EOS Freezing Accounts, Community Growing Restless

EOS, a blockchain platform, had a painful way towards the launch of their mainnet – and only days later, the troubles show no sign of slowing down. Most recently, they froze seven user funds to prevent theft, but in violation of their own constitution by letting block producers decide on this action.

All 21 block producers (BPs) (EOS’s equivalent of miners) have unanimously voted to freeze seven EOS accounts that were suspected to be carrying stolen funds. However, arbitration bodies are required by the constitution to make such decisions, while BPs are only supposed to execute this decision.

Big names states their opinions on Twitter: Jackson Palmer of Dogecoin criticized this course of action, wondering why even have a constitution or the ECAF (EOS Core Arbitration Forum) if BPs can make these sorts of decisions by themselves.

Nick Szabo, a famous computer scientist and cryptographer, joins in to say, “Under the EOS protocol you must trust a “constitutional” organization comprised of people you will likely never get to know.”

Reddit users have joined in to state their opinions: “Thought the whole point of cryptocurrency was trustlessness? WTF is all this sh*t,” asks u/Bedroni. Another jokingly points out the “newest” way to reach consensus: “PoCC : Proof of Conference Call,” writes u/tnpxu.

EOS didn’t release a public statement about the frozen funds.

This is just following other controversies surrounding EOS, from accusations that they managed to raise USD 4 billion in a year-long ICO (initial coin offering) without a working product, to its centralization issues.