Why the bare metal argument for EOS BP’s is incomplete.
There have been some BPs and public personalities advocating for a vote for BARE METAL block producers. This article is an attempt to expand on this issue and perhaps give voters a more balanced perspective on the matter.
The argument goes something like this: “Bare metal servers are the best because they ensure no 3rd party can shut down EOS”. They have a point, if all BPs were to use AWS, then it becomes apparent that EOS has a central point of failure. I would personally like to see a maximum of 1 BP out of the top 21 running on AWS, if any.
However, let’s look at the flip side. If ALL BP’s have a Bare Metal setup, and are located in the top jurisdictions (China, US, Korea, Europe), it is easy to see that the network becomes vulnerable. All it takes is a few governments going after these locations in concert and EOS goes down.
The capital and time required to upgrade equipment as the demands on the network grow is something that will become an issue pretty soon. Some teams have the skill and resources to pull it off, but there is a scenario where EOS tokens go down in value and BP rewards will not suffice to grow the equipment requirements.
At eosMeso, we studied the various bare metal options, and decided that a LOCAL CLOUD spanning MULTIPLE JURISDICTIONS was our best choice, at least at this early stage, in order to provide fast and flexible infrastructure that can grow very quickly and meet global standards of tier 3 ISO certification.
We believe the best choice for voters is a mixed bag of geographical and jurisdictionally diverse BPs on both bare metal and DIFFERENT cloud infrastructures. A vote in this direction will provide the most antifragility for EOS.
As we move forward, we believe the lines separating bare metal from cloud will blur further. A Bare Metal BP might decide to set up nodes in several locations and might have capital partners with experience in building state of the art data centers, it will start to look more like a “Cloud BP”. A “cloud BP” might install within several state of the art data centers, their own machines and start looking more like a Bare Metal BP.
As with everything, there is nuance inside each BP proposal. Please do your own research and vote with care for a robust, fast and resilient EOS network.
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