Ever since EOS emerged on the scene in June and became a direct competitor to Ethereum, many proponents of two of the biggest blockchain platforms made for development and facilitation of decentralized applications have (dApps) been continuously at odds with the opposing camp.

A Bit of History

In its year-long ICO process, EOS managed to secure funding in excess of $4 billion, making it the most successful ICO to date in terms of funds raised. The EOS team has also managed to launch their mainnet, but not without issues, as they faced some technical difficulties in their first month.

In the same time period, many Ethereum critics have been arguing, especially since the network's congestion presumably caused by digital game CryptoKitties when users experienced uncharacteristically slow responsiveness on the platform, that the Ethereum protocol is poorly equipped for mainstream adoption because of its limitations regarding network's scalability and thus, its transactional capacity. The scalability issues caused some developers to consider changing the underlying platform their dApps run on.

The Ethereum team seems to be well aware of the issue at hand. The highly anticipated upcoming upgrade to the Ethereum blockchain, recently unveiled at the annual Ethereum conference Devcon 4, titled Serenity, is set to address these pressing concerns.

A big challenge the Ethereum developers have taken on is the shift from a proof-of-work to a proof-of stake consensus algorithm, with a transitional phase when a mixed system of both models will be used, which (if implemented successfully) will make Ethereum significantly more efficient and cheaper to use.

Another monumental task facing the developers is the challenge of improving the network's capacity to process transactions, which will hopefully lead to an increase from the currently low 15 transactions per second (tx/s) benchmark and enable the platform to ultimately, in Vitalik Buterin's words, process transactions at "Visa-scale transaction levels", at 45.000 tx/s.

There are considerable differences in the methodology that was employed for enabling a worldwide decentralized system of applications between the two competitors, from the different utilization of the network fees to the differences in their governance models. The substantially diverse methods unfortunately incited some heated rhetoric and accusations as both sides claim their approach to be superior and they are also not shying away from sharing their opinions publicly.

Unlike Ethereum, the EOS blockchain is built in a way that makes progressive scaling way easier to achieve, which is probably the EOS's platform biggest advantage over its competitor. Using Graphene technology, EOS managed to achieve 3097 tx/s according to EOS network monitor.

However, there are critics claiming that the only reason EOS was able to achieve this feat is because they have taken the decision to make the platform more centralized, and by doing that they have in some sense defeated the purpose of powering their service with blockchain technology.

Ensuing Drama

Consensys, one of the leading companies in funding Ethereum-based development, commissioned a study of EOS which was conducted by Whiteblock. Zak Cole, Whiteblock's CTO, stated:

“EOS token and RAM market is essentially a cloud service where the network provides promises for computational resources in a black box for users to access via credits. There is no mechanism for accountability due to the lack of transparency on what block producers are able to create in terms of computational power.”

To say the least, the quote ruffled some feathers and prompted many people to take a side in support of their chosen camp in the online discussions that followed.

This was not an isolated occurrence and definitely not the first time EOS found itself in conflict with Ethereum. Earlier in the year, an Ethereum dApp developer accused EOS of attempting "to attack the Ethereum network gas prices to validate the launch of their platform.”

EOS founder, BitShares and blockchain social platform Steemit creator, Daniel Larimer, issued a rebuttal to the claims of purposefully overloading the Ethereum network:

"I can assure you Block.one [a private company that was the original developer of EOS] wouldn't be so stupid to spend our resources attacking ETH when all it takes is CryptoKitties. There are far smarter and more cost effective ways at bringing ETH down if that were the goal."

It is way too early to predict how the rivalry between EOS and Ethereum will turn out. Though often times referred to as "Ethereum killer", EOS and Ethereum can, and very likely, will coexist for the foreseeable future. The competition is welcome as is the key to a healthy and evolving marketplace, but the unsubstantiated claims and retributive actions are unfortunately taking the attention away from the important technology-based topics and fueling the unneeded as well as unproductive tribal discussions.