Hello, my Dear Crypto Reader!
If you interested in Mythology, please, skip this article and read my favorite stories:
- American Gods is a novel written by Neil Gaiman. For the television adaptation of the novel, see American Gods (TV series)
- The Iliad by Homer
But if you are a technical person interested in EOS, you can continue with the current article.
Some numbers before Myths
EOS vs. Ethereum
Market Cap: 700 000 BTC vs. 3 000 000 BTC
Transaction per day: 600 000 vs. 400 000 -600 000
But a lot of EOS transactions have not transfer type (promote, buy resources, new account, etc.)
Accounts with non zero balance: ~ 15 400 000 (?) vs. 310 000 (as all EOS accounts are not free)
Nodes: 18 000 vs. 21(total 400 for standby)
We can see that Ethereum still the king for DApp world but EOS is going ahead.
Myths list
We will follow five simple myths about EOS:
- M1. Real Decentralization
- M2. The Fastest blockchain
- M3. User-friendly
- M4. free transaction
- M5. Command lines tool for geeks
If you want to see favorite Myth just note it in the comments
M1. Decentralization
The main core of the myth that EOS is more decentralized than Ethereum.
Adepts of Myth provide diagrams from Etherscan:
To control Ethereum Network, you require an alliance with 4–5 main mining pools compare to 21 (or active 14) producers for EOS.
Is it true?
No, because you can’t compare Producers with Miners.
Ethereum Miners is just slaves of the Network. Miner pool is a temporary structure which can TRY to do only limited things:
- transaction double spending
- ignore transaction queue
- create a new fork
But as the pool is a temporary alliance: people start a migration to another pool, after any leeks informing manipulations.But if we are talking about the community of Ethereum, it is nobody (including Vitalik Buterin or Gavin Wood) cannot provide any fast changes.
For example, Bitman is controlling near half or Bitcoin market, but nobody worries as Bitmain just miner and can only create a new fork or destroy network reputation but can’t take control of the blockchain itself.
Or look at the situation at Decentralized Exchange Order Tracker
But for EOS situation is dramatically differ:
Developing changes
Block Producer is the authority and curator of the EOS network. Within the DPoS system, Block Producers run the underlying network layer to process all transactions on EOS. There will be a total of 21 block producers along with another 400 Backup nodes overlooking the activities of the 21
EOS producer can:
- write block (mining role)
- validate transactions (mining role)
- EOS awards producers every time they produce a block
- suggest and vote for Proposals
Block.one is the most significant player and controlling 10% of tokens.
Actually, top100 accounts including exchanges are controlling near 75% of tokens.
Another 25% of users are inactive and delegate mostly formally.
As we have Delegated-proof-of-Stake model, I can imagine that it is enough to stake near 30% of tokens with media support for full control of the network.
As another 70% of users can be inactive or understand the real situation.
Controlling cash
After ICO Daniel Larimer has obtained a tremendous amount of money.But do you know any information about using this cash or ICO Ethereum?
For example, do you remember the decision to attack the Ethereum Network?
Do you think Network holders or Producers approved it?
Exactly, No.
If a small group of people controls more than 1 billion dollars without any reporting can we say that it is a decentralized community?
If Daniel will require 5–10% of tokens to change the balance? He can spend cash to buy it.
Compare this with Ethereum. The funds from ethereum’s initial $18m crowdsale and project development are now managed by the Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit entity based in Switzerland.
DPoS: Risk of attack or shut down by governments
The number of full nodes in EOS is going to be smaller. So Dan Larimer has this concept called DPOS where he says that in DPOS you only need about 100 nodes in the network and consensus happens among these full nodes and everyone else is a thin client. The other reason it (EOS) claims it can process more transactions is because the requirements (bandwidth, computing) for each of these full nodes is much higher. This is one way to achieve scalability.
The problem is that if you have 100 nodes the system is much more centralized. You can denial of service them. Because you have to vote for them, the nodes that win are going to be the nodes that everyone knows. So it is much easier to attack the people running the nodes. ISPs can shut them down, companies can shut them down, governments can shut it down fairly easily.
Vitalik’s basic argument is that there are fewer full nodes and that they are easily identified and can be shut down by governments.
But try to simulate a situation when hat any structure will close Ethereum? Exactly no, because it is more decentralized.
Summary
And it looks like that EOS a toy for Daniel Larimer and his friends. But now it’s favorite toy and developing extra intensive. But if I can image Ethereum without Vitalik, but can you picture EOS future without Daniel?
M2. Fastest blockchain
EOS is abnormally quicker than Ethereum. Just now expected real speed near ~4000 transactions per second. And it can be increased after fixes of code and adding more powerful producers hardware.
But Why EOS is faster than Ethereum?
The main reason that EOS has another consensus, security and logic model. Not better, just another!
Main speed key factors:
Consensus:
Delegated-Proof-of-Stake, or dPoS, is a consortium blockchain that is validated by a set of master nodes known as ranked delegates. And to confirm transaction you need 14 nodes only.
EOS is designed to allow nodes that validate partial state. This means that not all nodes need to run every contract. This in turn means it is possible to know the state of the applications and contracts you care about without having a highly resource demanding full node.
Ethereum is still on PoW and requires colossal calculation and for all network with 18 000 nodes. For example, Ethereum with PoA consensus can support 80 or more transactions per second versus 15 for PoW.
Security:
EOS is public blockchain with users registration. Private blockchain expects to minimize security validations. For example, private Hyperledger Fabric can support up to 7500 transactions per second.
As EOS trust own users and Producers development team cut two critical things:
Merkle trees are the main calculation bottleneck of Ethereum and were kicked from EOS.
The reason why EOS says that they can process more transactions comes from two sources. One of them is there are a lot of protocol features that Ethereum has EOS doesn’t have. One of them, for example, was Merkle trees. So this if you want to prove anything about a transaction then anyone in the network can prove it. And you actually don’t need that much computing power to prove that the state of that account is some number and that the transaction was included. EOS does not have this. (с) Vitalik Buterin
Response to Vitalik Buterin on EOS - Steemit_At 8:20 minutes into the above video Vitalik Buteran says: The reason why EOS says that they can process more…_steemit.com
In order to support the efficient generation of merkle proofs and validation thereof, it is useful to have a merkle tree comprising all blocks. This tree can be calculated on an incremental basis by tracking the leading edge of the tree.
Continuous Growing Merkel of All Block IDs · Issue #8 · EOSIO/eos_In order to support the efficient generation of merkle proofs and validation thereof, it is useful to have a merkle…_github.com
Blockchain platform EOS found containing critical security vulnerabilities
See Life Cycle of an Ethereum Transaction
EOS is not fastest blockchain, but for DApp environment speed 4000 tx per second is enough for the actual requirements.
M3. User-friendly blockchain
Correct. It is a true myth. EOS is a user friendly-blockchain.
Username
- EOS supports username which is more flexible than the public address
detonator212
vs.
EOS7epiMwQShVAYS6py3SrrJJbuCnbmhN9C6USYnMKBxJPYkydBcZ
Messages inside transaction
- EOS support readable messages inside of the transaction. You can send details like in bank transaction! In Ethereum you have you convert it from HEX before reading.
Read next article to compare it with Ethereum
Blockchain Art. Images including Kitties in Blockchain. Step by step instruction._Blockchain becomes more and more commodity and usable not only by geeks. You may try it just now!Today we will spend…_hackernoon.com
Plugins and UX tools
- EOS has own MetaMask — Scatter and all basic tools
EOSToolkit.io | All in one EOS web wallet_EOSToolkit is the premier free, open source interface for managing EOS accounts. Create, transfer, stake, vote and more…_eostoolkit.io
M4. free transaction fee
We cannot honestly say that a transaction fee is really free.
Users need to stake (lock to be non-transferable for a certain period of time) their tokens in order to use the blockchain. More details on How to build a Decentralized Application without Fees by Daniel Larimer.
But for most of operations users don't need to pay (micropayments hold included in basic account creation). Usually, expected that the owner of DAapp create Smart Contract and pay for operations.
It’s principal difference between EOS and Ethereum because in Ethereum payment is provided by the user who runs the function in the Smart Contract.
As the owner of application you have to provide the primary resources:
CPU requires the stake. Unstake at any time to reclaim your EOS tokens
CPU Bandwidth is measured as your average consumption in microseconds over the last 3 days. CPU bandwidth is temporarily consumed when you send an action or transaction but decreases over time returning to 0. The longer your transaction runs, the more CPU bandwidth it will consume.
RAM has to be purchased
RAM is required to store data on the blockchain and must be purchased. You get a set number of bytes of storage based on the current RAM market price. The price automatically adjusts up and down with buying and selling action. When you release storage you can sell RAM back to recover EOS at the current ram market price.
NET requires the stake. Unstake at any time to reclaim your EOS tokens
Network Bandwidth is measured as your average consumption in bytes over the last 3 days. Net bandwidth is temporarily consumed every time you send an action or transaction but decreases over time returning to 0
Check the current price for EOS.IO network storage and bandwidth resources with online EOS Resource Planner:
EOS Resource Planner_ERP is a free and open-source tool to display the current price for EOSIO network storage and bandwidth resources._www.eosrp.io
M5. Only Command lines tool for geeks
It’s not truth myth! Actually, you can provide all necessary actions from GUI:
- creation of account
- creation key pare
- transferring EOS or tokens
- simple payment from a website page
If you want to click for the test network, kindly link:
EOS first baby steps: account, wallet, keypair, testnet, transfer tokens, validate transactions._OS is young, and most of the environments are just developing, but some necessary things are available and … work!_hackernoon.com
For mainnet link:
EOSToolkit.io | All in one EOS web wallet_EOSToolkit is the premier free, open source interface for managing EOS accounts. Create, transfer, stake, vote and more…_eostoolkit.io
Summary
EOS is an innovative blockchain with impressive differentiators:
- fast performance
- near free transactions
- developing environment and tools
- strong community
But my private opinion that Ethereum is still a King of the DApps blockchains.