In a big concern for the EOS project, the Chinese Internet security giant 360 has found “a series of epic vulnerabilities” in the platform.

There should be a few red faces amongst the lead devs, as some of the bugs allow arbitrary code to be executed remotely on EOS nodes and even take full control of the nodes. 😱

According to their Weibo, 360 reported the bugs to the EOS team. “The person in charge of the EOS network said that the EOS network will not be officially launched until these issues are fixed.” Apparently, this is now done, so kudos to the EOS devs for responding fast, and it doesn’t appear it will affect main-net release date.

As Vitalik Buterin has made clear, blockchain projects face a trilemma, in that you cannot achieve scalability, decentralization and security at the same time. Something has to give, and one of the big criticisms of the EOS project is that they have sacrificed security (…and also decentralization, although this debate is a bit more complex and would require another post to fully dig into!)

Disclaimer: I have invested a bit in the EOS project, as I applaud its ambition and marketing, but there was always going to be a risk of something like this happening. It’s good the Chinese firm was wearing their white hats and identified the problem, and in the current bear market it might not even have that big of an impact on price. However, to call EOS an Ethereum killer is very premature, as they have yet to prove themselves and have not started in the best way!

While Ethereum is not perfect, it has thousands of the smartest developers around the world trying to solve problems of scalability, security and decentralization. There can be no argument that the dev community will be the driving force behind blockchain Dapp protocols, and unless EOS can recruit serious talent quickly, I don’t see it competing in the near to mid-term.

What do you think about this news? Is EOS going to be the silver-bullet blockchain that does everything better, or is it rather over-hyped and unproven?

The interest in the EOS project is undeniable, as it is by far and away the best performing ERC20 token when considering metrics like Daily Active Users and transactions. How these figures will change once main-net hits remains to be seen.

EOS metrics — 29.05.18

Whatever happens, exciting times ahead in the next few months to see where EOS goes, and whether it can really compete with Ethereum!

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You can get more details and track projects like EOS using Trivial’s token discovery platform that I’ve been working on — I recommend it as a launch pad for researching new projects or just browsing the Ethereum network!

Some of the cool things you can do with it: