EOS: Meet the scalable blockchain platform

The blockchain industry started back in 2008 and has steadily grown into one of the largest markets in the world. The total market capitalization touched $800 billion in Jan 2018, and that is an impressive feat for a market that was relatively unknown, just a few years ago.

However, with its rise, it has also faced considerable issues. The dominant blockchains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, are unable to handle the large number of transactions that the networks are receiving. As a result, users have to pay higher fees and have to wait longer for their transactions to be accepted.

For a growing market, such a roadblock can be detrimental to its reputation, and turn away potential investors. Who knows how many potential investors turned away from blockchain because of their first bad experiences on Bitcoin and Ethereum?

The slow transaction acceptance and higher fees not only harms investors but also makes the whole system less practical. Just consider that you are paying for your coffee with Bitcoin and it takes 20 minutes to get the transaction accepted. You can’t possibly wait for 20 minutes in line, just to buy a coffee. That is just impractical.

To resolve these issues, EOS.IO is being developed with the backing of Block.one. The platform will have the ability to cater for the daily requirement of users and the requirements of the large-scale institutions and corporations.

Although, still in its developmental stages the test-net has shown the potential of the blockchain. EOS.IO’s internal testing has revealed that the blockchain can support thousands of transactions per second. This is significantly better than Bitcoin and Ethereum, which can only support 9 and 30 transactions per second, respectively.

The Platform

Let’s discuss how the platform plans on achieving their ambitious goals. The EOS.IO software has been designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of the decentralized applications. The project has been able to achieve this by designing their software like an operating system, upon which the applications are built.

One thing to clarify here is that the software is not releasing any blockchain. Instead, they are developing a system that ensures the scalability of blockchains that use their system. The team members of the project explain that it is really up to the community to build blockchains with the help of EOS.IO software and that the company is just focused on developing this system.

EOS.IO provides accounts, databases, authentication, asynchronous communication, and scheduling of applications across the different CPU cores connected with the system. In this way, the system acts like a blockchain system but free from the limitations of previous efforts. The system will have the capacity to scale to millions of transactions per second, eliminate user fees, and pave the way for easier deployment of decentralized applications.

By supporting large numbers of transactions, the platform will remove the requirement of fees for interacting with the system. If a blockchain project wants to really reach the masses, and gain the highest user base, then the system needs to be free to interact with their blockchain. This is what the EOS.IO plans on producing.

Moreover, to ensure complete decentralization, the software will be using the Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS) consensus algorithm. This algorithm dictates that the holders of tokens on a blockchain that uses EOS.IO software will be able to select block producers through an approval voting system. Anyone can participate in the production of blocks, provided that they can persuade the token holders to vote for them.

A transaction based on EOS.IO software is confirmed after an average of 2.5 seconds from the time of broadcast. The project is also supporting the Asynchronous Byzantine Fault Tolerance (aBFT) algorithm for faster irreversibility. The algorithm provided 100% confirmation of irreversibility within 1 second.

There are numerous other technical aspects that you can read about and understand but will not be covered in this review. You can access their technical whitepaper to read more about their software, and how it works to provide users with the best experience.

The EOS.IO Dawn 4.0 was released at the start of May 2018, and improvements have been made to the software based on feedback received from the users. The internal test-network of EOS.IO has nodes all over Europe, Asia, and the United States. These nodes have been operating without any significant issues.

EOS.IO 1.0 will be released in the first week of June, and the initial release will have everything needed for anyone to create their own EOS.IO based blockchain.

EOS Platform (source: EOS sub-reddit)

Token and Distribution

There can be two kinds of tokens. One is the ERC-20 token that is being employed in the token sale of EOS.IO. The other token will be the one used in the blockchain based on the EOS.IO platform. The latter will have various configurations, and limitations put forward by the EOS.IO platform to ensure that the blockchains are not abused.

The former EOS tokens are ERC-20 compatible tokens distributed on the Ethereum blockchain pursuant to a related ERC-20 smart contract. The EOS tokens do not have any rights, uses, purposes, attributes, functionalities or features on the EOS platform.

The EOS token distribution takes place over 341 days from June 26, 2017, and total of one billion EOS tokens will be distributed. The following distribution technique is being employed by EOS.IO to distribute the tokens over the distribution period:

EOS Token distribution

The tokens will be distributed after the end of every 5-day period and at the end of 23-hour period. The platform is using this odd scheme of token distribution because they believe that it will provide sufficient time for people to become familiar with the project, and invest if they are interested.

The Team

The team behind EOS.IO is experienced in the field of blockchain development and has two famous projects to its name. The Steemit and Bitshare projects were developed by some of the team members on the EOS.IO team. Bitshare is a decentralized exchange that processes 800,000 transactions per day, and that is more than Bitcoin and Ethereum combined.

EOS.IO was developed from the experience of these two projects, and the team plans on achieving the same success with this project. The following are the main team members of the EOS.IO project:

Brendan Blumer: CEO, Daniel Larimer: CTO, Ian Grigg: Partner, Brock Pierce: Partner.

Some EOS concerns for its future

However, there have been some doubts about the project despite its glowing performance. Ethereum claims that EOS is totally centralized, and that’s a problem since EOS is based on a blockchain.

Theoretically, EOS should be completely decentralized, but the platform uses Delegated Proof-of-Stake (dPOS), which makes the system, somewhat centralized. In Bitcoin and Ethereum, thousands of nodes compete to perform the necessary calculations to bring value, but in EOS the process is carried out by just 21 nodes. From thousands to 21, it can be seen why Ethereum likes to call EOS centralized. The problem might resolve itself as the network grows, and more super members are selected.

For more info about EOS

To read more about the project, you can access the following links:

Website | Whitepaper | Telegram

Originally published at cryptopotato.com on June 4, 2018.