With some very good dApps dropping this past couple weeks I've really started putting in some time into EOS and wanted to get some answers about concerns that drove me away to begin with. First off, mad props to EOS Knights and EOS Bet for making some very good apps that caught my eye and are very well done. So here are my concerns that I've had in the past and why I pretty much pushed EOS to the back burner while focusing else where in the crypto community. This all lead me to believe EOS will fail and I have yet to see any solutions to these MASSIVE problems that are at the core foundation of EOS.
- Majority of EOS wealth held by less than a dozen wallets. 50% or more are held by exchanges and can pretty much control the network by voting for the BPs of their choosing. Making everyone else's vote pointless.
Sources: https://eosauthority.com/producers_chart | https://www.ccn.com/less-than-1-of-eos-addresses-hold-86-of-the-tokens/ | https://www.trustnodes.com/2018/06/03/just-10-addresses-hold-nearly-50-eos-tokens
- CPU Cost to use certain Apps is pretty high. So I love EOS knights but noticed that the EOS mainnet is a bit all over the place. In playing I find that I get the most consistent play at about 30 EOS staked. However, I have still run into CPU issues during some peak times with EOS CPU skyrocketing. At one time I was still getting a CPU wait error with 60 EOS Staked! That is a bit insane considering that I am consistently staking between $200-$400 to play a phone game.
- RAM Cost to launch dApps is a big barrier of entry right now. According to the article below some devs have dropped as much as $100,000 to launch their app on the chain and do an airdrop. Yikes!
Source: https://www.coindesk.com/ram-it-all-rising-costs-are-turning-eos-into-a-crypto-coders-nightmare/
- Block producers seem to be chosen by a select few elite holders with not much community involvement. You can see this in the Voting graphics where more than 50% of the votes are from large wallets and exchanges. This exacerbates the issue with a few entities controlling so much EOS in only a few wallets. The problem will only get exponentially worse as these block producers will be claiming their rewards and either holding them, or exchanging them for cash to pay expenses. This either gives the BP more power or the exchange more voting power. In some instances the exchange IS the block producers (i.e. Bitfinex) and is a fundamental flaw in the foundation of EOS and its 21 block producer system.
Source: https://eosauthority.com/producers_chart
Any responses I've gotten on the above issues deals with off-chain or side-chain solutions, which is no solution at all if the main chain is compromised like this. Bitfinex does have a voting portal, so on the producers chart you will need to know that it isn't just one person casting the vote, but there is no transparency to this system and we have no way of knowing how many of these votes are from their holdings or their users. Most EOS users prefer Kraken as it has a USD trading pair, so I question how valid a rebuttal this is.
This may seem like FUD, but these are not opinions but real world problems in developing a drastically different blockchain than the norm. My hat is off to Block.one and EOS for accomplishing what they have, but I don't think EOS will be the silver bullet and will ultimately fall to ruin when someone takes what works so well in EOS and matures it in a project without any of the above problems. With all that said, I am having a blast on EOS Knights and will continue playing. I'm never going to be a major EOS holder for the above reasons, but I do think EOS has done a lot of things right with how they developed it.