We are nearing 12 months of the EOS ICO launch date, and the upcoming mainnet launch of EOS is just 10 days away. Many are touting the protocol as one with huge potential for being the premier Blockchain 3.0 platform for decentralized apps and smart contracts. It is a decentralized autonomous corporation, build them, host them, and govern them. Like with many other blockchain 3.0 protocols, it was built from the ground up, with scalability in mind and the ability to conduct millions of transactions per second, according to its cofounder, Dan Larimer. EOS, out the many ICOs in 2017, certainly tried to make a statement when it was advertised at Times Square.

With the release names titled Dawn 1.0 (on September 14th, 2017), Dawn 2.0 (on December 4th, 2017), and Dawn 3.0 (on April 5th, 2017), it’s safe to assume the team named it after the Greek Titaness and goddess of dawn, who rose each morning from her home at the edge of Oceanus. However, there is no official origin story of the name, according to the official EOS FAQ.

According to blockgeeks.com, the two main claims that “have really captured the public’s imagination” are the protocol’s ability to completely remove transaction fees (which leaves it up to the discretion of the dapp developers), and being able to conduct millions of transactions per second. Another huge value proposition, according to Coin Central, will be its suite of dapp development suite of operating-system-like services. Both of these play into developer-adoption, which will hopefully lead to user-adoption.

When did the protocol launch? What’s a one liner that makes EOS unique? What stage is it in development? What is its current rank compared to other blockchain 3.0 protocols?

One of the key concepts behind EOS is its ability to support decentralized apps and facilitate the development of dapps. What differentiates the EOS network from that of Ethereum is the larger array of languages developers can build dapps from. It also provides database management or account management tools for users whereas in Ethereum developers have to create these apps from the ground up, according to boxmining.

EOS currently stands at 5th place in terms of total market cap ($9.84 billion) on CoinMarketCap. It is trading at $11.24, compared to ADA (7th place at $.21) and NEO (11th place at $54.21).

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What is the philosophy behind EOS?

EOS rallies around scalability over decentralization. It is a fairly centralized blockchain protocol, with EOS VC and Block.one as two business and regulatory-facing entities. More importantly, however, is how EOS positions itself as the premier developer-friendly blockchain protocol. What sets EOS apart, according to Dan Larimer, is its operating system-like suite of tools that will encourage developers to create user-friendly decentralized applications.

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What are the unique technical aspects of EOS?

Delegated Proof of Stake

The EOS.IO software utilizes the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) consensus algorithm, invented by Dan Larimer, Chief Technical Officer of EOS. Under the DPOS algorithm, “those who hold tokens on a blockchain adopting the EOS.IO software may select block producers through a continuous approval voting system.” Virtually any participant of the EOS network may vie for votes from other EOS token owners in hopes of becoming a block producer (BP), according to the official EOS.IO Technical White Paper v2.

Recent Developments

With the release of Dawn 3.0, Dan Larimer “believes the platform is now stable enough for serious application developers to start building their applications.” Leading up to the public mainnet launch in June, there will be a finalized system contract that will implement the staking, voting, and governance mechanics. Interestingly enough, the EOS repository was one of the top 10 C++ repositories in all of Github in March 2018.

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What are the main problems EOS is trying to address?

Kyle Samani from Forbes, condensed these 8 problems into three main categories:

1. Scalability & performance
2. Focus on consumer usability
3. Go-to-market focus.

1. Scalability & performance

Kyle Samani also adds that the Ethereum Foundation has prioritized decentralization at the expense of scalability, whereas Block.one has prioritized scalability over decentralization, a “fundamental ideological decision” that will reveal long-term effects overtime.

Prioritizing scalability leads to a high TPS rate (at around 1000 per second). Block.One has indicated how EOS blockchains will scale beyond 10,000 TPS.

This also means that transactions will be free for all users. Users, (depending on how many EOS tokens they own), can interact and execute functions with the blockchain dozens of times, crucial for some particular decentralized apps. The benefit of this leads to greater “consumer usability.”

The scalability of data storage and hosting will be addressed by providing developers with usage analytics for storage and bandwidth, directly from EOS. EOS token stakeholders will pay for the exact storage specs required by developers.

Concerning performance, the EOS system structures each block into cycles to reduce latency and maximize performance. Cycles are turned into threads that run in parallel within cycles (sort of similar to that of Epochs and Slots in Cardano’s blockchain).

2. Consumer Usability

If a decentralized app like Steemit were to run at the scale it does today, it could not if every user had to pay a fee for every article submission, every like, every share, etc.

Protocol-layer account recovery mitigates the common user-issue of potentially “losing one’s password.” A native protocol-layer account recovery assures users one’s wallet can be recovered. Another protocol-layer ensures human-reable addresses. Samani says that

“EOS will allow users to establish.. an EOS address (that) looks like: Kyle Samani, as opposed to 0xdbd838ae88d71bbd465d8f7ddf6b0c9156002d7e”

Accounts and usernames- both necessary and main staple features in the legacy computing world. With consideration to accounts, each one has at least two permission levels: “owner” and “active.” The owner permission level can reset the active permission any time the active key is lost or stolen. Under this model, the account owner permission controlled by one or more hardware wallets will be secure against hacking and device failure.

Fundamentally, however, in order to create great user-friendly applications requires teams of great developers. Ethereum has about 20-30 million participants on the network, and its network effect is much stronger there. It remains to be seen if EOS will provide a developer-friendly platform and create a community as robust as Ethereum’s.

3. Go-To-Market Focus

Approximately $1 billion has been allocated to support partnerships with other leading venture capital investors.

Recently, EOS partnered with Asia-focused EOSIO Ecosystem on April 6th, 2018, for a joint venture fund called EOS Global. The $200 million joint venture fund will make strategic investment in Asia-focused projects utilizing EOSIO.

Block.one has been establishing partnerships with various institutions across the board of key industries. On May 18th, Block.One committed $3 million to Virginia Tech to educate its College of Engineering and Computer Science student body through participation in live classroom sessions, seminars, and symposia.

“Blockchain has the potential to have a vast impact on humanity” — Julia M. Ross, Paul and Dorothea Togersen Dean of Virginia Tech’s College of Engineering

Block.One also established a $100 million joint fund with FinLab AG on March 21st, 2018. The fund, managed by Finlab, will make strategic investments throughout Europe that like the Asia-focused joint venture fund, will utilize the EOSIO open-sourced blockchain software.

Another notable joint venture for EOS is that with TomorrowVentures, the early-stage startup venture capital firm created by Eric Schmidt, Google’s Executive Chairman. TomorrowVentures and Block.one created a joint venture fund called Tomorrow Blockchain Opportunities

(TomorrowBC), according to PR Newswire.

Block.One is setting up joint venture capital funds around the world to help kickstart local entrepreneurship in both Asia and Europe, upon EOS.IO’s mainnet launch.

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What is the corporate structure?

Block.one is the big guy behind the EOSIO blockchain protocol. It’s an open-source software publisher “specializing in high performance blockchain technologies,” according to its website. In December 2017, Block.one launched EOS VC, an investment vehicle for businesses and initiatives leveraging the EOS platform around the world.

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Who is on the Block.one and EOS team?

Brendan Blumer—CEO of EOS

As the co-founder of Block.One with Dan Larimer in 2016, Blumer serves as the CEO of Block.One, the parent entity of EOS.IO.

“If the internet was mass, scalable, insecure data transfer, then the blockchain represents mass, secure data transfer and everything that comes with it.”

Prior to founding EOS.IO, Blumer was involved in multiple startups, most notably Accounts.net, which sold in-game avatars and reached more than $1 million a month in revenue.

Dan Larimer — CTO of EOS

Currently serving as CTO of EOS, Larimer also founded the cryptocurrency platform Bitshares in 2014 and the social media platform Steemit in 2016. He is credited with inventing the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) algorithm. Some in the blockchain community praise Larimer for his expertise in creating long-term sustaining blockchain protocols, whereas some perceive him as a pump-and-dump schemer. Only time will tell.

Rob Jesudason— COO of Block.one

Jesudason used to be Commonwealth Bank of Australia’s Chief Financial Officer, and oversaw group finance, audit, treasury, security, and property and investor relations. As a member of Block.one’s Board of Directors, Jesudason will also be responsible for scaling the group’s global operations. It should also be noted that he was formerly the Head of Global Emerging Markets at Credit Suisse, and worked previously at JPMorgan, Barclays, GE Capital, and McKinsey & Company.

Lee A. Schneider — General Counsel of Block.one

Schneider has led blockchain practices at two major int’l firms, most recently at McDermott Will & Emery. He was also one of the contributing authors to Coinbase’s “A Securities Law Framework for Blockchain Tokens.”As General Counsel, Schneider will be responsible for all of Block.One’s legal affairs and be involved in regulatory and compliance initiatives.

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ICO + Tokenomics

The EOS token sale was unique in that it was an ERC20 token sale that lasted for over a year as a measure to prevent massive price volatility. The token sale opened on June 26th, 2017, first with a 5-day period that distributed 200 million tokens. The next 700 million were then distributed over 350 consecutive 23-hour periods beginning on July 1st, 2017. 100 million tokens will be reserved for Block.one. According to TrustNodes, Americans or Chinese could not participate in the ICO due to regulatory complications, though they can be traded for on most major exchanges.

Upon the mainnet launch on June 1st, many EOS-token holders will be switching their ERC-20 token to the official EOS token. Here’s are official press releases on registering EOS tokens on Binance, Kraken, and Bitfinex. The current Ether to EOS conversion is as follows: a*(b/c)

a = Total ETH contributed by an authorized purchase

b = Total number of EOS tokens available for distribution in the period

c = Total ETH contributed by all authorized purchasers during the period

EOS: circulating supply is 875.26 million tokens, and there is a maximum supply of 1 billion. As of May 23rd, 11:01PM PST, EOS is trading at $11.24 on CoinMarketCap.

DISCLAIMER: We are in no way associated with the EOS team. Neither is this meant to be financial advice. Whatever follows just reflects our understanding of the project, and our personal opinion on its outlook. Here is a link to their official whitepapers.