What is Eden
EDEN is a new way to decide who should make decisions, known as “Fractal Democracy”. It is based on Dan’s book More Equal Animals. Members are randomly assigned into groups of 4-6 people. The objective is to persuade your group that you are competent and trustworthy enough to represent the group in the next round. It then repeats with all the winners of the first group. With the final 4-6 people, the winner is chosen randomly to prevent incumbent advantage.
“EDEN on EOS” is the first implementation of the EDEN system on the EOS blockchain. Proceeding through one round grants you a budget. The budget increases as one gets further into the rounds. The winners of the rounds are called “Delegates”. The group who makes it to the final round are the “Chief Delegates”. The one winner who is selected randomly from the final group receives the most funding. The amount this “Head Chief Delegate” earns depends on how many rounds were needed to reach the final group. In the first official election, the Head Chief Delegate earned ⅓ of the total treasury because there were three rounds. Funds are distributed monthly at a 5% drip rate of the total EDEN Treasury.
EDEN on EOS is pioneering a new decentralized dispute resolution system using the principles of dividing a cookie. Let one child divide the cookie and the other pick which side he/she wants. In practice, “the Plaintiff and Defendant each propose a division and a randomly selected jury chooses which proposal is ‘more fair’1. The goal “is to take back our power from corrupt governments, which means rejecting the corrupt court processes and instituting new, [fairer] processes.”2
In order to join EDEN on EOS, one must get invited to go on camera with three other members for an induction ceremony where the invitee pledges to have read the Peace Treaty. The invitee must donate (currently) 10 $EOS to show “skin in the game” that funnels into the EDEN Treasury. With provably unique and trusted members, bots are eliminated. Other applications, like one called Violet Garden, can then use the EDEN member list to exclude bots as well.
As of 2021, EDEN on EOS is funded by inflation through grants from the EOS Foundation. The intention, over time, is to directly receive funds from the BPs rather than going through the Foundation. Eventually, Dan has stated the intention to use the EDEN process to select BPs, rather than the DPOS method of voting for them with $EOS tokens.