If you haven’t heard of the altcoin – and blockchain – EOS, it’s about time we caught you up.
EOS is different… in almost every way imaginable.
It claims to have game-changing technology. That may be the only thing it has in common with other blockchains.
EOS says its technology will power 100,000 transactions per second – through something called horizontal scalability (we’re not going to get into how it works right now). Block.one, the developer of EOS, claims its technology will ultimately process millions of transactions per second.
For comparison’s sake, bitcoin does seven transactions per second. Visa does 56,000 per second. Sounds like a game changer to me – if these guys can pull it off. And, unlike bitcoin and Visa, it charges no fees.
Does anybody believe this is even remotely possible?
If money talks (and it does), the answer is yes, to the tune of $4 billion raised (in an initial coin offering). It’s the most collected by a cryptocurrency team.
And EOS being EOS, it’s giving away its $4 billion code (as I write) to anybody who wants it. Its launch (sort of) began a few days ago, or more precisely, 23 hours after the code became available as open-source software.
Yet, here we are. It’s been several days since the code was “given away,” and the blockchain still isn’t live.
The last big event happened June 2. Snapshots were taken of the Ethereum tokens. These pictures will be used later to issue tokens on the EOS blockchain to their owners.
These coins won’t be tradable until the blockchain goes live. So what’s next?
A group of block producer candidates is running tests on the software to make sure everything’s okay. Only after that’s completed can the first block be created.
We’re still waiting.
Block producer candidates still need to publicly identify themselves.
One of them will need to create the genesis block.
Voting on the first official slate of block producers still needs to take place. Only 21 producers are allowed at any given time to verify EOS transactions.
And the vote only counts if 15% of EOS tokens are represented by the voters. Otherwise?
EOS doesn’t get turned on.
No, this isn’t your typical blockchain launch. Almost all of these qualify as “first time” events. No other blockchain has done these things before.
And it doesn’t get easier.
The EOS community is confused as to how voting will take place. User-friendly interfaces are few and far between.
It’s normal for bugs to crop up in launches. They could be easy to patch. Or incredibly hard to fix. Hard to know right now.
We’re witnessing a controlled-chaos-like process. Pretty wild.
Yet, nobody is panicking.
“Things are going about as we expected,” one EOS insider commented. “A few road bumps, no show-stopping problems.”
It’s going to be interesting to see what EOS and its chief technology officer, Dan Larimer, have come up with.
By the way, Larimer is credited with inventing delegated proof of stake. He also launched BitShares and Steem. He earned praise for both and also criticism for the abrupt way he exited those endeavors.
Audacious projects like EOS are why I like my job so much. Hopefully EOS will complete its launch in the next couple of days.
That’s when the real fun begins.
Good investing,
Andy Gordon
Co-Founder, First Stage Investor