By : Weixing Chen, the founder and CEO of Kuaidi Dache, a Chinese taxi-hailing application, has expressed his concerns about crypto assets like in a statement published on Weibo that prioritize scalability.
A rough translation of his statement :
is a good example. I have always said that there is no problem in trying [new] technology. The problem is the fraudulent propaganda such as ‘Million TPS” and ‘Next Generation Operating System’.
CnLedger, a trusted crypto source based in , confirmed to CCN that the Weibo account is, in fact, Chen’s and that he is well known in ’s venture capital space as an anti- figure.
Chinese Ride Hailing Giant Didi Chuxing to Launch a Uber
— CCN.com (@CCNMarkets)
Why Chen May Be Anti-EOS
, currently valued at $5.8 billion, is the largest initial coin offering (ICO) in the history of the crypto market. It raised $4 billion in May 2018 a live product.
The mainnet of the protocol in June 2018 with 21 “block producers,” individuals that are responsible for producing blocks on the network that contain transaction and smart contract data.
Since then, has demonstrated an increase in popularity from -based decentralized application (dApp) users. According to DappRadar, all top three dApps are currently based on the network.
However, since its inception, experts have criticized the level of decentralization of the network, which focuses on scalability and offering a large transaction capacity to appeal to dApp developers.
Smart contracts pioneer Nick Szabo, for instance, said:
In a few complete strangers can freeze what users thought was their money. Under the protocol you must trust a ‘constitutional’ organization comprised of people you will likely never get to know. The ‘constitution’ is socially unscalable and a security hole.
The criticism of by Szabo came after a controversial section of an article explaining the governance system of the network was released, which stated that an account could be auctioned off after years of inactivity.
“A Member is automatically released from all revocable obligations under this Constitution 3 years after the last transaction signed by that Member is incorporated into the . After 3 years of inactivity an account may be put up for auction and the proceeds distributed to all Members according to the system contract provisions then in effect for such redistribution,” read Article XV of .
As said by CTO Dan Larimer in October 2018, is able to achieve such a high transaction capacity because its sole focus is not decentralization. He said:
Decentralization isn’t what we’re after. What we’re after is anti-censorship and robustness against being shut down.
The goal isn’t decentralization or centralization it’s civilization that we are after. That means civil discussion and non dispute resolution. Civilization is built on civility.
— Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster7)
Whether the scalability-first approach of is right or wrong is to be determined by the market. So far, is seemingly attracting developers and dApp users by providing a network with flexibility and large transaction capacity.
But, investors like Chen does not seem to approve of networks that do not focus on decentralization, differing from the principles established by , which still remains as the dominant 10 years after its launch.
There’s No Right Answer
So far, the dApp market is simply not large enough to determine which of the approach used by , , , , and other competing smart contract protocols is the right approach.
DApps are averaging less than 10,000 users in a 24-hour span and is not comparable to centralized applications and platforms.
Published at Tue, 21 May 2019 15:05:57 +0000
