What is EOS - Explained simply

EOS cryptocurrency explained

EOS is a blockchain platform designed to help the development of dApps. It can be considered as an operating system or a program that provides all the tools required for dApp development and deployment. Some compare it to Ethereum and say it is far better.

EOS aims to be a platform that brings forth the essence of all smart contract technologies.As it sets itself this goal, the path it takes is to setup an environment that would be very user friendly.EOS aims to have a platform that is both very easy to use and extremely scalable.

EOS is designed as a platform that synergies the strengths of various cryptocurrencies such as the security of the Bitcoin and the ability of Ethereum to develop dApps over it.

The EOS platform has built in functionality to create dApps with ease. Aimed at providing a convenient programming web interface the EOS platform strives to create ease of use akin to using an app from the app store.Its web-toolkit makes it easy for anyone to develop a dApp.

The efforts of the EOS community and the development team would reflect in a dApp platform that is easy to work on at a daily basis.Being extremely scalable is another core strength of the EOS platform.

How EOS works

There are two parts of the platform EOS and EOS.IO. Think of EOS.IO as the program, software or better still the operating system used to manage and control the EOS blockchain network.

Whereas EOS tokens are the currency of the EOS network.Any dApp developed to runs on the EOS platform would be both secure and scalable with the ability of utilizing the efficiency of the EOS platform to scale up to several thousands of transactions per seconds.This becomes possible due to EOS working as an efficient backbone of the dApps.

The efficiency of the EOS environment can be attributed to inbuilt and seamlessly integrated features like

-Authentication System

-Cloud Storage and

-Server Hosting

EOS Authentication System

From a dApps perspective the EOS system is a platform that can be used as a ready, easy to use and  fully operational authentication mechanism pre-built into the EOS environment.Additionally the database access can be shared between accounts.

An additional feature is the option to store the user data on local machines off the blockchain.User accounts come with various levels of permissions and have access to their own locally secured data. This is again a built in capability of the EOS environment.

An essential safety mechanism built into the EOS platform is the ability to recover stolen accounts. To validate the identity of the original account holder provisions are made in the EOS environment.

The EOS ecosystem incorporates the use of delegated proof-of-stake and a role-based permissions concept this incorporates the flexibility to make instant high level decisions such as instant roll backs, bug fixing in the dApps or the system.

This is performed by the voting done by the majority holders.

EOS Hosting and Storage in the cloud

Both the hosting as well as storage can be performed in the cloud.

The app developers has the freedom and tools enabling him to build and deploy in the cloud.

The security, storage and bandwidth are provided by the EOS platform and so the developer can focus on building the core functionality into the dApps.

Better dApp management is possible as EOS gives the developers access to tools to have analytics pertaining to both storage as well as bandwidth.

Even the limits for various apps can be set by the developer.

These features can be availed by paying for these services by way of staking tokens.

Its web toolkit supports easy dApp development for individuals as well as developers.

It is a single window tool for development, deployment and hosting of the dApp which also gives the developers full control over the pricing model.

Usually in a blockchain based wallet or dApp the end user needs to pay a transaction fee in order to send a transaction to the network.

However in the case of EOS network. The use of the dApp which requires interacting with the underlying blockchain does not mandate a micropayment towards network fee.

On the other hand the developers can choose their own payment model.

Benefits of EOS tokens

A developer intending to develop dApps on the EOS platform would need to hold the EOS tokens.

This holding (rather than spending of EOS tokens) gives him access to the resources needed to build his dApp.

Alternatively someone who holds the tokens but is not running any apps can choose to rent out his spare bandwidth to others.

How EOS scaling works ?

Better scalability of EOS as compared to Bitcoin and Ethereum can be attributed to the difference in which the blockchains operate.

Blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum are based on consensus over state.

This interprets into the ability of each and every computer on the network having the ability to verify the current state of the entire blockchain. This is their way of confirming transactions as well as prevent the chance of frauds coming into the blockchain.

EOS has a more evolved mechanism wherein the EOS network implements consensus over events. Here the importance is given to the transaction that is the message rather than the state.

Thus the nodes verify a series of events that have occurred till this point. This is to track the network state.Though in this process more time is required to complete the reconfirmation of history when it restarts but overall more transactions are processed while it is running.

With this setup the EOS network can scale up to a million transactions per second on a single machine.

This means when there are multiple machines supporting the network the possibility of scaling up are immensely higher.

Features and bugs in EOS

EOS aims to keep enriching the environment and weed out any bugs with this intent it has built in a governance model in which the block producers vote and decide the transactions to be confirmed.

How voting power of the EOS tokens works

Here is what the vote decides on the EOS platform:

- The vote decides the fate of an individual app as it decides if it is running correctly.

- Voting also validates any changes needed for the code of an app or the system.

- EOS is community driven where the community decides the option to upgrade, downgrade,

bug fixes etc.

EOS team

The EOS platform is developed by Block.one. EOS is the brain child of Dan Larimer and Brendan Bloomer.Dan Larimer brings to the project his experience of co- founding Bitshare and steemit.Collectively they bring a lot of crypto insight into the project.

EOS Roadmap

EOS Dawn 1.0 was released September 14, 2017.

EOS Dawn 2.0 was released December 4, 2017 . This release brought resource tracking and inter-blockchain communication.

EOS Dawn 3.0 was the official release of of the project in April 2018

EOS is backed by an active and proactively contributing community that is global in nature and has a good blend of investor as well as contributors.

EOS ICO / Token sale dates and how to buy

The EOS token sale was spread out over a year from June 26 2017 to Ist July 2017. Here 200 million (20%) of the tokens were distributed and had 350 periods of distribution.

In this method of distribution the total number of tokens designated for the given period were allocated to the contributors in proportion to the ETH sent out by them divided by the total contribution amount. Another noteworthy thing was that a lot of exchanges listed the EOS tokens. In this way the price of the EOS token was realistically determined by the market demand.

How and where to buy the EOS Tokens

One of the easiest places to buy the EOS token is the Binance exchange. EOS purchase at Binance can be made using USDT, BTC and ETH.Other exchanges where the EOS tokens can be bought and traded at are Bitfinex, Huobi, or OKEx.

Best wallets for holding EOS

Freewallet- Easy to use and very user friendly. Can be used through a web interface or a mobile app.

Infinito EOS Wallet - It is a wallet that also serves as a gateway that integrates many services such as 

- Exchange

- ID/KYC solution etc

 GreyMass EOS Voter Wallet. This is an open source wallet where the keys are encrypted with AES-256 encryption.A user can choose the desired API node to vote making the voting more secure than the web interface. The idea behind this wallet is to encourage the use of EOS and create an easy to use experience for the user.

Guarda EOS Wallet. It is a multicurrency wallet which does not store the private keys. Instead the private keys are stored in the device memory securely and upon log-out the keys are deleted. This makes it a very secure wallet. Besides EOS it can store other cryptocurrencies like EOS, BTC,ETH, ETC Zcash, Ripple, Dash amongst others.

SimplEOS Wallet. Available for the Windows, Linux and the Mac platforms this wallet is designed to integrate cohesively with the EOS ecosystem making it quite popular.

Scatter EOS Wallet. Scatter has a desktop version can can be implemented through a chrome extention as well. It enables a user to be able to sign transactions on the EOS blockchain without having to risk exposing the private key.

imToken Wallet. The claim to fame of this wallet is that it is the worlds largest Ethereum digital asset wallet.As this wallet began supporting multiple currencies, EOS was added as one of the currencies which can be stord in this wallet.A user can pay a fee in ETH to create a wallet or import an existing one. However users having 3 TFT tokens in their iomToken wallet can create their EOS wallet free of cost.

Negative feedback of EOS

There is a view that the EOS project is a very centralized project as it uses a delegated Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism in which just 21 Block Producers verify transactions.Some community members question the year long sale that raised $4 billion through the ICO.Despite the sufficiently large budget the EOS project has seen its fair share of bugs.

Summary

- EOS has a fairly experienced team leading the project.

- In its journey thus far the EOS project has seen its share of controversies and bugs.

- EOS has established itself in the dApp market place and has become a name to reckon with.

- EOS has emerged as one of the more formidable platforms for dApps and gives a serious competition to Ethereum.