What is EOS?

EOS is one of the newest cryptocurrencies currently in the initial coin offering (ICO) phase. The concept behind it is similar to that of Ethereum with the crypto-economic incentive of the currency being able to access a powerful and decentralized operating system. You can think of EOS as a blockchain operating system, Windows or MacOS for example, which enables developers to design and build powerful decentralized applications, or DApps, for its operating system.

EOS also aims to be a coin that can process millions of transactions simultaneously; making it vastly more efficient than either Ethereum or Bitcoin, which are limited by the way they verify blocks before adding them to the blockchain. It will also largely eliminate transaction fees by rewarding holders of the coin a certain number of fee-free transactions based on the amount of currency they hold.

How does EOS works?

The creation of blocks for the EOS blockchain is rewarded by providing access to a massive decentralized operating system that will allow developers to build industrial scale applications to run on it. The EOS infrastructure actually rewards based on ownership of the operating system’s resources depending on the amount that individual may hold. This promotes the maintaining of an ownership stake in EOS and provides the ability for DApp developers to scale up as needed.

Most cryptocurrencies create blocks by having miners solve extremely difficult math equations as ‘proof-of-work’ and once the answer is verified by the network as correct it rewards the miner with coins and a portion of the transaction fees. Because of the resource-intensive nature of solving the problems and the need for every node to validate the solution as correct, this method of validation is extremely inefficient.

With EOS they have implemented a ‘proof-of-stake’ system where an individual holder acts to validate a block as part of the chain instead. Blocks have a much shorter and less resource intensive creation time, generally around 9 seconds. This allows for much faster processing times and increased scalability. In order to validate the work as correct, 15 of the 21 pre-selected individuals must verify the block presented as being correct and able to be added to the chain. These individuals place bets, or put up a stake, on the validity of the block so they have an incentive in ensuring the block is true and not corrupted.

Recent major developments

EOS is currently in its initial coin offering (ICO) with the third round of distribution set to begin at the end of January. It is expected to end its ICO in June or July of 2018 and begin formally trading in the secondary market exclusively at that time.

It also recently entered into the top 15 largest cryptocurrencies by market cap (source: CoinMarketCap).

Fun fact

EOS was created by the Cayman Island based company, Block.One. While you may think that EOS is an acronym with a defined meaning, it has actually never been formally declared with the company deferring to the community for its own interpretation.

Block.One founder, Brock Pierce, was a child actor who starred in the classic Disney movie Might Ducks, as well as Mighty Ducks 2.