Why EOS (and DPOS) needs governance
Blocks on the EOS blockchain are added by 21 active block producers. The block producers are voted in or out by the EOS token holders. 15 out of 21 block producers can decide on the validity of any block.
This means that the active block producers have the power to do basically anything on the EOS block chain. The block producers can grant access to an account that holds EOS if the private key to that account got lost. The block producers can freeze suspicious accounts in order to stop criminal funds disappearing. This potential led Dan Larimar to promise in the EOS Whitepaper that there will be a system in EOS to deal with lost and stolen keys. “If it is possible to do so, why not do it?” could have been a solid reasoning behind that promise.
How so? Well: the EOS core code gives the block producers the power to (e.g.) restore access by issuing a new private key. Denying or granting to restore access to an account where a person that lost the private key can clearly prove he or she is the owner of, is therefore a real choice. A block producer could choose to deny or to grant without consequences. This where DPOS stands out from POW concepts.
When and where a block producer has a real choice, he can legally easily be forced to honour a good faith request to restore access. (The claimant will have to subpoena at least 15 block producers though).
Why is that easy? Because denying such request would be an act of bad faith if there is nothing to stop a block producer from granting it, other than, maybe, its internal difficulties in handling the number of such requests.
So this needs to be regulated. Block producers will need guidance while making these decisions. The public will need to know which choices the block producers are going to make. One can imagine one would want safeguards also: not all requests will be made in good faith. Should one not wish to introduce rules, chaos will reign. Followed by endless law suits in myriad jurisdictions. No one wants that.
That is, in a nutshell, why DPOS needs governance. And that is why POW blockchains don’t need that. With DPOS block producers have a choice, with POW not. With DPOS rules are needed to ensure choices are made in a fair and predictable manner.
Voting by the token holders also needs rules. Whether you want to compare token holders to shareholders in a corporation, to members of a DAC, to members of an association, to companies in a market even or to voters in a democratic society: in all of these systems there are rules to ensure voting does what it should do: be effective as a means to allocate power. Those rules ensure that the candidates provide sufficient information to make an informed choice, that minorities are protected when it gets to important decisions, that fundamental rules cannot be changed without the voters have a say about it and that no monopoly arises that dominates the cooperation.
One may leave out those rules. Often that is done in the name of “freedom”. Such freedom however is of the kind that enslaves others. No rules would further neglect centuries of human thinking about the subject of effective voting.
Crypto may be new, its struggling to organize itself is old. Ancient even. Many brilliant people have worked on that. Not using the progress made is more than an arrogant overstretch, it is an insult to all those great minds .
