EOS invites us to embark upon a journey of exploration. Together we are stepping into the unknown and though the beginning of this journey may seem somewhat esoteric and terrestrial, it will transform our societies, our very selves and eventually bring us to the stars.
London Meetup
EOS had it's first official London meetup on Tuesday 19th September at CodeNode. Both Brendan Blumer (CEO for Block One) and Daniel Larimer (CTO for Block One,) along with many other team members, were in attendance. It was a very good kick-off event for the growing European EOS community.
Brendan talked about the important idea that blockchains would transform traditional business models by dramatically improving economic alignment between providers, users and shareholders. How? By turning users and providers into the shareholders by virtue of the interests they have in products and services and by the tokens they choose to hold. Due to this alignment of economic incentives, which is vastly more efficient and cohesive, business that adopt it are likely to out-compete everything else.
Daniel talked about EOS's new decentralised storage solution. This is an area of innovation that many are working in and no-one has yet cracked. But it seems Daniel's team have done it. What does that mean? It means that when you want to build a high performance blockchain and enable thousands of decentralised applications to run on it, you need to provide the infrastructure that can handle it, without building in compromises that by their very nature, put off or prohibit user adoption. The bottom line is that millions of people are only going to use blockchains and decentralised applications if they perform better than their centralised counterparts. That is the only way to unlock the added value of blockchains....the integrity, the freedom, the censorship resistance and so on. This huge step in decentralised storage infrastructure innovation is astounding and a game changer. Now EOS really will be able to compete with YouTube etc.
Blockchain Live
The Blockchain Live conference on Wednesday 20th September at The Brewery seemed to be a great success. There was very good attendance...it was bustling....and there was a good energy to the event. I watched most of the EOS related talkes and several others besides.
I was very fortunate in being able to speak to several of the Block One team members individually and once again, came away feeling that this team was most fitting for delivering Daniel's vision and a product that is inured to compliance risk and capable of bringing decentralised applications to millions. EOS could very well be responsible for the next great surge in developer and entrepreneurial adoption....thereby unleashing global user adoption.
There were a couple of areas that I would like to see further discussion upon.
Steemit -
Steemit is arguably the most successful blockchain / decentralised application in existence. It has many flaws but as a first attempt, as an experiment, it is astonishing. Examples for how it is changing human connection and behaviour abound and may help to articulate and inform the innovation and possible outcomes of new decentralised applications. As an example it can also help people to understand what EOS is and what EOS could mean to everyone.
Identity & Reputation
In an increasingly open-source and decentralised world. Where anyone can develop for any existing decentralised application or build a new one, how do people protect their work? What are the tools that enable healthy competition and choice to thrive in a free market? The solutions are identity and reputation. Our view of identity may need to change slightly, perhaps becoming less about the specifics of who we think we are, like date of birth, phone number, address and more about applying different filters of information that relates to you may provide a different view of who you are depending on the interest of those looking and the degree of specificity they employ. Does anyone know who they really are? Is anyone all good or all bad?
What is of major importance is that an identity can be attributed to a physical being correctly in order to minimise abuse and fraud. So far I am unclear how EOS will be solving these challenges, though I know they are working hard on them!
Finally, if we are able to build identities based on a true physical being, then these identities will build a historical footprint of actions and associations that contributes to a reputation. A "good" reputation (not forgetting a dependence on the degree of specificity) should become ever more valuable and make losing it through misbehaviour economically unlikely. Also, if you are building something and are good at what you do, your growing reputation should protect you from competition and ensure a position in a global, open-sourced, decentralised economy.
These are all my own thoughts, interpretations and musings. Nothing I have said here is officially from Block One or EOS. Please do not take anything I have said here as investment advice. Never invest in something you don't understand because it is impossible to understand the risks. I'm not even sure that it is possible to invest directly into EOS.
I hope you enjoyed the summary.
For more information visit eos.io
Sometimes, one simply doesn't realise what is building above one's head.
Happy Steeming