- Recently leaked spreadsheets allege that Huobi exchanged votes with other EOS Block Producers
- Huobi denies involvement in collusion and manipulation
- Not the first time EOS is accused of lacking decentralization
Last week, vote manipulation and collusion among EOS Block Producers came to light. This week, Huobi is trying to distance itself from the scandal by releasing an official statement.
Four senior executives have recently resigned from EOS’s parent company, Block.one when it was discovered that EOS block producers (BPs) had been colluding and manipulating the system.
According to a September 29th tweet, Huobi has claimed that it had no quid pro agreement with other EOS BPs. This was first reported by Jinse, a Chinese media publication.
How the scheme was discovered
The scandal first came to light on September 26th, when a spreadsheet was leaked which showed that there was mutual voting collusion between primarily Chinese EOS BPs.
An analysis of the manipulation given by the Twitter handle @MapleLeafCap
The 2 allegations in the article are that (a) Huobi and many other BPs mutually vote for each other to cement their BP position, and (b) Huobi openly votes for a few bp candidates in exchange for EOS returns.
The analysis shows that Huobi, who is denying these allegations, voted for 20 BPs and have the favor returned by 16 of them and also receiving percentage returns.
What does the evidence mean?
While evidence like this should create an open and shut case, Huobi continues to deny any wrongdoing. Some who support Huobi say that the activity that has been revealed doesn’t actually have any effect on the market.
While the Block Producers can help each other maintain their positions this way, it would be very expensive to keep protecting the weakest BPs. In the long run, some of them will certainly be replaced despite any collusion.
Regardless, EOS has come under scrutiny in the past for not being properly decentralized and this scandal only adds fuel to that particular fire.
