EOS: WTF?
A blockchain has never been worth as much before it even existed. The masterpiece of blockchain architect Dan Larimer promises to solve all problems that other cryptocurrencies suffer from. So far, however, its founders in particular have made it even richer. At the beginning of June, however, EOS will show what it does.
In many cryptocurrencies, prices are currently jumping up. But none as strong as with EOS. Since mid-March alone, the value of the 840 million EOS tokens has become more than tripled by increasing from about 5 to a good $ 16. This means that EOS is in fourth place in the ranking of cryptocurrencies after market capitalization. This becomes even more astonishing when you show yourself that the tokens were traded at around 50 cents in early November 2017.
Anyone who has invested in time has its commitment in truth – and that while EOS does not yet exist. So far, the currency only exists as an ERC20 token on Ethereum. What the ..? How does EOS get the most hyped blockchain project of this year?
Before we come to the technology, we stay with the people behind EOS for a moment. Because these are at least as interesting. The prospective blockchain has had some of the most prominent and richest players in the eco system. On the one hand, there would be Dan Larimer, who has already proven as the inventor of Bitshares and Steem that he can form highly scalable blockchains. He is supported by Brendan Blumer and Brock Pierce by the investment company Block.one. All three have a place in the Forbes list of the Reichen in Kryptoland.
Great expectations
The sale of the EOS tokens has played a major role in making Larimer, Blumer and Pierce into three-digit millionaires or billionaires. The token-selling is about a good three quarters of a year and will be completed after 341 days. About 900.000 token sold. Two months ago, the team had taken more than two billion dollars, which makes EOS the most successful ICO of all time.
It seems to be the expectation that Dan Larimer will do something big with his third attempt. But what exactly wants to achieve EOS? The “Epic Operation System” (“Epic Operating System”) should be a decentralized operating system for DAPPS (decentralized applications). According to the usual explanations, whether on Reddit or Steemit, EOS Accounts and databases will have to make it possible to identify users, and be able to scale to millions of transactions per second thanks to various procedures. EOS is said to be the platform for smart contracts and decentralized computing, and also a blockchain for all financial transactions. The claim is to make all other cryptocurrencies superfluous.
EOS is supposed to be the Google of blockchains. Apparently it doesn’t work underneath.
The technology
Like Bitshares and Steem, EOS uses the “Delegated Proof of Stake” procedure (dpos) developed by Larimer and already used by Lisk Lisk and already. According to the EOS technical white paper, this is “the only known decentralized consensus algorithm that has been proven to meet the requirements for blockchain applications.“In fact, Bitshares and Steemit succeeded in processing thousands of transactions each second with this procedure without shooting the latency of the network through the ceiling. At least in test environments. But also in everyday life, Steem is able to cope with many transactions (about 1.5 million a day)
In short, DPOS works in such a way that the “community” selects a certain number of block producers-at EOS there are 21 in number-which then verify transactions and blocks and continue the blockchain. In this choice, each user receives a voice in relation to the number of tokens that he holds. One could compare it a little with the concept of the election men in the United States, with the difference that there is a continuous choice in which users can fire a block producer at any time if they behave incorrectly. For their work, block producers are of course rewarded by EOS tokens. They also ensure that EOS has a kind of “government” that makes decisions, for example, how the software is further developed.
As the white paper explains, EOS will have an account system that is more reminiscent of websites than blockchains: the users are shown by a name or a pseudoyym. Each account holder can determine in different levels which rights are assigned if other users interact with them. This enables different roles to assign the actors in the EOS ecosystem, depending on which function they exert in a ratio structured by a smart contract. It will also be possible to rescue credit when private keys have been stolen or to freeze accounts if, for example, criminal activities are carried out by these. Both are done by a majority decision by the block producers.
A variety of scripts and a virtual machine ensure that almost every conceivable Smart Contract can be carried out on EOS. The project thus competes in direct competition with Ethereum-even while it only exists as a token on the Ethereum blockchain.
In order to get thousands or even millions of transactions (according to the representation of EOS), the project relies on several concepts. On the one hand, it is assumed that the 21 block producers have sufficiently good hardware to master the data load. The data processing at EOS is also massively parallelized. Above all, however, EOS is supposed to build a universe from sidechains that can be used with the same token.
The rulable blockchain
EOS plans to form a controllable log grove. A cryptocurrency that is aristocratically managed by the 21 block producers have extensive rights to intervene in the financial and other interactions. The unhappy, which we know from Bitcoin and also from Ethereum – at least changes in Ethereum are now extremely difficult – it is noted by EOS as little as the freedom of permission that gives the same rights at Bitcoin or Ethereum.
In other words, EOS is trying to make the governments of this world tasty a blockchain. EOS offers some of the advantages of blockchains – transparency, decentralization, openness – without taking over the loss of control that many governments of blockchains fear. I personally find this relatively boring because EOS simply gives two of the most exciting aspects of blockchains – freedom of permission and the unchangeability – and what should not have a cryptocurrency: a government.
But with many others, EOS obviously is well received. For example, Bitfinex has already agreed to want to form a decentralized exchange based on EOS (Eosfinex), and the large manufacturer of Bitcoin-Mining hardware Bitmain is already applying to a place as a block producer. There are also numerous other projects to use the EOS blockchain projects.
However, this is not even official, even if it already exists as a test network. However, EOS should officially go live at the beginning of June. Then you will see whether the project will meet the high expectations.
