The countries of Greece, Britain, the United States and several other nations, have forever been embattled in the claim that each is individually the oldest democracy in the world. If these countries cannot accept in a democratic manner, as to which is the oldest democracy, then it is easy to understand the current growing pains being experienced by the EOS (EOS) Community. The platform was launched less than a week ago on the 10th of June. Therefore, decentralization is not 100% functional.
With the launch of the platform came the delay in voting brought about by lack of reaching the 150 Million EOS tokens needed for staking. Eventually, the community managed to elect 21 block producers and the platform went live on the 14th of June. But two days later, the network would experience a freeze due to a software bug.
Block.one, the EOS creator, was then reported to be working on creating a patch for the bug. What then proceeded, is that the block producers held a conference call to discuss the problem and how to solve it without compromising the rest of the token holders.
The decision was then reached that the block producers would lock seven compromised accounts. These accounts could potentially allow ‘thieves’ to misappropriate funds on the platform due to the bug.
This action seemed like an overstep of their mandate and throwing decentralization out the window. But during difficult times, comes the need to make quick executive decisions. Block producers are meant to be executors of discussed and voted decisions, and not decisions makers. But given that the EOS constitution has not been ratified, it is within their powers to act as they did.
This scenario can be compared to the well thought out water landing of the US Airways Flight on the Hudson River by Captain Sullivan. He took control of the aircraft and acted to the best of his ability. So did the EOS block producers with respect to how they handled such ‘a young democracy’ on the blockchain.
EOS42 issued a statement on Steemit about the Block Producers decision to Freeze 7 EOS accounts. In the statement, the following was said acknowledging the difficult decision:
Given the time sensitive nature of this case, Block Producers debated this difficult decision for over two hours today on a call. On the one hand we could protect token holders, on the other this on the surface appears a dramatic overstep of our role in the constitution and BP agreement, which is to be the executor only of arbitration decisions, not to also be judge and jury.
However, the following was added to explain why the decision was reached to freeze the 7 accounts.
…our own conclusion is that if a ratified EOS constitution and arbitration was in place, then it would indeed be a fundamental overstep of Block Producers to do more than action arbitration decisions. However this is not currently the case, so the question was whether we would freeze the tokens on 7 accounts identified as already unlocking (meaning potential thieves could appropriate funds in under 24hrs), to subsequently enable ECAF when able to review and pass a ruling – and protect token holders to the best of our ability.
The Block Producers went ahead to eventually freeze the said 7 accounts. They also emphasized a need to ratify the said constitution because without an agreed ‘document’, democratic rulings during critical events will continue being a challenge. Up until the constitution is ratified, the block producers have the mandate to make tough executive decisions. This is an example of good governance by the 21 Block Producers.