By Joshua Nyaga
So you bought some EOS and you're wondering what the big fuss is all about! Isn’t it just like holding any other crypto? Well, i would like to introduce you to the host of ways in which EOS lets you invest while you HODL and giving you returns on your investment you probably didn’t even know about. Not only is EOS the operating system Blockchain, it lets you as a holder, own a real piece that you can rent out at a price and gives you regular dividends on your investment.
Kyle of The Awakenment Youtube channel refers to the token as digital real estate which is a most apt description. While Bitcoin is the proverbial digital gold (store of value) and Ethereum digital gas (powers online transactions) EOS is, by the same token, digital real estate. What this means is that EOS allows you to own the part of the network that you can stake(lay claim to by using your tokens).
To use the real estate analogy, imagine the EOS network as a large piece of land or office building. You can stake your tokens in the same way you would buy a section of the property and hold. In a practical sense, you would be staking for RAM and CPU processing power. The total RAM and CPU power of all 21 active block producers would be the entire piece of land or building, with you owning as much as your stake allows. As more and more individuals buy up the “land”, its price goes up until there is no more free land and we have to buy from each other.
Now this is not just creating artificial demand for the network resources but has an actual use. Once DAPPs start running on the network, they will need a large share of the network resources than a simple wallet. They will then turn to staked tokens and offer a lucrative and competitive “rent” to be allowed to use those staked network resources that you have. In this way, we begin to see the true value of the EOS token for any holder or user. Not only is it valuable to hold the token, it basically pays you to do so.
The best part of it all is that one does not actually buy the staked resources so no tokens are actually used up. The tokens will earn while staked and a DAPP has “rented” them out but will always remain the same in number and will remain yours. They remain staked till you unstake at which point, you receive all your tokens back. This is a huge opportunity for hodlers to earn some passive income that is not dependant on the crypto market gods.
Although this system has received a lot of negative backlash initially from the community due to the fact that it makes the EOS network less competitive for dApp builders by making it more expensive to develop on EOS, various solutions have been proposed and are being worked on. Dan Larimer proposed a system wherein Block Producers would be required to increase their RAM capacity at a given predictable and predetermined rate. This would be a fixed amount that would be added to the network and thus inflate the supply of RAM thus making it less profitable to speculate on RAM.
The cherry on top of the pie comes in the form of “dividends” for all EOS wallets. Airdrops are a form of Token Generation Event that has been gaining traction and many are slated to hit EOS wallets with some having already landed. What an airdrop is is a distribution of a new token to mimic the exact displacement of its parent token. What that means is that when a new token is airdropped, it goes to all the wallets of its parent token in the same volume but sometimes a different ratio. This means that if you have a wallet with 100EOS and there's an airdrop at a 1:0.5 ratio, you will receive 50 units of the new token.
Since airdrops are essentially free and power DAPP’s, this is a kin to getting in on every ICO from the ground up and you have the liberty to use the token or sell it when it accrues sufficient value. That is why this can be considered a dividend since i will happen regularly and will only add to the value of the EOS token.
EOS is a budding flower that is yet to bloom and show us the wonder of a truly democratic and visionary cryptocurrency. It is riddled with opportunity for the sharp investor looking to get the most out of their investment in cryptocurrency while being part of the most ambitious experiment in blockchain since Bitcoin. In this early days, one would do well to secure themselves a patch of green overlooking the rolling hills of the EOS metropolis.