Block.one’s EOS VC recently made a “seven digit Euro investment” in Arxum GmbH while Galaxy Digital launched a service offering cryptocurrency options contracts to new and its existing customers.
Top News
Welcome to the latest bi-weekly EOS / Block.one news summaries, among multiple concurrent token-specific news roundup series looking specifically at the coins which rank among the top ten for market cap.
June 28th
Block.one CTO Dan Larimer Believes That “Democracy Has Failed”
Chief Technical Officer of Block.one Dan Larimer published a blog post to Medium in which he discussed his theoretical perspective regarding the abstract concept of a democracy. Not only with regards to blockchain models, but regarding governance in all forms: of a societal nature, and over people in particular.
Larimer’s prior experience includes being the founder of BitShares (cryptocurrency platform), as well as being the co-founder of Steem (social media platform).
Although it bears a simple title, ‘Decentralizing Governance’, the article is arguably far too long and convoluted. Here is a much briefer summary of the ideas and opinions discussed – communicated through the same perspective lens as the original article…
1. Introduction – “History is littered with failed attempts at governance”
- The primary aim of a governance model is “to create a level playing field in which mankind can prosper.”.
- Stresses the importance of the threat posed by “the tyranny of a majority by a minority or a system which creates an unlevel playing field.”
- Greed and the inherent ability for monopolies to form out of (and abuse) free market economies is a concern when considering governance.
- About Anarchists: Praises their ideals BUT concludes that their ideal world “can only exist when all people are equally able to defend their interests.”.
- About Voluntarists: Their ideal world “when fully realized, utilizes sanctions to cut people off from society by coordinated shunning. Anyone who doesn’t respect the sanctions becomes subject to them.”
- The Governance Challenge: There is value to joining a community, however they require a commonly accepted set of rules for governance without ‘mob rule’. The challenge is “deciding what these rules are and preventing this system from being captured for private profit.”
2. On Democracy
- Democratic systems were created to keep society control / governance decentralized.
- Despite this, a minority of the population is elected to power – often recurrently and from a limited demographic of the population.
- “There is no correlation between the will of the people and peace treaty (aka government) they end up being forced to accept or else default to law of the jungle (aka civil war).”.
- A key problem is that “The skills required for advancing as a politician, and the skills required to make good governance decisions are very different.”.
- Therefore = democracy has (essentially) failed.
3. Designing a New Governance System
- Compares political propaganda, private donor canvassing / popularity contests; and other campaign tactics to ‘games’ of might – which determines leadership in a barbarian society.
- Desires ‘equality of outcome’ model which seeks to guarantee that government comprises of a selection of people who possess “a vast range of skills and / or genetic predisposition.”.
- The latter of which is highly ethically questionable for many reasons, and Larimer strongly implies that an ideal system would systematically nominate participants against their will.
Larimer’s New Governance System
- Proposes a system in which a “large number of competitive games”
- Potential ideas for these competitive games include: “Olympics, Chess, Typing Speed, Poker, Starcraft, race car driving, memorization, spelling bee, etc.”
- Exemplifies that 1000 members of government could be selected from the respective “best” at 1000 different ‘games’.
- Governance would require 2/3 approval.
- “To prevent life-terms and the establishment of an elite club, each individual can only serve for a limited term.”
4. Conclusion
- The same principles outlined for a civil society also apply to blockchain governance models.
Needless to say, the entire proposition is highly far-fetched. Furthermore, the concept and implications of forming a system of games based on a hypothesised expectation of “genetic” predisposition is not only wild, but does not deserve further commentary.
More Stories
July 2nd
FinLab and Block.one EOS VC make “seven digit” investment into Arxum GmbH
Arxum GmbH has become the latest candidate to receive capital investment from FinLab EOS VC , Block.one’s Venture Capital Company, a product of the partnership between the EOS VC Fund and FinLab AG. A “seven digit Euro investment” to be exact.
According to the press release, the funds have been transferred with a claim that they will be spent on resources and initiatives that will help to grow the EOSIO ecosystem, developer tool-set, and middleware solutions that act as an interface between companies, IT systems, and the ‘Arxum Production Protocol’.
In this particular circumstance, German company Arxum will be implementing the EOSIO blockchain as part of its ‘infrastructure-as-a-service’ – in a solution which seeks to connect the “manufacturing industry with suppliers and customers.”. EOSIO blockchain will be used to provide secure, automated data transfer between partes (such as business information).
Block.one’s EOS VC offers funding to developers as well as entrepreneurs which are creating “community-driven businesses that leverage EOSIO.”. There are additional benefits offered, such as access to data-sets and code – as well as mentoring and supervision. Partners include Galaxy Digital Assets, EOS Global, and SVK Crypto.
FinLab AG is a stock market listed company builder and investor’, which aims to help to grow German startups in the FinTech space through provision of capital and ongoing support.
Quotes
Dr. Markus Jostock, Co-Founder and CEO of Arxum
“We are proud that FinLab has selected Arxum for a substantial investment and we are eager to further grow our innovative business solutions for the manufacturing industry and to join FinLab’s EOSIO partner network”
Juan Rodriguez, Managing Director of FinLab EOS VC Fund
“Arxum’s technology and the strong industrial business focus of the solution was one of FinLab’s decision criteria. We are convinced that Arxum has the potential to disrupt industrial business interaction and we support them in establishing the EOSIO protocol as an effective state-of-the-art data exchange standard”
June 24th
Galaxy Digital, Block.one Partner and Former Shareholder, Launches Cryptocurrency Derivatives Offering
Galaxy Digital, a former shareholder and ongoing partner to Block.one, has released information detailing how it has recently launched a service which offers crypto options contracts to new and existing customers.
This news was officially confirmed by Yoshi Nakamura (global head of business development) in an exclusive interview with The Block in which he said that the options business is “relatively new”, and “continues to increase.”.
Nakamura continues that many parties are seeking to hedge the “inherent volatility risk” of cryptocurrencies.
On the one hand, increased investment will undoubtedly bring added liquidity; however, the speculative nature of the intent of these new investors / traders leaves much to be desired when it comes to market stability.
Price Movements
Information correct as of 22:08 PM, GMT 15th July 2019
