EOS Developer Acknowledges Claims of ‘Collusion’ and ‘Mutual Voting’ Between Nod

[Cordillerabit]

Block.one, the developer of blockchain protocol EOS, has published a statement on EOS public blockchain governance in an official Medium post October 1, signed by Block.one’s CEO, Brendan Blumer.

In the statement, Blumer states that the company is “aware of some unverified claims regarding irregular block producer voting, and the subsequent denials of those claims.”

Without providing any details on the “denials” of allegations, Blumer stated that EOS will continue to “ensure a free and democratic election process and [...] vote with other holders to reinforce the integrity of this process.”

The statement follows recent allegations that accuse the platform’s major Block Producers (BPs) — the equivalent of miners on the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain — including Chinese crypto exchange Huobi, of “mutual voting” and “collusion.”

The accusations began to surface last week, when Eosone, which had already published a report on controversial EOS BPs this September, posted what it claims was a leaked Huobi spreadsheet in its blog on WeChat. The spreadsheet contained four tables with "node mutual voting table" and "node income statement" among them.

As per Eosone, this could mean that main EOS nodes, including Chinese crypto exchange Huobi (the fourth BP in current producer ranking, according to EOS Titan), were involved in mutual voting along with pay-offs.

The top 21 BPs in current EOS ranking, according to EOS Titan. Source: EOS Titan

Twitter user Maple Leaf Capital provided a detailed explanation of the internal document in English. Per the tweet, Huobi voted for 20 other BPs, and 16 of them voted back for Huobi.

A list of EOS BPs allegedly involved in mutual voting. Source: @MapleLeafCap

Per the above table, Huobi voted for three other BPs in exchange for significant pay-offs. Maple Leaf further explains the data from the spreadsheet:

Huobi votes for eosiosg11111, cochainworld, and eospaceioeos in exchange for 170, 150, and 50% of the returns respectively...”

Source