Determinants of EOS success
Centuries ago, somewhere around the time of early Bitsheres (2014), Tokenika's team members got quite excited by the concept of DPOS. Automated governance on a super-fast, cheap to run blockchain was a thrilling prospect to get involved in. Back then we went as far as coding our own wallet prototypes for Bitshares, thinking the native ones were not up to scratch. Long story short, we started supporting DPOS pretty early on, hence our presence on EOS as a Block Producer is a natural consequence of many years of growing up along with the concept. Today, with EOS turning into something so much bigger, our excitement couldn't have been greater.
Having said all that, we know first hand it takes a massive amount of work to bring any blockchain ecosystem from visions and pipe-dreams to anything functional. These days, often the valuations of blockchains assume years ahead of growth and adoption, as if these already happened. We see this perception as somewhat delusional. However we also think EOS has a chance of escaping this pitfall, and actually bring real value to the table fast, becoming the king of smart-contract-enabled public blockchains.
There are 3 prerequisites of a stable and thriving blockchain that we consider most relevant. These are:
- Good core architecture
- Stable, safe and cost effective infrastructure
- Low cost of software development
For EOS, the first two points we think are already present to a large extent. Graphene and Delegated Proof of Stake have proven themselves to be both stable and cost-effective - their operational overhead is marginal compared to anything powered by Proof of Work, and core architecture turns out to be very fast and robust at the same time.
The missing parameter is the cost of development. We understand this cost as the sum of all the difficulties affecting the developer's workflow - the harder it is, the more expensive it becomes. This, unfortunately, is a tough nut to crack, as it takes years for the IDE's on any framework to mature and become truly developer - friendly. Without it however, we risk getting wiped out by more agile competitors.
Our main focus for the next 6 months
As a leading Central European EOS contributor, we embarked on the mission to reduce the complexity and the costs of development on EOS. We believe this might be the single most important determinant for EOS's success.
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Google Android example clearly shows that if you want to make a platform popular, the most effective thing to do is to train developers to use it as a first port of call. Likewise here, the blockchain talents need to get steered towards EOS, and if this proves too hard or expensive, they will wander off elsewhere.
Thus, this is the equation we'll be engraving in the professional developer mindset: I need a Blockchain for my app = I need EOS for my app
Tokenika's developer support activities
EOSFactory - a smart contract development IDE
About 7 months ago (a good half a year before EOS got launched) we started working on an important piece of developer software on EOS, designed to make sure that smart contracts run as expected. We called it EOSFactory and have already put out 3 major releases, the last one being fully compatible with the EOS mainnet.
In short, EOSFactory allows developers to unit-test their smart contracts using Python scripting and standard Python unit test libraries. We took a lot of care to make EOSFactory compatible with all leading operating systems (Windows, Linux and OSX), and have it support powerful Integrated Development Environments such as Visual Studio Code, as well as C++ CMake toolkit. We are soon going to add JavaScript support (besides the existing Python) and add further functionalities, so that eventually EOSFactory becomes equal to Ethereum's Truffle framework. The project is already around 10k lines of code and growing. Link to our latest EOSFactory release description can be found here and we will be offering professional online training in EOSFactory in the upcoming months, shortly after the introduction of JavaScript support. Right now full documentation of the project and our Telegram Support Group should get anyone started quickly.
TOKENIKA4DEV - A development-promoting proxy voter
Using similar reasoning we decided to create a voting proxy on EOS called tokenika4dev. This proxy supports other Block Producers who share our vision of the importance of real development on EOS through:
- Helping with the development of useful EOS dev tools
- Training developers on EOS
- Educating on-line
- Building sensible Dapps
Apart from this, there are two additional criteria a BP has to fulfill that are very close to our hearts. These are:
- Ability to reliably produce blocks. This is a no-brainer - the bare bones of being a BP.
- Libertarian, non-interventionist view of EOS governance.
This means no account freezing concepts, unilateral law enforcement, or other self-appointed authoritarian behaviours. We believe in the free market as the only force able to regulate EOS long term, and good practices should serve as guidelines only.
Every couple of weeks we will examine the BP's projects and try to determine which BP's are working towards raising of developer awareness, or, developing apps that help the adoption of EOS. We will then cast the proxied votes onto these BP's. Tokenika4dev proxy will NOT be too concerned about ownership disclosures, politics, whales vs non-whales or other BP affairs. What we do care about is, if there is tangible value brought in by a given BP through real EOS development.
We understand it might sound a little coarse, but at this point EOS needs to grow first and foremost, and all the politics will only make sense when we have some fruits of this basic effort.
TOKENIKA's DEVCONS - cyclical EOS developer conferences
We would like to invite everyone involved in EOS development to our first DEVCON which will take place in Warsaw, Poland around mid October 2018 (13-14th tentative). This is the first one of a cycle of events which Tokenika will organise around the development subjects on EOS. The events will have a highly utitlitarian focus on helping to teach best development practices, and address real challenges when developing on EOS. Elite speakers from the EOS coding community will be invited. The first one of the cycle will focus on:
- Cost effective development on EOS - what, where and how
- Pitfalls and good practices in smart-contract development
- Review of available tools and the state of the EOS DEV ecosystem
- Developer competitions and prizes to spice things up
Please follow our Twitter to keep yourself up to date about the upcoming DEVCON.
Our request for your support
If, as an EOS token holder, you agree with our views, we encourage you to proxy your votes to tokenika4dev. You can do it in the safest manner possible through our off-line voting tool available here. Instead of entering BP's name, enter tokenika4dev as your choice in step 2 of the voting tutorial.
We will issue updates as to our voting reasoning, and keep you informed as to why a certain BP is getting the proxy's support. This is not to say that BP's who are not developing are not useful - there's is often great value added by them also. However, they will not be in tokenika4dev proxy selection. Think of it as a tax incentive from us to other BPs for being productive on the EOS coding front.
If you do not wish to proxy your votes, and prefer to make individual BP choices yourself, you can also support us by voting directly for tokenika4eos. We have several EOS projects that need good propulsion, and it will be just as helpful.
Last but not least, we'd like to thank everyone who has already trusted us with your votes. We are working hard to make EOS happen, and most of this work is man-hours of pretty expensive developers and business experts. Your support means the world to us and we are humbled and grateful to see it coming our way.