by Douglas Horn, GoodProxy Founder
I launched GoodProxy a few weeks prior to the launch of Telos as a proxy on EOS (as goodproxyeos) in preparation to offer a high-quality voter proxy once Telos launched its mainnet. Upon Telos launch, GoodProxy became the first voter proxy on the network (as goodproxytls). I intended to create a proxy that was voted based on certain principles as judged by several different custodians or “governors” who knew both chains well and could provide distinct and varied independent voices. I chose six other governors plus myself. The people I knew who were the most knowledgeable about EOS and Telos at the time were all members of the Telos Launch Group and were all Telos block producers. Our method of deliberating was always to each vote individually and privately within our group and assign our official proxy votes to the 30 block producers on each chain who received the highest number of aggregate votes in our internal poll.
Over the past three months as Telos grew, GoodProxy grew as well. On EOS, GoodProxy was recently the proxy with the 25th highest amount of votes proxied to it (by staked EOS tokens) and with the 18th most accounts trusting it with their votes. This was quite respectable, but it did not approach the levels of proxying accounts that GoodProxy received on Telos where it was the largest proxy by any measure. Voting, which had always been a daunting task, became even more so because the weight of GoodProxy’s block producer votes on Telos had the power to move many block producers in or out of the Top 21 voting position.
On March 4th, this fact became apparent to Telos voters when GoodProxy performed its periodic vote, which moved several block producers into and out of the Top 21 active block producers — and hence altered their pay and voting responsibilities. Several people in the community voiced concern about seven block producer operators having such influence. While the voting power of the proxy was fairly arrived at by Telos account owners who entrusted it with their votes, it nonetheless had the look of possible collusion. The measure I had put in place to ensure that I alone would not have too much voting power on the network now, ironically, had the appearance of possible collusion amongst some block producers. Of course, we the GoodProxy governors knew that we were voting fairly and based on principle, but it did not matter: the appearance of collusion itself needed to be removed from Telos voting…and quickly.
While any account owner who was concerned about this level of voting power always had the ability to instantly move their votes to another proxy or vote them directly, in practice GoodProxy had acquired too much voting power to be controlled by a group of block producer operators. I proposed that GoodProxy quickly bring in new governors to share the voting power and spread it across a mix of people from a variety of positions within the community. Several fine nominations quickly arose and I saw that this would indeed be a good way forward.
When CJ Anders, who was a well-respected member of both the TLG and the EOS Alliance amongst her many EOSIO bona fides, was nominated, I realized that she would be an ideal person to take up the torch of GoodProxy leadership. After private conversations with CJ and some of the other GoodProxy governors, I changed the account owner key for goodproxytls to keys provided by CJ, giving her total control of the account. I will soon repeat the process with goodproxyeos.
GoodProxy governor Josep Rosich of eosBarcelona also stepped down from voting. I hope that no one in the community infers anything from our self-removal other than our strong desire to remove any possible taint of collusion amongst Telos block producers. Similarly, nothing should be inferred about the GoodProxy governors who remain. It is beneficial for some of the institutional knowledge of the group to remain and be shared with CJ and the new governors or custodians of the proxy. All voting power is currently held by CJ with no other governor able to force a particular vote. I expect that over the coming weeks, the makeup of GoodProxy’s governors will evolve significantly and any remaining appearance of collusion will dissipate entirely.
GoodBlock and I no longer have any involvement in the operations or voting of GoodProxy aside from hosting the GoodProxy website. No one from GoodBlock is privy to the private voting deliberations by the GoodProxy governors. I feel that this is entirely appropriate and I offer my best hopes for the proxy and its governors moving forward. I hope they will continue to vote for GoodBlock, but the only way I will be able to influence this is by performing well as a block producer and contributing to the Telos community. This is also exactly as it should be.
About the author: Douglas Horn is the Telos architect and whitepaper author, and the founder of GoodBlock, a block producer and app developer for the Telos Blockchain Network.
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