EOS Block Producers vote limit proposal by community member gains traction

The EOS community has risen up and made their statement against the whales on the blockchain. Those who hold more EOS have more voting power due to the Delegated Proof of Stake consensus algorithm it utilizes. However, the whales on the network, such as the block producers that validate its transactions, have no limit on the number of votes they can cast as a singular party.

To combat this phenomenon, EOS community member Blockchain Kid started a petition on Change.org to “promote fairness and greater decentralization” on the EOS blockchain. This, he states, will be done by imposing a limit on the number of votes that can be cast by a Block Producer, with the said limit being enforced by EOS themselves.

On the platform, users can ‘stake’ their tokens, which amounts to a lock-up period, to vote for their block producers. Out of these, 21 parties who have received the largest amount of votes are paid a regular sum of EOS tokens. These 21 parties are tasked with making sure that the blockchain continues to function smoothly, and also voting on any important changes to be made.

Bitfinex is one of the biggest block producers on the EOS blockchain, with over 3 million coins staked over a dozen wallets. Out of these, 3 officially belong to Bitfinex, with others being controlled by investors with large sums of EOS tokens.

Notably, the exchange also faced allegations that it was utilizing funds stored on its wallets by the users that utilized it for trading. However, the platform denied these claims.

The petition stated:

“Currently, Bitfinex is voting between 10 million and 40 million EOS for up to 30 other BPs. These votes go a LONG way to ensuring the recipients are among the Top 21. In most cases, Bitfinex’s votes make up between 50% AND 90% OF THAT BP’S TOTAL VOTES.”

A spokesperson for EOS UK, one of the block producers on the platform, alleged that manipulation of voting is taking place. Roger Davies, the representative in question, said in a statement to Hard Fork:

“I am almost certain that manipulation of the voting of block producers is taking place. I have no direct proof of this, of course, but we have become increasingly frustrated by […] this unnatural voter distribution. [It] suggests collusion of whale token holders, ‘whalification’.”

User stop-making-accounts on Reddit stated:

“You can’t do this–BPs will just vote from other accounts.”

Davies also echoed this, stating that it would be “impossible” to enforce this rule. He stated:

“No, I do not support this proposal […] because it favours bad actors that are capable of simply creating multiple wallets and distributing masses amounts of tokens across different wallets.”