EOS cryptocurrency is a token of EOS.IO project, developed by American programmer Dan Larimer, who is also known as a founder of financial blockchain platform BitShares (2014) and social network Steemit (2016), where users are rewarded with tokens for the publication of content. Dan introduced the concept of the project at the International Blockchain Conference Consensus 2017 in the New York City.
The platform aims to provide decentralized hosting of commercial applications for businesses using smart contracts. Distributed data storage solutions implemented in the platform should solve the scalability problems that Bitcoin and Ethereum are facing, as well as completely remove transaction fees. The block architecture, namely its vertical and horizontal scalability will potentially allow EOS software to manage millions of transactions per second without charging any commission fees and enable developers to deploy decentralized applications fast and easy – states the official project description.
In autumn, 2017, Dan Larimer wrote in his Telegram channel that EOS transaction confirmation would take less than a second. Larimer started implementing high-speed solutions yet in BitShares platform, where the block was generated only in 3 seconds (comparing to 10 minutes at Bitcoin). So, Dan basically plans to create the fastest blockchain ever. To achieve this ambitious goal he will use DPoS (Dalegated Proof of Stake) algorithm. It means that network users delegate their right to confirm transactions and generate blocks to selected “witnesses”. Such an algorithm was successfully applied in Steemit social network, where the average transaction confirmation time is only 3 seconds.
Last year EOS held one of the most successful ICOs in history, collecting as much 651,902 ETH (about $ 170 million back than) in five days of the first tokensale stage. This was an absolute record. The project issued 1 billion tokens on the Ethereum platform. EOS price is not fixed and varies at each stage of the tokensale. In fact, the price is completely determined by the demand. The price and number of distributed tokens is calculated according to a special formula available on the project website, and is determined by the ratio of the funds invested in EOS tokens. EOS ICO campaign itself is planned for almost a year – its first stage started in late June, 2017, and all 350 following stages will finish on June 1st, 2018. Today EOS is one of the top digital currencies on the market and demonstrates a fairly sustainable rate dynamics.
So, EOS looks rather thought through and has its unique features that already helped the token enter the list of top-10 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization and can ensure a successful future of the project, at least in the short term. However, as it usually happens on the cryptocurrency market, no one can be 100% sure that EOS will manage to establish a universal blockchain platform, adopted by businesses all around the world and squeeze other projects (first of all Ethereum) that offer a decentralized software environment for deploying and running applications.