- 1 EOS uses DPoS and approval voting for decentralized, scalable consensus with 21 elected block producers.
- 2 Token holders influence block production, maintaining decentralization and accountability in the EOS network.
- 3 EOS’s 15-producer consensus threshold deters malicious activity, enhancing security and blockchain integrity.
EOS uses Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS) for consensus to achieve scalability, flexibility, and usability. Token holders vote for block producers to validate transactions and add blocks. 21 producers are elected, with a minimum of 15 required for consensus on new blocks. Standby producers can replace underperforming ones based on voting. The governance model creates accountability for voters. With block producers elected by stakeholder votes rather than computing power, EOS leverages distributed decision-making to deliver greater speed and scalability than proof-of-work while still maintaining decentralization and trustless consensus.
EOS Block Producer Election and Governance Mechanism
Block producers are nodes that are elected to generate blocks by EOS token holders through a continuous approval voting system. There can be a maximum of 21 block producers at any given time that are actively validating transactions and adding blocks to the EOS blockchain. To become a candidate block producer, an EOS token holder needs to obtain votes from other EOS token holders proportional to the amount of tokens they hold.
The top 21 candidates who obtain the maximum number of approval votes get elected as active block producers, while others remain on standby. These standby block producers can replace any of the top 21 producers if they fail to generate blocks or are deemed untrustworthy. The voting process and elections occur automatically and continuously on the EOS network.
EOS token holders who stake their tokens in the network obtain voting rights to select block producers. Each EOS token counts as one vote towards a producer. Token holders can vote for up to 30 producer candidates and can spread their votes how they choose. They can multiple times vote for a single producer or spread votes over several candidates.
Voting is essential to EOS as it allows token holders to influence the block. Production. Process directly. It ensures the network remains decentralized by preventing too much control from accumulating in one or a few block producers. If token holders are unhappy with certain producers, they can remove their votes to kick them out of the top 21. This maintains the accountability of block producers towards the community.
Ensuring Network Security and Accountability
The EOS blockchain requires agreement between a decentralized alliance of block producers to add new blocks rather than reliance on any single entity. Specifically, at least 15 of the 21 elected block producers must actively participate and reach a consensus in the block production process. This differs drastically from proof-of-work models like Bitcoin and Ethereum, where any single miner who solves the cryptographic puzzle first gets to add the next block unilaterally.
The EOS consensus approach provides greater security against malicious actions on the network. If a few block producers were to act deceptively by approving fraudulent transactions, they would fail to gain agreement from the other 15 required producers, who would reject the invalid block.
This deters misconduct since no block producer or small colluding group can arbitrarily override decisions on the EOS blockchain without broader consensus. The minimum approval threshold of 15 out of 21 elected producers is sufficient to prevent centralized control while still maintaining adequate decentralization.
Block Validation and Consensus Process
When transactions are submitted to the EOS network, block producers are responsible for processing and validating them for inclusion in new blocks. Producers examine pending transactions in the queue to ensure they are fully valid and have no conflicts with the current state of the blockchain. A designated producer bundles validated transactions into a new block and cryptographically signs it with their private key.
This proposed block is transmitted across the EOS peer-to-peer network to the other 20 block producers for review. Each producer checks the validity of all transactions in the block to prevent any fraudulent or erroneous activity from being codified into the blockchain. Once the block has been signed and approved by at least 15 producers, consensus is reached, and the block is permanently added to the EOS blockchain.
Block producers are rewarded with newly created EOS tokens for adding valid blocks. This incentive encourages timely verification and signing of blocks. The 0.25% annual inflation funds rewards while keeping inflation low. Rewards are proportional to blocks produced, incentivizing participation. Missed blocks result in forfeited rewards. The incentives and penalties drive producers to efficiently validate transactions and sign blocks so the EOS network can reach consensus quickly and attain high throughput.
Rotating Block Production Ensures Decentralization
To promote decentralization and fairness, the EOS consensus protocol utilizes a round-robin randomized schedule to determine the producer who gets to generate the next block. The order of the 21 active block producers is shuffled, and only every round. When a producer’s turn comes up in the schedule, they have a 500-millisecond window to broadcast their block before the right shifts to the next producer.
This regular rotating schedule prevents any single producer from dominating block production while giving all active producers proportional opportunity over time. The randomized rotation combined with the consensus voting process ensures adequate decentralization in EOS block creation and distributed governance by stakeholders.
Conclusion
In conclusion, EOS employs an innovative consensus protocol that leverages the power of stakeholder voting to achieve efficiency, decentralization, and scalability. By having EOS token holders elect block producers through continuous approval voting, the network remains accountable to the community. Requiring agreement from 15 out of 21 block producers to validate transactions and add blocks provides fault tolerance while preventing centralized control over the blockchain.
The randomized, rotating schedule for block production ensures no single node monopolizes block creation. Together, these mechanisms enable EOS to support extremely high transaction throughput compared to older proof-of-work models while maintaining network security and achieving decentralized consensus amongst block producers. The EOS consensus protocol demonstrates how community participation, economic incentives, and delegated block production can be combined to create a high-performance and decentralized blockchain capable of wide-scale adoption.
