With Block.one’s B1 event just four days away, the price of EOS continues to climb as supporters eagerly await a major announcement from the company – but what will it be?

The event, which will take place on June 1st in Washington, DC, will be live streamed on Block.one’s website.

Details about B1 have been deliberately shrouded in mystery, with just enough teasers being dropped to whet the community’s collective appetite and spur speculation and debate.

Leaving a trail of cryptic clues

In March of 2019, Block.one CTO Daniel Larimer began leaving a breadcrumb trail of cryptic – and not so cryptic – clues as to what was coming down the EOS pipeline.

The first clue was an emoji sequence posted on March 9 which he promised would make sense to readers in June.

It appears to translate to ‘B1 steam secret’ which many in the EOS Telegram community take to mean that an announcement about a social media platform is in the offing.

Other possible less emoji-laden clues from Larimer include:

March 13: “When the time comes our marketing will be beyond anything seen in crypto. But before you can market you need an onboard strategy that can convert users and a service that can retain them.”

March 27: “We will not collect data like Facebook does.”

May 22: “Do you love MEOS?…Better than Steem”

A new social media platform

Given Larimer’s Telegram posts and the massive amount of RAM that was just purchased by Block.one, it is likely that one of the announcements at the B1 event will be the launch of its decentralized social media platform.

A tweet he posted in February also seems to support this theory:

What if you could decentralize social media more than steemit? The future of social media is thousands of blockchains under independent governance coordinating with inter-chain communication behind a seamless user experience. — Daniel Larimer (@bytemaster7) February 19, 2019

Dubbed MEOS, the platform is already being hyped as the “Steemit killer”.

In July 2018, Block.com filed a trademark application for MEOS, which is described as “providing temporary use of non-downloadable web and mobile application software for virtual community, social networking, photo sharing, electronic media sharing, and encrypted or otherwise secured messaging and media transmission.”

The application also makes note of additional services like an application service provider (ASP) and software as a service (SaaS) services.

It is being widely reported that Block.one has already obtained the registered trademark for MEOS – this is incorrect.

The official status of the MEOS trademark filing is “688 – Notice Of Allowance – Issued”.

According to the US Patent and Trademark Office:

“A notice of allowance is a written notification from the USPTO that a specific mark has survived the opposition period following publication in the Official Gazette, and has consequently been allowed; it does not mean that the mark has registered yet.”

Block.one received a Notice of Allowance from the USPTO on March 12th and has six months from that date to use the MEOS mark “in commerce” – e.g. providing services connected with the mark – and submit a statement of use (SOU).

UBI or IBC?

An additional emoji clue posted by Larimer in March has had people scratching their heads ever since.

Depending on Larimer’s intended interpretation of the first and third symbols, EOS supporters think that it could either translate to UBI (Universal Basic Income) or IBC (inter-blockchain communication).

UBI – at least in fiat currency – is the least likely of the two interpretations, given Larimer’s doubts about the concept.

When asked what he thought about presidential hopeful Andrew Yang’s proposed UBI, Larimer stated unequivocally that “I’m against any dollar-denominated UBI”.

This has led some to speculate that perhaps Block.one intends to distribute part of EOS’ token supply among the community, either as an airdrop or some other type of giveaway.

Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer appears to have nipped that rumor in the bud, however, tweeting earlier today that there were some “wild rumours out there which are just not true.”

Among other things, Blumer specifically noted airdrops as something that are definitely not happening.

We are excited about #B1June, but encourage everyone to be realistic in their expectations – there are some wild rumours out there which are just not true. Big news for some, may not be for others. No Facebook, Apple, or Google partnerships. No Airdrops. Stay calm, keep building. — Brendan Blumer (@BrendanBlumer) May 28, 2019

The more likely interpretation of Larimer’s second clue is inter-blockchain communication (IBC), which is – as the name implies – transacting and moving tokens from one blockchain to another.

Chatting in the EOS Telegram channel in March 2018, Larimer admitted that he was “not aware of any blockchain that is properly designed for efficient interchain communication.”

He also noted that “[o]nly EOS has designed support into the headers for IBC.”

More recently, Larimer observed that having IBC without dApps that can use it serves no purpose and that “IBC will appear when the market is ready.”

EOS outperforms Top 4 cryptocurrencies

In terms of percentage gains over the week, EOS has outperformed Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, and Bitcoin Cash.

Cryptocurrency 7-day Start 7-day End Total Gains (%) Bitcoin (BTC) $8032.86 $8703.60 8.34% Ethereum (ETH) $257.95 $271.40 5.21% XRP (XRP) $0.399779 $0.443729 10.99% Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $422.86 $436.20 3.15% EOS (EOS) $6.33 $7.95 25.59%

The data provided by CoinMarketCap shows that at publication, EOS’ seven-day gains:

outperformed Bitcoin by more than 300%

outperformed Ethereum by more than 490%

outperformed XRP by more than 230%

outperformed Bitcoin Cash by more than 810%

In fact, EOS’ gains over the week are nearly more than all of the other four cryptocurrencies’ gains combined.

As EOS continues to climb, some analysts are predicting $10 as the next target.

Will EOS’ momentum and the mysterious B1 announcement be enough to take it there? We’ll have to wait and see.