EOS Proves Yet Again That Decentralization Is Not Its Priority

Recently, Blockchain protocol EOS became subject of a new scandal: its governance model was questioned, as evidence showing a moderator reversing transactions which had already been confirmed surfaced on Reddit.

Thus, the EOS ecosystem rests upon at least two major entities - the EOS Core Arbitration Forum, effectively its 'judicial branch,' and Block Producers, who produce blocks on the EOS blockchain - just like miners do within the Bitcoin's blockchain.

BPs earn EOS tokens produced by inflation - according to some estimations, top three EOS BPs obtain around 1000 tokens per day.

Decentralization supporters' nightmare: EOS reverses previously-confirmed transactions.

According to Reddit user u/auti9003, a dispute allegedly involving a phished EOS account was referred to one of the platform's "Arbitrators" Ben Gates, who decided to reverse transactions that happened without the owner's permission.

Essentially, an alleged leaked Huobi spreadsheet suggested that main EOS nodes were involved in mutual voting along with pay-offs to remain in power of the EOS blockchain and keep their profits.

On November 1, more detailed and grounded criticism of EOS' governance model arrived, as blockchain testing company Whiteblock published results of "The first independent benchmark testing of the EOS software." Essentially, the investigation came to several conclusions about the EOS, the most bold of which was that "EOS is not a blockchain," but "Rather a distributed homogeneous database management system," because its transactions were reportedly "Not cryptographically validated."

In July, EOS' chief technology officer Daniel Larimer tweeted that EOS was performing 2351 transactions per second.

Thus, the investigation concluded that "The foundation of the EOS system is built on a flawed model that is not truly decentralized." Later, on November 6, the EOS Alliance, a non-profit organization formed by EOS community members and block producers with the role to "Facilitate the dialogue within community," published a response signed by its Interim Executive Director Thomas Cox.

Dubbed "Yes, EOS is a blockchain," it criticized Whiteblock's "Provocative paper," noting that the benchmarking firm "Only recruited Ethereum folks for the project."