Thoughts on Dan Larimer’s EOS Community Governance Proposal Draft

Dan Larimer, former CTO of Block.One, has published a draft of EOS Community Governance Proposal. There’s over a 100 valuable comments by the time of this writing, and I’ll try to summarize my own thoughts here.

1. Even at the start of EOS mainnet history, we’ve seen a very low participation in the governance. Too few people bothered to update their BP votes or cast a vote on the global forum. With proposed EOS Community design, maybe a few hundred enthusiasts register themselves and start taking part in the governance process, but they will quickly get bothered and busy with other things. The entry hurdle and cost will reduce the circle of possible members even further. There’s no motivation for a common token holder to join.
2. What will this group of a few hundred self-organized people actually represent? What will be their role in EOS ecosystem development? What kind of money would the top 21 producers delegate to it and why?
3. The Community DAO would be operating with funds, without any legal entity, without legally binding contracts, without taxation, without licensing. In some parts of the world this is an outright criminal activity.
4. This DAO will buy time and resource from commercial providers, such as software development or marketing firms. Those firms will have a hard time to send invoices to a nonexistent legal entity. Income from unknown source is taxed differently in different countries, the legislation is not always precise, and is sometimes interpreted randomly. We’ve seen this hurdle with Telos WPS grants and BP rewards of some producers.
5. Many commercial activities, such as software development or infrastructure services, require mid- and long-term predictability and stability. You wouldn’t invest in human resources or hardware if you know that you’re contracting for an amorphous DAO without a legal address and for an unknown period of time.

In my view, a for-profit entity, with a clear purpose, transparent decision making process, and a legally binding obligation toward the public has more chances to move anywhere.