May 13, 2019
By Colin Talks Crypto

Greymass’ article on a Worker Proposal System aka “Blockchain Workers” is a helpful addition to the debate on what we could do to help promote development on EOS.

The proposed system is a clever and potentially useful system to all EOSIO and DPOS-based systems.

It allows a separation of duties where currently they are mixed: block production and development. It would allow the best BPs to rise to the top of their class for the job they are doing, and it would similarly allow those who want to develop value on top of EOS to be ranked and paid according to their skills. This solution correctly breaks the conflation between the two.

An example of why this is important: We’d eliminate a BP being pushed to the top of the block producer ranks because they “made a great dApp” when there could be a more qualified choice as far as actual block production ability goes. The team which made the dApp could be rewarded on its own merit and not forced into a BP role just to get paid for their dApp development.

Concerns

    •   1.5% is a lot of inflation to give to a new system. I understand the goal is to more than offset the 1% BP inflation in order to reduce long-term BP centralization, but I feel 1.5% added suddenly could be manipulated by low community participation, especially at its introduction. As such I feel a new worker system should gradually introduce inflation until it reaches 1.5% over a 1 year period, starting at 0.25% upon release. This way the new Blockchain Worker System can "grow into the system" and evolve organically without a sudden jolt of inflation being introduced at its onset.

    •   The remaining 2.5% should be burned. We do not need to keep “hanging onto” inflation out of some belief that it "must all be used some day".  5% annual inflation is far too high over a long period of time and considerably dilutes token holders’ value.  2.5% compounded over time is still a somewhat high amount of inflation, but if the value provided by a WPS creates more value than it dilutes (in terms of inflation) then it can be worth it, even to token holders whom it is diluting. This is because, theoretically, the token price itself would be bolstered enough by the value created by the new development, which would serve to counteract the dilution the tokens experienced. The exact benefit to the token price as a result of “blockchain worker projects” would of course be nearly impossible to tangibly quantify or measure directly.

    •   Unique IDs would be needed to better enforce participants, rather than mere “social construct and community enforcement”, to ensure BPs are not receiving funds intended specifically for non-BP development workers.

Conclusion

For now, since no such worker proposal system is in place, I am in support of removing all excess inflation (remove 4% of the 5%, leaving 1% to BP pay).

Why remove all 4%? It seems there are as many different ideas for ways to use this 4% inflation as there are people in EOS. Everyone has a different idea. It becomes impossible to remove the excess inflation because everyone wants to use it for something, but widespread agreement cannot be reached on one path. As such, we should remove the 4% and start fresh.

For what it’s worth, Dan Larimer, the creator of EOS agrees with removing the 4% inflation. I consider Dan's opinions valuable, although the community is not required to accept them.

Additional inflation for a Worker Proposal system can be reintroduced once a new system (perhaps one similar to what Greymass described) has been properly developed, tested and proposed to the community. At that time its merit can be reviewed and it can stand on its own two feet for community consideration as an addition to EOSIO.

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