The EOS blockchain, the “operating system” platform for which a record $4 billion was raised by parent company Block.One in an initial coin offering in May, is in trouble with community members over an arbitration decision.

The drama relating to the EOS blockchain, which is supposed to allow scalable “decentralized autonomous communities” with the support of asynchronous smart contract communication, started after the EOS Core Arbitration Forum decreed an “Emergency Measure of Protection Order” June 22. That forced blockchain participants not to process transactions from 27 different accounts that had been compromised by hackers or scammers.

As Coindesk explains, the order required the EOS network’s block producers – the 21 validators who maintain the blockchain in a way analogous to bitcoin’s miners — to take action, despite the fact that the very intent of the EOS blockchain is that it is supposed to be decentralized. In other words, the order compelled those involved to act in a centralized manner instead of operating as decentralized parts of the network.

The order was heavily criticized on two fronts — first that it went against the ethos of a decentralized blockchain, and the second that the process used to make the order was “haphazard and unprofessional.” Opposition to the order has already resulted in open rebellion. EOS New York, one of the 21 validators on the network, said it will ignore ECAF decisions in the future.

Dan Larimer, co-founder and chief technical officer of the EOS blockchain, has said that he wants to scrap the platform’s current constitution and build a new one to address the issue. But although many are opposed to the ECAF process, a majority of validators would have to agree to that proposal for it to work, causing even further splits and chaos in the EOS community.

“I have learned a lot about human nature by watching the disputes, the witch hunts, the ‘bring everything before the ECAF’ mindset,” Larimer said, suggesting that it was validators on the network raising the issues to ECAF that led to the order.

Under Larimer’s proposed new constitution, an arbitrator would be able to “render an opinion and the parties can either comply or not and the arbitrator can indicate whether a party is in good standing … An arbitrator should not ever have the power to take assets unless said assets were previously placed in control of the arbitrator.”

The dispute has affected the price of the EOS token. The price dropped from $10.56 on June 22, the day the ECAF order was given, to $7.77 as of 11:15 p.m EDT Wednesday. With a market capitalization of $7 billion, the token is currently the fifth most valuable cryptocurrency online behind bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple XRP and Bitcoin Cash.

Image: Block.one