Now that the EOS snapshot has occurred there are many reports that 50% of all EOS coins are held in 10 wallets. Oops! I suppose the yearlong ICO wasn't as decentralizing as everyone made it out to be.
Can you say that you are surprised? Steem has been out for two years. We've had two years to hype up the platform of one of the only cryptos that actually does something. This in turn caused new people to enter the space and buy Steem coins from the whales, thus decentralizing the platform. EOS has had no time to do this because it remains 100% speculative with no active mainnet.
Perhaps this is jumping the gun a bit. There is a theory out there that states those 10 wallets could be centralized exchanges like Binance. If this was the case, one of those wallets could contain hundreds if not thousands of people's tokens. We'll just have to wait and see what the distribution is actually like once everyone's EOS accounts are actually set up.
On the other side of the coin, can't we assume that some whales split up their holdings into multiple wallets? This would give the appearance of decentralization when they are all controlled by one person. When it really comes down to it, EOS centralization was bound to happen. What else did we expect when the only way to get tokens is with fiat currency.
As long as fiat currency is intimately linked to crypto the space will remain overly centralized because fiat is overly centralized. The ultimate blockchains of the future will simply give coins away (proof-of-existence aka UBI) at the beginning to promote decentralization, and then pivot to a different proof. I generically call this proof-of-reputation or proof-of-trust.
I maintain the idea that @dan will once again get frustrated with this creation and start over again eventually. However, he may stay within the bounds of EOS for quite some time because he can piggyback new coins directly on top of the platform. Still, if 10 accounts control 50% of all coins and each account gets 30 witness votes... you can see how this is an oligarchy. Those 10 accounts can elect all the witnesses. It's been pretty obvious to me from day one that an account should only get one vote (duh).
Fortunately, this isn't something to get freaked out about. New systems of government do not start out corrupt. They get corrupt over time. Blockchain technology evolves so quickly that maneuvering around corruption is much easier than ever before.
Return from EOS is more Centralized than Steem to edicted's Web3 Blog
