image from unsplash.com by Daniel Hjalmarsson
The following is a message I posted in the EOS BlockPros telegram channel reflecting on the challenges they face in the successful launch and evolution of EOS main net.
EOS could never eliminate all corruption. Why? Because some people are sociopathic, we all carry selfishness and the capacity to act irrationally. Also, we have been living in a sick all-encompassing system for so long that no-one has escaped damage. That damage exacerbates the potential for selfishness and irrationality. How many of us are able to manifest even close to the best we can be?
EOS doesn't have to eliminate all corruption, it simply needs to move the needle off the floor and out of the red to give us time and resource enough to heal, innovate, educate, adapt and re-organise. So we aim for the stars relative to eliminating the possibility of corruption within EOS, trying to maximise resilience via alignment of economic incentives and minimise the surface for corruption beyond that.
I realise many if not all in this group understand very well what I'm talking about and what is at stake. The discussions around what may or may not be the optimal initial EOS configuration or the optimal BP candidate, especially in the context of an array of unknowns, relative to what is best initially and in the future, have been revealing.
The most valuable thing I've taken from this stage of the discussion is the apparent willingness of known BPs to work together to do the best they can to balance the risk of corruption with entrepreneurial spirit, the menace of the old system and the practical rigours of launching the EOS main net with limited information available. There are differences of opinion and that is fair enough! What I hope is that as we learn more, every single BP has enough integrity and independence to respond rapidly and adapt to minimise risks.
If the protection of life, liberty and property for all is the vision we all share, it requires us all to constantly test our assumptions, configurations and actions against it.
In the future I would love to see BPs identifying risks to the vision, informing the community, including their peers and describing how they were mitigated. It's a joy to see this kind of collaboration already happening.
It's not just the software that must be able to adapt, it's everyone and every role within EOS, but most especially the BPs.
I don't know, but I suspect no-one alive can actually deal with the colossal idea of actually changing the world as radically as we hope it does through tech like EOS. Can anyone deal with the monstrosity of the present system or the promise of a new one in anything other than an abstract manner? I certainly can't. There's just too much. Abstract or not, the power of these ideas is undeniable. As stark as the surface of the moon and as bright as the sun.
I wish you all the best of luck in the coming weeks. You've worked incredibly hard. Maybe you'll be helping to launch the first digital wonder of the world! 😉