In the latest episode of WAX ON, Worldwide Asset eXchange™ founder and CEO William Quigley gives his take on EOS - why the DPoS blockchain was created in the first place, if its performance has lived up to the blockchain community’s expectations, its drawbacks, and a similar (but better) alternative.

EOSIO is an ambitious project, which was developed to overcome two of the most vexing problems in blockchain - transaction speed and costs. Traders of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other first-generation cryptos know all too well why these were considered the most problematic aspects of using the blockchain. Slow and expensive transactions were never going to usher crypto into mass adoption status. EOSIO was touted as the solution.

So almost a year and a half after launching EOS, the first chain using EOSIO, how is it performing? William says, “Really well. EOS is much faster than Ethereum, hundreds of transactions per second versus Ethereum’s 10-15, and it's free. There are no transaction costs on EOS and that's critical if you're going to build a commercially scalable and popular blockchain.”



Thomas Cox, Chief Governance Officer for StrongBlock, agrees:

“StrongBlock could have built our solutions on anything, and we chose EOSIO software because we believe it’s the best the best platform for making enterprise-grade blockchains ridiculously easy for anyone to configure, launch, and build applications,” said Cox. “EOSIO is enormously flexible. It has a Delegated Proof of Stake model, which can very easily be adapted to a Proof of Authority model, based on how you set up it initially with a few lines of code. It’s many out-of-the-box governance hooks make EOS a well-mannered environment for developers to work in. Some of these other chains are effectively unmanageable.”

“Ethereum paved the way for the rest of us, but development of the Ethereum mainnet is in the slow lane and falling behind. They’re hoping that in 2 years, if they make their own deadlines, that they’ll be where EOSIO was last year. EOSIO has a remarkable community of contributors who regularly release useful open source as well as proprietary coded solutions, including sophisticated privacy and search capabilities, Block Explores, dApps, and standards like simple assets that are absolutely cutting edge. I don’t see this level of developer-focused productivity anywhere else.”

“Though the EOS mainnet is going through some governance struggles, and the token hasn’t performed the way a lot of folks would have liked them to, I don’t see any downsides to the EOSIO software today.”

Given the magnitude of a project of EOSIO’ scale, it naturally has a few drawbacks which William discusses in the second half of the video.

“Pros of EOS include speed, ease of use (less signing for every transaction using whitelists, since you don't need to pay for each step of computation), and a growing community and ecosystem,” said YouTuber Omar Bham (a.k.a. Crypt0). “Cons include concerns about block producer collusion and neglect (remember that time a BP didn't get the new blacklist, and allowed a thief to get away?). There is also competition from many smart contract platforms vying for many of the same markets, slow adoption because accounts need to be purchased, and RAM/memory issues that confuse new users. All of these perhaps could be made easier to digest.”

If only there were a blockchain that offered all the best features of EOSIO like DPoS consensus mechanism, near-instant transaction speeds, and free transactions, but without the pain points that EOS users experience today…

Well there is, and it’s called WAX. The WAX Blockchain is purpose-built for commercial scalability and usability. That means it’s easy for developers to profit from, easy for customers to use, and features the best of what EOSIO has to offer.

Get the full picture from William himself in the second episode of “WAX ON” here and let us know what you think in the video comments.

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Video Transcript

What are the pros and cons of EOS? In other words, why was EOS even created? So EOS was created to overcome two of the most vexing problems in blockchain - transaction speed, transaction costs. These are at the heart of what prevents blockchains from reaching commercial scalability.

So how did EOS do that? Well, they created something called DPoS. DPoS delegated proof of stake, consensus mechanism. What that really is just a way for transactions to get validated quickly and correctly (can’t have any little scams going on). So it's like what Bitcoin mining and Ethereum mining is for validating transactions on Ethereum and Bitcoin, the DPoS consensus mechanism is the way transactions get validated on EOS.

So how has it worked out? Well, I'd say a year after launch, a little bit more, really well. EOS is much faster than Ethereum, hundreds of transactions per second versus Ethereum’s 10-15. And it's free. Yeah, there are no transaction costs on EOS and that's critical if you're going to build a commercially scalable and popular blockchain. Now you do have that own EOS tokens to reserve system resources, but those tokens stay there in your wallet and don't get used up. They're more like holding them in escrow, so no transaction fees, I like that. Thus far, there's been about 5,000 apps that we call dApps that have built on the EOS blockchain and that's pretty good.

So EOS works well but does have a few drawbacks. One, you need to educate the users about something called voting and staking. Those things are a bit complicated. Well voting is you actually select which entities get to validate a transaction. It's like if on Bitcoin you were picking who the miners would be. And then you have staking. Staking is basically tying up your tokens in some wallet, it might be the Scatter wallet, in order to get system resources. So you can't get them unless you stake, you also can't vote unless you stake. And then there's the account creation. I'll just say here, it's a bit wonky. It's not easy to create an account on EOS, which isn't great if you're trying to grow the user base. It's got usability issues. One of those I just mentioned earlier is something called Scatter. While Scatter is a good first attempt, it's a crypto wallet that you use to actually work on the blockchain, it is way too complicated for the average person to use. And that I think is a major stumbling block to making EOS popular. Now if you can fix those problems and they're not insurmountable problems, the EOS platform would actually be pretty good.

Well, that's why I created the WAX protocol. The WAX protocol uses this DPoS consensus mechanism and it's a blockchain that's been purpose-built for commercial scalability and usability.

WAX was inspired by everything I've learned about virtual item trading, especially video game virtual item trading where you need very, very large scale and you need to worry about things like costs and speed. At the heart of the WAX protocol is the WAX service layer. So the WAX protocol has a micro-service layer that allows dApps to easily develop and to on-board new users onto their dApps.

WAX also has the best UI for adding blockchain customers. It makes creating and managing a blockchain account as easy as installing an app on an iPhone or sending an item to somebody on a phone.

If you're interested in learning more about the WAX protocol, we've created a matrix that compares WAX to a number of other blockchains (get it here), including Ethereum and EOS. You can find it at the link below. And if you want to learn more about actually building on the WAX protocol, check out the WAX developer hive. Also at the link below, you'll be able to find a ton of developer resources to help you build your dApp on the WAX blockchain. See you soon.

Blockchain Comparison Matrix: https://go.wax.io/comparison-m...

WAX Developer Hive: https://developer.wax.io









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