoid exchanges from listing waste-tokens, then who can we turn to?
Unusual problems require Unusual solutions…
Our Potential Unexpected Heroes: WALLETS
An Organization of EOS Wallets as a potential line of defense
Wallet Developers, in contrast, have shown a true desire for the network to thrive. It is also in their best interest: The more the blockchain they support gets adopted, the more users they get, the more business they can generate.
Most EOS users are not tech-savvy enough to compile and run an EIDOS Miner on a running local EOS node interacting with CLEOS (the command line for EOS). Most of the users who “mine” EIDOS rely on third-party Dapps that are being accessed through wallets. Even a friend in the community coded up an “EIDOS miner” just for fun.
So we can’t stop people from running these miners, but we can definitely restrict access to the mining DAPPS and other DAPPS that we consider to be malicious or harmful for the network.
So far, there is not a global organization that holds wallets to a higher standard. There is no entity that is the clear go-to place to understand what are the wallet’s best practices. And let’s not forget what we are giving the wallets, it’s not just our e-mail or our profile picture, these are our private keys we are talking about.
So what I’m proposing in this article is a “General Consortium” of Wallets that can serve as a guide for all wallets in the system to follow and take the required actions to live up to the high standards required for a reputable Crypto Wallet, and also fight-off or blacklist potentially harmful DAPPS or even DAPPS that have harmful or malicious content. If a wallet gets a “Best-Practices” stamp, it can attract more users.
If we can organize ALL the leading wallets, which give access to the wide majority of users, and the wallets can determine things like “This DAPP has the potential of harming the network, let’s all take care of our users and block access to this particular DAPP”.
Is this a form of Censorship? Well, YES! But this is a very direct way of shutting down the main gateway for potential attack vectors of the network.
Tokens like EIDOS will still be used and Network resources wasted, but on a much smaller scale since the large majority of users will not go through all the trouble to get the tokens if the access for these DAPPS is not facilitated.
If you consider this as a potential solution, I can get my hands dirty and begin gathering support from the leading wallet devs. Leave your comments below and tell me what are your thoughts.
To end this with a positive note…
There is always a solution to a problem, and new opportunities will be created out of the current situation. There are amazingly smart people in our community that honestly care about EOS and I have no doubt that we will find a creative and super-original solution to any problem we shall face.
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