EOS Block Producer Hears About ECAF Freeze Order A Little Too Late

On June 22, the EOS Core Arbitration Board released its second emergency order to freeze compromised accounts that were likely subject to theft. However, one of the block producers failed to follow through on the order, resulting in a loss of 3,570 EOS (currently valued at over $27,000).  

For these freezes to be maintained, all of the block producers must refuse to create blocks for the account in question. If one block producer fails to implement the freeze, the account remains active.

The fact that a freeze must be unanimous is what allowed block producer EOS New York to get ECAF to issue the first freeze order on June 19. By threatening to unfreeze the compromised accounts unilaterally, putting millions of dollars’ worth of EOS at risk, EOS New York essentially blackmailed ECAF into acting.

Unlike EOS New York’s threat, EosStore was not trying to flex political muscle, and the failure to freeze doesn’t appear to be a result of in-fighting among the EOS community. Instead, Simon Wang, who is “responsible for the technology of EosStore” maintains that he just didn’t know about the order.

In an exchange posted on Twitter, he wrote, “I didn’t receive the last blacklist … sorry for that.”

After being pressed, he then says he hadn’t attended recent meetings because, “I have some private affairs, sorry for that … very sorry.”

Simon also apologized on Telegram for the failure to freeze the account, though not everyone has accepted his professed contrition.

Sometime after the Twitter exchange (and under looming threats of lawsuits), EosStore provided a more thorough statement about the incident. In it, there are no mentions of “private affairs.” Instead, the blame is placed on confusion caused by ECAF’s lack of an official outlet for its orders. EosStore states that the order didn’t appear on any of the following channels:

“1. Three Telegram channels: EOSIO Gov, EOS Validation (EMLG) and EOS BP Infrastructure.;
2. Github as the first blacklist did;
3. Zoom video meeting on June 21st.”

The statement also cited confusion created by an apparent hoax order that circulated online earlier this week. “[Because of] current massive fake news, like a fake ECAF arbitration order these days, we did not updated [sic] the blacklist in time.”

EOS New York decried the absence of an official ECAF communication channel in its statement about the hoax order from earlier this week.

EosStore said it is willing to reimburse the tokens that were lost and has proposed the development of a publishing platform for ECAF arbitration orders, inviting “all BPs to co-develop a software” for it. It is unclear why the creation of new platform is necessary; ECAF has a website, but so far has not posted any of its orders there.

Tim Prentiss is a writer and editor for ETHNews. He has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Nevada, Reno. He lives in Reno with his daughter. In his spare time he writes songs and disassembles perfectly good electronic devices.

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