Decentralized Wikipedia rival ditches Ethereum to launch on the EOS blockchain

Following botched plans to launch on Ethereum, decentralized encyclopedia Everipedia has announced its operation is going live on the EOS blockchain.

Everipedia wants to rival Wikipedia by offering a truly open and censorship-free database of information. Its developers claim that Wikipedia suffers from too many regulations and “bureaucratic-type overseers” that make it “attractive only to a relatively small portion of potential encyclopedia writers.”

There is an inherent connection between the two platforms, too: particularly the presence of Dr. Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, who is Everipedia’s chief information officer (CIO).

The hope is that Everipedia will benefit from EOS’s supposed decentralized nature – but just how much censorship resistance can be derived remains unproven.

The migration from Ethereum to EOS

Its launch was a long time coming – the project first appeared last year, originally being built for Ethereum. In December, the team jumped ship to EOS, which coincided with the hiring of Sanger. The developers maintain that building on Ethereum is “infeasibly difficult” – at least, until it solves its scalability issues .

While this is a fair argument, it should be noted that EOS has its own brand of problems related to how it deals with sharp increases in traffic. Particularly, it’s had trouble coming up with a solution for distributing critical resources to app developers, namely RAM.

“Not everything works or is ready on the EOS platform, but that is the same for Ethereum,” the Everipedia team told Hard Fork in an email. “Scaling solutions are still being worked on, storage, RAM, and bandwidth costs fluctuate a lot. Obviously, things need to be improved and economics worked out.”

How Everipedia will work

Everipedia features an incentive system powered by its native cryptocurrency – IQ. Contributors and validators are rewarded for objectivity and high standards with tokens. This, combined with blind allegiance to decentralization, is to be apparently enough to control quality.

The introduction of money to the editorial process also raises certain ethical questions. Answers, it seems, come by way of the idyllic ‘free market‘ – the best content will inevitably rise to the top, as long as there is incentive.

Having no central authority also brings new challenges. We already know there are problems associated with maintaining quality of decentralized content. Namely, there can be too many dicks – and even widespread astroturfing .

This problem certainly isn’t unique to decentralized platforms – as Wikipedia is notorious for trolls. To combat this, Wikipedia tracks IP addresses to see who’s doing what – a data trail reminiscent of a blockchain, in the way that records are kept of all page edits.

Sanger further elaborated on how he envisions the platform will work, in an email to Hard Fork:

Like Wikipedia – but with money

Its success really hinges on whether or not the system will inspire legitimate content. Although live today, its still an experiment still in its early stages. It claims to have over 8,000 contributors already and a larger volume of English entries than Wikipedia.

This is probably due to Everipedia having a head start: its original database was an exactly copy of Wikipedia’s – a complete set of entries. Sanger assured Hard Fork that it’s totally going to be different – albeit eventually.

In the end, this is really an attempt at piecing together a global workforce of encyclopedists – something Wikipedia has tried, but due to its non-profit nature and lack of incentives, the integrity of its contributors has often drawn criticism. A few years back, The Atlantic reported that Wikipedia entries were being doctored by those paid to influence consumers and even medical patients.

“We need a much wider variety of people to feel comfortable about contributing. Instead of about 10,000 contributors—that’s my estimate of the number of active Wikipedians—a more open, decentralized network will be able to organize the labor of millions of intellectuals from around the world.” Sanger told us. “That’s what should exist. But you can organize that number of people only in a highly decentralized, neutral leaderless way, in much the same way the Internet itself was organized, via neutral technical protocols.”

Can EOS handle it?

EOS has a history of block producers shirking constitutional responsibilities and doing as they please, independent of consensus. Recently, seven accounts were frozen after they were suspected of housing stolen funds. Usually, an arbitrary body makes such decisions, and although they rejected the motion, block producers went ahead and did it anyway .

There are also concerns regarding the influence Blockne has over EOS. Dan Larimer recently declared that it will be taking part in elections for the right to produce blocks in the network. At first glance, this may seem above board – but considering that EOS utilizes Delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus, the large amounts of EOS controlled by Blockne challenges certain claims of decentralization.

As creators, Blockne actually own enough EOS to control 25 percent of votes , raising significant conflict of interest concerns – not to mention if this centralizes any decision making. Two days before this, though, Dan Larimer was arguing to get rid of its constitution altogether , claiming it was “unwise” to begin with.

The whole thing warrants questions, particularly regarding the effect EOS governance could have on Everipedia. If snap decisions can be made to freeze accounts outside of protocol – can decisions be made to silence contributors by locking their accounts?

If we’re really building a new internet, one decentralized, it should probably have its own encyclopedia. Having a monetary reward system for contributors sure sounds great – but reimbursement for content creation inevitably gets in the way of editorial ethics.

Any potential consequences are yet to be played out, although Everipedia finally being open to the public sure gives us a front-row seat.

[Best of 2019] A quick guide to understanding blockchain smart contracts

Welcome to Hard Fork Basics, a collection of tips, tricks, guides, and advice to keep you up to date in the cryptocurrency and blockchain world.

‘Smart contracts’ is a term that gets thrown about quite often in the blockchain world, but there seems to be some confusion about what they are – and how they work.

Some context

The term was first coined by Nick Szabo, a prominent computer scientist, and cryptographer, who first proposed the idea in the 1990s.

Szabo realized that decentralized ledger technology could be leveraged for smart contracts, which could be converted into computer code, stored, and replicated on the system under the supervision of the computer network tasked with keeping the blockchain running.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to support basic smart contracts, in the sense that its network is able to transfer value from one participant to another. Its programming language enables the creation of smart contracts such as payment channels, escrows, multisig accounts, and time locks, but is somewhat limited.

Ethereum, on the other hand, was built with smart contracts in mind. It replaces Bitcoin‘s more restrictive script language with one that enables developers to build their own decentralized applications. It’s currently the most prominent smart contracts framework.

How do they work

Unlike a normal contract, which is drafted by a lawyer, signed by partaking parties, and enforced by law, a smart contract sets out a relationship with cryptographic code.

In simple terms, smarts contracts are self-executing, written into code, and built as complex if-then statements (meaning that they will only be fulfilled if the established conditions are met).

Ultimately, smart contracts remove the need for a third party, meaning participants entering into the agreement can transact directly with each other.

The best way to think about smart contracts is to imagine you’re trying to buy a can of soda, tagged as ‘A5,’ in a vending machine.

To make your purchase, you insert the amount, say $4, into the machine. Once you’ve inserted the funds, you need to select A5 in order to continue.

After you make your selection, the vending machine will set its lever in motion to push out your can of soda.

This highlights the need to fulfill each separate step in the contract between the individual buying the can of soda and the vending machine. In this case, the contract would stipulate that the correct amount of funds must be inserted, and the correct selection made, in order for the machine to push out the end goal (aka the soda).

You should also know that smart contracts can work independently – they can operate on a one off discrete instance – but they can also run alongside other smart contracts and the successful completion of one will trigger the beginning of another, and so on. So, if the soda inventory is low, another smart contract could order some more, and pay for them.

But, will they replace lawyers?

Smart contracts have been deemed potentially revolutionary across a range of industries with some observers going as far as saying that they will replace traditional contracts and lawyers.

Those who say smart contracts will render lawyers useless usually believe the entire legal agreement is expressed in its code. Essentially meaning that code is law and as such lawyers are unlikely to be required – unless they are also developers.

In general, smart contracts are perceived to be code (not law) used to automate the execution of an underlying legal agreement.

So, are they legally binding? I’m afraid not – at least for now.

Want to find out more about cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology? Check out our Hard Fork track at TNW 2019 !

UK launches the world’s first crypto assets task force

Britain has announced a plan to establish a special ‘task force’ for crypto assets, in a statement from the office of the Treasury of the UK.

Philip Hammond, UK Finance Minister, said in the statement:

The initiative is part of a larger collective fintech sector strategy; one which will “help the UK to manage the risks around crypto assets, as well as harnessing the potential benefits of the underlying technology,” as per Hammond.

Philip Hammond is expected to announce the task force — which will comprise of Bank of England, the Financial Conduct Authority, and the Treasury itself — on Thursday, at the government’s second International Fintech Conference.

The statement also announced the government’s interest in creating a UK-Australia ‘fintech bridge’, which will aim to connect the countries’ respective markets and help UK firms expand internationally.

The British government has been mostly supportive of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology, only sporadically calling for increased regulations in the industry.

British Prime Minister Theresa May, speaking at the World Economic Forum in January, shared her concerns about potential criminal usage of cryptocurrencies.

The governor of the Bank of England reiterated the same concern earlier this month, calling price volatility within the space “speculative mania”. He also said “Bitcoin has pretty much failed as a form of money.”

Bank of England also announced plans to launch its own cryptocurrency in December 2017, to be launched by early 2018. There has been no update on its progress since.

The UK government has thus far avoided creating unnecessary fear or uncertainty in the market, and has always come up with straightforward statements, a virtue missing in most of the countries’ governments – at least when it comes to cryptocurrencies.