At one point hailed as the most promising project emerging from the ICO boom in 2017, EOS has since struggled to carve out its place and, some say, completely fallen off the radar.

Before we tackle this monster of a layer 1, let’s take a small trip down memory lane.

Promising to improve upon the smart contract framework pioneered by Ethereum through a more scalable environment, there was much to be excited about at the time.

The company that was initially behind EOS, Block.one (B1), raised a whopping $4.1 billion after its year-long public sale, which concluded in the first half of 2018. With a more performant tech stack than existing offerings and all the funding in the world, EOS had all the cards in its hands.

So what happened?

B1's involvement, or lack thereof, in developing and funding the project played a large part in EOS's downfall. Initially, the core engineering team actively contributed to its development. As time passed, however, the community started to notice a decline in the rate of code production and its quality.

During an interview with Bitcoin magazine, Yves La Rose, a prominent member of the EOS community, stated that instead of fulfilling their promise to reinvest capital into the EOS ecosystem and community, B1 directed most of the capital into Bitcoin, shareholder buybacks, and private for-profit ventures unrelated to EOS.

Without proper stewardship, the EOS Network was on life support and struggled to attract meaningful development or user activity.

Something had to change sooner rather than later, and so it did.

What is dead may never die

With the project and community practically left for dead, B1 struck the final blow by attempting to sell their remaining 45 million EOS tokens, of which 37 million were still locked up in a vesting contract.

This immediately sparked discussions within the community, which led to a lengthy back-and-forth between B1 and the newly-formed EOS Network Foundation (ENF) in an attempt to strike a deal over the IP rights of EOS in exchange for the money.

After failing to reach an agreement, the community came together and, on December 8th, 2021, voted to stop token vesting going toward Block One and its founders, marking the end of an era and ushering the project into a new, more decentralized one under the ENF.

With the new leadership in place, the community could finally rally behind an organization that represents their best interests.

After firing B1 through means of governance, ENF has since taken on the role of leading the development of EOS, steering the community, and overseeing funding initiatives.

Recognizing the dire state that the network was in, ENF understood that to initiate a thriving ecosystem, it was essential to reward loyal community members and provide incentives for new developers to join the collective effort of revitalizing EOS.

However, to avoid blindly squandering the newly acquired resources, ENF created several working groups tasked with researching the broader crypto space and identifying items that should be implemented into EOS to make it more competitive.

The areas of interest were distilled into Core, Wallet, API, Yield, Audit, Recover, Scalability, EOS EVM, and AntelopeIO.

Upon finishing the research, the working groups provided recommendations in the form of Blue Papers, outlining the highest-priority items and presenting a detailed plan for their execution, including budget and costs for the suggested approaches.

The burning question is why, instead of moving to a different blockchain, the EOS community persevered through adversity to sustain the project.

To answer that, let's delve into how EOS operates and identify some key factors that set it apart from its rivals.

Under the hood of EOS

EOS runs on a performant Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) mechanism that ensures the security and validity of the network’s state. With this system, users continuously elect 21 Block Producers (similar to validators found in PoS systems) who fulfill the role of block building.

After B1's decision to discontinue the development of EOSIO, the foundational software for the EOS Network, it was forked and rebranded as Antelope.

Additionally, projects using the original EOSIO codebase, including Telos, Wax, and UX, established the Antelope Coalition.

The coalition combined resources to uphold the Antelope tech stack as a decentralized, open-source blockchain protocol.

Through this collaboration, EOS Engineers shipped the Antelope IBC protocol, allowing for a seamless flow of assets between partnering chains. Another coalition initiative was the WharfKit SDK framework, which now offers a comprehensive set of user-friendly and dependable developer tools for creating web-based applications on Antelope blockchains.

The technology behind EOS, Antelope (formerly EOSIO), is truly ahead of its time. Powered by the EOS VM, EOS is high-performing, low-latency, and supports a highly flexible native permission structure that enhances user and developer experiences. This Autumn, the EOS Network is set to advance even further with the release of Antelope Spring 1.0, introducing significant updates such as Instant Finality (1-3 seconds), Zero Knowledge Proofs, and more. However, despite its advanced capabilities, the Antelope protocol includes some technical nuances and features that may differ from the typical user experience found in other smart contract chains.

The original DePIN

Blockchains can be viewed as global, decentralized computers. Like any computer, a blockchain has limited resources that must be shared among people who wish to access its state.

EOS approaches resource management differently from most networks. Instead of using gas to pay for network usage, users must manage CPU, NET, and RAM resources.

CPU measures the time a block producer dedicates to processing your account's transactions, calculated in microseconds.

NET, on the other hand, measures the network space used to transmit your transactions, which is calculated in bytes.

When a transaction occurs on the blockchain, it utilizes CPU and NET, making them essential for any account's interaction with the blockchain. Free services such as EOS PowerUp enable users to boost their CPU and NET twice per day at no cost via their website or a dedicated Telegram bot.

Furthermore, wallets like Token Pocket or Anchor Wallet simplify resource management by integrating resource interfaces directly into their UI.

Out of the three, RAM is the most important and the most valuable resource. It is also the only one that can be actively traded for speculation purposes.

RAM preserves the chain's state in physical memory, including account balances, contract codes, and contract data. For example, when a user stores coins, NFTs, or any other data on their wallet, they are essentially renting out storage from the EOS network, hence the need to acquire the resource responsible for storage.

The RAM design has undergone many iterations to offer a more user-friendly experience. Notable improvements include the ability to transfer this resource between wallets without additional costs, an option to burn unused RAM for EOS, and the introduction of a system-level wrapped version of RAM (WRAM) to facilitate its seamless flow within the EOS ecosystem and beyond.

The dedicated RAM Utilities App enables users to easily manage this resource, including buying and selling, transferring, and burning RAM.

But there’s another twist in the RAM tale.

Scaling Bitcoin with RAM

Despite being the largest decentralized network by market capitalization, Bitcoin still has room for improvement in its use cases.

BTC's scalability limitations have arguably hindered its adoption, leading to recent efforts to integrate BTC into various Layer 2 networks and sidechains, such as Runes, Stacks, Botanix, and others.

But with dozens of BTC scaling solutions popping up, we’ll inevitably stumble upon the situation evident in the Ethereum L2 ecosystem: fragmented liquidity, sub-par UX, and different trust assumptions.

Using RAM's unique value proposition as a data storage layer combined with a hybrid consensus model (PoW + PoS), exSat has set out to provide users with an aggregation layer that gathers all the different L2 solutions under one roof.

Referred to as the ‘’docking layer’’, this project aims to connect all the different BTC scaling solutions and unify them under a single intent-based system. Read more about how exSat plans to position itself in the BTC L2 narrative here.

It’s important to note that exSat was built using the open-source EOS EVM codebase, which is a seamless integration of the EVM client already operating on the EOS mainnet.

EOS EVM not only forms the foundation of exSat but also has the potential to attract a large number of users and developers from the EVM community to the EOS ecosystem.

EOS EVM

In the Web2 space, the coding framework is practically irrelevant. In crypto, however, it’s the complete opposite, as choosing one framework over the other is an important business decision.

As the first smart contract framework, the solidity-based EVM has amassed huge mindshare and dominates the space regarding the number of developers. Although far from being the most performant and secure, EVM has the most extensive support for developers in tooling, which makes it the easiest choice for new developers coming into the space.

In most cases, chains that host a different framework have struggled to attract fresh developer talent. Until recently, EOS was part of this category.

Recognizing EVM as the standard of smart contract blockchains, the ENF prioritized making EOS EVM compatible to attract new users and developers, as it previously only supported contracts written in C++ or WASM.

For users, the integration of EVM atop the existing EOS smart contract framework abstracts away technical differences like resource management (RAM, CPU, NET) and instead uses the EOS token for gas.

For developers, this upgrade removes the need to learn the intricacies of EOS and means that any existing EVM dApp or wallet can be easily ported over without additional knowledge.

Ecosystem

So now that you know EOS is well and truly on its way to a revanchist comeback. What is there for us degens to do?

First off, you can participate in the 250 million EOS staking program to earn generous rewards. Every day, 85,600 EOS tokens are distributed to participants, and more than 31 million tokens are given out annually. Get started now!

No network is complete without a DEX. Defibox features an all-in-one experience that facilitates the trading, lending, and staking different ecosystem tokens.

But if finance doesn’t tickle your pickle and you're looking for something fun to do on-chain, then Upland is the place to visit.  

Having partnered with brands like the NFL Players’ Association and UNICEF Brazil, this open-world metaverse is one of the top 10 most popular blockchain games, with thousands of daily active users.

With the network’s TVL reaching historical ATHs, there is much to cover, so stay tuned for a more detailed overview of this burgeoning new ecosystem.

Tokenomics

EOS initially launched with a 1 billion token supply with an annualized 5% inflation, with 1% going toward block producers and 4% accumulated in the eosio.saving account.

At the time, there was no mechanism in place to use the funds accumulated in the savings account, which otherwise could’ve been spent on ecosystem funding initiatives.

To eliminate any possibility of a malicious party acquiring access to such a large amount of tokens, BPs voted to burn the 68 million EOS tokens accumulated in the savings account and to shut off inflation going toward that bucket. However, the savings account was later re-enabled with 2% inflation to support the ENF's mission to revive the ecosystem.

Fast-forward to today, and ENF has recently implemented changes that radically altered EOS's previous token economy. This initiative encompasses many moving pieces with the overarching goal of kickstarting a flourishing EOS economy once more.

Under the new model, 80% of the future total supply was burnt while capping the total supply at 2.1 billion, effectively making EOS non-inflationary. This eliminates the huge overhang of EOS tokens entering the market in the future, making the economics of the system much more predictable.

From now on, the network employs a halving cycle akin to Bitcoin’s, where the number of EOS tokens entering the supply diminishes by exactly half every four years.

These changes meant that the remaining tokens were minted and separated into buckets, some of which were instantly available.

One such bucket is the 350 million EOS (16.7%) allocation for market-making, buy-backs, and liquidity provision of RAM tokens. The second largest allocation, 11.9%, is reserved for staking rewards.

The rest of the supply is allocated to support ENF's day-to-day operations, ecosystem funding, block builder rewards, and the funding of different middleware upgrades critical to EOS, such as account creation tools, improvements to the resource model, account recovery, and more.

EOS Network Foundation

The not-for-profit foundation consists of talented individuals who have previously contributed to the EOS Network and have been elected by the founder, Yves La Rose.

ENF is divided into two distinct parts: core and board. While the core team is responsible for the foundation's day-to-day management and administrative operations, the board delivers critical feedback and advice on ENF's overall direction.

Prominent figures on the board include Aaron Cox, founder of Greymass, Fu Pan, founder and CEO of TockenPocket, and Dafeng Guo, founder of EOS Asia and Strikingly.

The funding for ENF operations was secured after block producers (BPs) approved the MSIG #2 proposal in August 2021, redirecting approximately 3.4m EOS tokens to the wallet designated for grant initiatives. This marked a pivotal moment in the network’s history as a funding source external to block production was achieved for the first time ever.

Since then, the ENF has made significant progress in empowering community-driven projects to address various challenges, retain talent, and contribute value to the EOS ecosystem through recognition grants, the Pomelo grants platform, and EOS Network Ventures.

The foundation remains as committed as ever to pushing EOS back into relevancy, and with progress being made on so many fronts, there are a lot of developments to be expected in the near future.

Nevertheless, a project's success depends on its ability to effectively introduce the product to the market, regardless of the sophistication of its technology. This involves navigating the intricate domain of business development, a responsibility shouldered by EOS Labs.

EOS Labs

EOS Labs' mission goes beyond mere "wen marketing" initiatives. It strives to facilitate the connection between Web3 companies and crucial resources, insights, and infrastructure, ultimately improving their chances of succeeding and strengthening the EOS ecosystem.

This will be achieved two-fold. Firstly, the entity will operate as an incubator offering new and promising startups the necessary funding and support.

Secondly, EOS Labs will focus on developing the most necessary dApps and tools while guiding its partners to create a holistic ecosystem.

The new tokenomics model divides the inflation rewards between the ENF and EOS Labs, as well as various other network functions such as block production and staking rewards. With the funding now going directly to EOS Labs, the organization can efficiently finance various business development initiatives as it sees fit.

The introduction of EOS Labs has expanded the network's capabilities and ensures that essential tasks are overseen by different organizations with unique leadership structures, ultimately improving overall efficiency.

Final thoughts

The cut-throat attention economy of crypto has seen the rise and fall of countless promising projects. To stay relevant, teams must continuously iterate on their product, and if they fail to do so, a newcomer can step in and take your lunch money alongside the delicious sandwich Your mom prepared before school.

This phenomenon is exacerbated in the Layer 1 space, with new blockchains flooding the market every week. Here, only the ones with the strongest value proposition remain relevant. The rest become ghost chains.

Over the course of a few years, EOS transitioned from being one of the most talked-about projects in the crypto industry, with abundant attention and funding that current projects can only dream of, to becoming a mere shadow of its former self.

But with the amount of dog that the ENF, EOS Labs, and EOS community have shown in them, this is shaping up to be an epic comeback tale.

And boy, do people love those.