{"id":77,"date":"2018-06-21T04:48:58","date_gmt":"2018-06-21T04:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abhashstempblog.wordpress.com\/2018\/06\/21\/how-eosio-vote-decay-works\/"},"modified":"2023-07-26T12:17:54","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T06:47:54","slug":"how-eosio-vote-decay-works","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.springworks.in\/how-eosio-vote-decay-works\/","title":{"rendered":"How EOSIO Vote Decay Works"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the most interesting concepts that EOSIO Dawn 4.0 has brought to our attention is the \u201cVoter Decay\u201d model. We believe that this could potentially be a very powerful model that future blockchain projects can use. However, before we get into it, it is important to understand why voting is such a critical component of EOS.<\/p>\n

Importance of Voting in EOS<\/strong><\/h3>\n

EOS plans to be a decentralized operating system for developers who want to create industrial scale Dapps. The words \u201cindustrial scale\u201d is especially important to understand. They want their EOS blockchain to have extremely high throughput and performance. The way that they achieved this is by utilizing the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) consensus mechanism, where the entire ecosystem votes for 21 block producers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The important of these block producers cannot be underestimated. Not only are they required for general consensus duties, they must also take care of the network as well. This becomes doubly important when you consider the EOS value proposition. In exchange for staking certain amount of tokens, you get access to EOS.IO\u2019s resources such as RAM, Network Bandwidth, and CPU Bandwidth.<\/p>\n

Now, assume that the price of the tokens increases threefold, your access to the network resources should still remain unaffected post token staking. However, what if you don\u2019t own the tokens and are merely looking to secure resources for your Dapp? This is where the block producer (BP) takes charge. The BP must handle the delicate relationship between the network resources and tokens. So, if the price of one token goes up, the BP must work on bringing the cost per unit of resource down to a reasonable range.<\/p>\n

This is, arguably, the most important task of the BP and this is the reason why BP voting is such an important task.<\/p>\n

Voting Apathy and The Free Rider<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The importance of voting in the modern era simply cannot be underestimated. Voting is literally the lifeblood of most democratic governments. In a delegated democracy system, voting is how the people gain a voice. The same is true for a decentralized system like EOS.<\/p>\n

This is the single biggest reason why the blockchain technology is considered to be so revolutionary because it takes the power away from centralized authoritarian entities and gives it back to the people (to be more accurate, the interested participants.)<\/p>\n

However, voting generally falls victim to the free-rider problem. The \u201cfree-rider problem<\/a>\u201d is a concept in game theory where \u201cthose who benefit from resources, public goods, or services do not pay for them, which results in an underprovision of those goods or services.\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see an example of this to understand the concept, after that we will see how this works wrt voting.<\/p>\n

The free rider problem works on public goods\/services which are:<\/p>\n