EOS Top 30 Block Producer Monthly Call Recap

Introduction

The monthly calls with EOS block producers (BP) are meant to establish regular communications between the top 30 EOS BPs and the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) to foster an open dialogue between network operators and custodians in support of the mutual development of the EOS ecosystem.

Meeting Overview

The meeting started at 01:00 UTC on February 8, 2023. 18 BPs attended the call and a total of 34 people participated in the discussions, which ran for 1 hour and 30 minutes. The Interprefy tool was used in the call for synchronous translation to facilitate the free flow of information across multiple languages in real-time.

Summary of Significant Network Events Since the Previous Meeting

On February 7th, EOS Network BPs approved an MSIG proposed by EOS Asia that adds a smart contract to the eosio.saving account. This smart contract now enables network issuance that flows into eosio.saving to be programmatically distributed to other accounts to receive on-going funding directly from the EOS Network. The default parameter for this smart contract allocates 100% of the funding allocation to the eosio.grants account, which is managed by the EOS Network Foundation.

• Smart Contract Actions and Tables
• View Code on Github

The ENF wishes to express its gratitude to the EOS Network BPs for their approval of this proposal. By implementing this smart contract, the network will be better able to predictably sustain funding to essential programs and organizations.

Block Producer Attendee List

• Newdex (1)
• Genereos (2)
• EOSeoul (4)
• OKEx Pool (5)
• EOS Nation (6)
• Big.One (7)
• Flytomars (8)
• Starteos (9)
• Blockpool (10)
• EOSIO.SG (11)
• Hashfin (12)
• Defibox (15)
• EOS Asia (18)
• eoslambdacom (22)
• EOSphere (23)
• moreisfuture (25)
• Greymass (26)
• DFS (30)

Meeting Minutes 

ENF CEO Yves La Rose expressed his gratitude to the active EOS BPs for their timely approval of the recent MSIG put forward by EOS Asia, and for acknowledging ENF as an essential service for the ecosystem, a central point for public goods funding, and point of contact for media, exchanges, partners and more. Yves stated he was proud of the work the ENF is doing, and that without the BPs enabling this none of it would be possible. Yves expressed confidence that EOS is in a very good position compared to where it was a year ago.

ENF CCO Zack Gall presented highlights and commentary on the recently published ENF Q4 2022 Quarterly Report as well as the ENF strategy behind some of its other activities and initiatives.

ENF Developments

• The ENF team has expanded to over 40 full-time employees and there are now hundreds of other individuals and businesses working for EOS through its core funding pillars.
• ENF will be paying more attention to the GameFi field, developing GameFi infrastructure, and promoting the flow of funds to GameFi initiatives on the EOS Network.
• The ENF’s global conference strategy and representing EOS at a variety of large conferences and events. Went into detail about the rapid feedback the ENF was able to receive as well as some of the opportunities and partnerships that presented themselves at these events.

Partnership Development

• Binance Partnership
  • USDT (EOS) Binance Listing
  • Learn to Earn educational quizzes coming
  • Upcoming AMA
• Messari Partnership
  • Introduction to EOS report will be published soon by Messari
  • Messari will begin publishing quarterly reports on EOS, which will cover the current state over the next 5 quarters.

It was also mentioned that Yves recently spent about a month in Asia, making several trips to Korea to meet with potential partners and exchanges.

Project Updates

• EOS EVM
  • The EOS EVM is still on track to be launched to the EOS mainnet at the end of March.
  • The EOS EVM bridge contract will allow users on a centralized exchange to withdraw EOS tokens directly to their MetaMask wallet, bypassing the need for a native EOS account. End users will be able to transfer EOS tokens from their EOS account or a centralized exchange to a bridge account with their Ethereum Public Key in the memo field.
• Antelope IBC
  • Use cases are already being showcased with new liquidity pools being established for wrapped UTX and TLOS on Defibox. The EOS Network can be the liquidity hub for other Antelope chains.
• Yield+
  • According to the latest Yield+ reports, TVL on EOS has seen higher growth percentages than competing L1 chains.

Q&A

Q – What is being done to address the friction of account creation and user onboarding?

The ENF recognizes that account creation has been a problem for EOS and has been working towards reducing and/or removing that friction on multiple fronts. The ENF is working closely with Greymass, the developers of the Anchor wallet, to help close some of these gaps through the WharfKit Web Client SDK. For the first time, the core EOS protocol developers are collaborating directly with the client side developers whose products interface with the end users. Improving the user experience for EOS is a top priority for the ENF.

It was noted that reducing user registration is a very important piece of the ENF’s GameFi strategy and its engineers are in the early stages of ideation on an alternate EOS account system for easier user onboarding.

Q – Are there plans to create additional blue papers or RFPs for EOS?

The Blue Papers require a great deal of professional personnel to author and are very time, energy, and resource intensive. There is a finite amount of talent that exists with the knowledge and expertise required for conducting that kind of R&D and a major limiting factor is that the engineers engaged in researching and writing papers have less time to write code or work on their core businesses outside of the Blue Papers. The ENF is actively looking for more people that have the technical background and skillset to write Blue Papers and additional RFPs.

Expanding the talent pool working on or within the EOS ecosystem is a high priority for the ENF and the original Blue Papers and the resulting RFPs that came out of them. We’ve seen the results of these efforts with the recent delivery of IBC as well as through the Antelope Coalition’s most recent RFP for P2P Peer Discovery, which was recently awarded to a team based out of Fudan University.

In addition, Yves revealed that there are early discussions of writing a new EOS whitepaper. Every project has a whitepaper and it is often something that the ENF regularly gets asked for. The original EOS whitepaper is now very outdated, so there is discussion about creating a new whitepaper to change the perception of what is EOS, The New EOS.

Q – Are there any plans to make USDT (EOS) available on other exchanges now or in the future?

Enabling the ability to deposit and withdraw Tether from centralized exchanges to and from EOS was one of the earliest goals that the ENF set out to achieve. The ENF is focused on maximizing its cooperation with Binance so that the ENF can build a framework around this process, which can be leveraged for future partnerships with centralized exchanges to maximize value for EOS token holders. The ENF is also having on-going discussions about other options. If anyone has recommendations or can open up other opportunities, please contact us.

Q – Could you please work to improve explanations around the background and rationale of all MSIGs to eliminate uncertainty and confusion, and let the community and BP work together better?

The ENF expressed its gratitude for the feedback, and affirmed that it will continue to work to increase communication with EOS BPs, and the EOS token holders more broadly. One of the purposes for initiating the monthly BP calls is to communicate regularly and frequently with the BPs so that they can be made aware of any upcoming initiatives or proposals in advance. This allows discussions and questions to take place between the ENF and the elected network decision makers (BPs), who represent the EOS token holders, prior to releasing information more broadly and publicly. The talking points discussed on the monthly calls can be communicated by BPs to their own respective communities and the ENF can work with each to provide them with the information they are looking for, but communication around MSIGs are ultimately the responsibility of the BPs.

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EOS Network

The EOS Network is a 3rd generation blockchain platform powered by the EOS VM, a low-latency, highly performant, and extensible WebAssembly engine for deterministic execution of near feeless transactions; purpose-built for enabling optimal Web3 user and developer experiences. EOS is the flagship blockchain and financial center of the Antelope framework, serving as the driving force behind multi-chain collaboration and public goods funding for tools and infrastructure through the EOS Network Foundation (ENF).

EOS Network Foundation

The EOS Network Foundation (ENF) was forged through a vision for a prosperous and decentralized future. Through our key stakeholder engagement, community programs, ecosystem funding, and support of an open technology ecosystem, the ENF is transforming Web3. Founded in 2021, the ENF is the hub for EOS Network, a leading open source platform with a suite of stable frameworks, tools, and libraries for blockchain deployments. Together, we are bringing innovations that our community builds and are committed to a stronger future for all.