A sockpuppet in the context of EOS is a second block producer owned by an existing block producer on the network. This post will go over the incentives which lead to the existence of sockpuppets on EOS.

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Model

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For simplicity’s sake, let us imagine:

15 block producers with 10 million EOS each (Group A)

• Each producer has 5 million EOS in account 1 (Accounts A1)
• Each producer has 5 million EOS in account 2 (Accounts A2)

15 block producers with 5 million EOS each (Group B)

• Each producer has 5 million EOS in account 1 (Accounts B1)

If each of these 30 block producers were to vote for each other with the amount of votes the receiving party holds, we would end up with:

Group A:

• Voting for 15 block producers (Group A) with 10 millon EOS (Accounts A1 and A2)
• Voting for 15 block producers (Group B) with 5 millon EOS (Accounts A1)

Group B:

• Voting for 30 block producers (Group A and B) with 5 millon EOS (Accounts B1)

Result:

• Block producers in group A have 225 million votes each
• Block producers in group B have 150 million votes each

Incentives

In this model, each of the 15 block producers in group A has 5 million EOS (Accounts A2) which is not voting for anyone.

Each block producer from group A can create a new block producer sock puppet (Group C), and vote for each other from the unutilized Accounts A2 pool.

This would amount to 5 million EOS each from the 15 block producers in Group A, for a total of 75 million votes for each sock puppet in Group C.

Final Result

• Block producers in group A have 225 million votes each
• Block producers in group B have 150 million votes each
• Block producers in group C have 75 million votes each

Conclusion

We see that the design of EOS incentivizes maximum allocation of voting power across block producers. Sock puppets are an efficient tool for the allocation of unutillzed voting power. In a future post, I will discuss how the efficient allocation of voting power reduces the 1 token 30 vote system of EOS to a 1 token 1 vote system.