Block.one is out. How does EOS begin its journey of reinvention?

EOS, which has been silent in the blockchain world for a long time, has returned to the attention of followers after a long absence, and has become a hot topic due to the community's resistance to its parent company.

On December 8, the holders of 17 block-producing master nodes and 8 backup nodes of the blockchain system EOS.IO (EOS) voted to freeze 66 million EOS coins that were originally scheduled to be distributed to EOS.IO's parent company Block.one (B1) in the next six to seven years. The reason is that B1 can obtain 27,400 EOS rewards from network output every day, but its code contribution has declined significantly and it lacks contribution to the development of the network ecology.

The incident occurred a month ago.

On November 8, B1 announced that it would transfer 45 million EOS to Helios, a new tool led by Brock Pierce, to create an EOS venture capital fund and develop institutional-level EOS financial products. However, the community knows that Helios founder Brock Pierce is also the co-founder of B1, and this amount of money is equivalent to "transferring from the left hand to the right hand."

Soon, the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) negotiated with B1 as the community representative, but in the end B1 was always unwilling to transfer the intellectual property (IP) of EOS.IO to the EOS community, which eventually led to B1 being voted out.

An interesting scene happened. Daniel Larimer (BM), the founder of EOS.IO who had a disagreement with B1, suddenly announced his return with a project that needed financing. He said it was time to reshape the EOS brand. EOS will not only change its name, but also re-establish a new vision and new goals that can inspire community members to participate and promote investment.

These changes have briefly revived the EOS community, which has been dull for a long time. However, in the eyes of many users, the long-standing stagnation of EOS is no longer trustworthy. For EOS, reshaping its brand and building trust is also a long way to go.

Block.One was "expelled" by the EOS community

EOS, which has been lost in the crypto world for a long time, is trying to get back on track.

On December 8, holders of EOS.IO's 17 block-producing master nodes and 8 standby nodes voted to pass a major proposal to stop paying Block.one (the parent company that originally participated in the design of the blockchain network, referred to as B1) 66 million EOS originally scheduled to be distributed in the next six to seven years, worth approximately US$250 million.

This means that the community will vote out B1, which has been inactive for a long time, in a DAO manner.

The EOS community voted to stop distributing EOS to B1

The EOS Network Foundation (ENF) then elaborated on the reasons for doing so in a “Review and Summary of the Statement on the EOS Network Action on December 8th”.

ENF stated that over the past year, B1 has significantly declined in the speed and quality of EOSIO code output. Especially after EOS founder and former B1 CTO Daniel Larimer (BM) and other original core contributors left B1, B1 did not provide continuous core code development, including not implementing any type of blockchain cross-chain communication solutions, never fulfilling the promise of "1 million transactions per second", and not fulfilling the promise of launching more than 1,000 DApps.

"There are too many to list," ENF said, pointing out that B1 not only disappointed the EOS community, but also disappointed all developers who built the ecosystem around EOSIO.

The community's resistance is not difficult to understand. In the early fundraising, B1 obtained 150,000 BTC in financing through EOS. At the same time, B1 also received 27,400 EOS from the network output every day, which is equivalent to the sum of the first 60 block nodes. However, when new public chains such as Avalanche have put out hundreds of millions of dollars to support ecological construction, the wealthy B1 has almost never paid to support ecological construction. In the words of EOS users, "The money is in place, but B1 does not do anything."

The long-simmering dissatisfaction finally broke out due to a fuse. On November 8, B1 announced that it would transfer 45 million EOS to the new tool Helios to create an EOS venture capital fund, develop institutional-level EOS financial products, create infrastructure, tools and documentation for developers, and organize community activities around education, networking and use case development.

This move, which seems to be a contribution to the EOS network, has aroused suspicion in the community. You should know that 45 million EOS is worth more than 150 million US dollars, which is not a small amount. The recipient of this money, Helios, is founded by Brock Pierce, who has two important identities: one is the co-founder of Tether, and the other is the co-founder of B1.

From this point of view, this amount of funds is equivalent to "pouring from the left hand to the right hand", which makes the community very vigilant. Soon, ENF, as the community representative, began to negotiate with B1. The final proposal discussed by both parties was that after B1 gave 45 million EOS to Helios, it also needed to give 30 million EOS to ENF, 1 million EOS to the ecological financing platform Pomelo, and 1 million EOS to the governance system EdenOS. In addition, ENF required B1 to transfer the intellectual property (IP) of EOS.IO to the EOS community, including community accounts, eos.io domain names, etc.

The community's "forced palace" has achieved results. On December 6, B1 announced that it would donate a corresponding amount of EOS to various organizations, but kept silent about handing over the IP. In the end, the EOS block producers simply voted to lock up the EOS that B1 had not yet allocated, which was equivalent to kicking B1 out in disguise.

B1’s long-term situation of “taking money but not doing anything” has come to an end at this moment, but the EOS ecosystem obviously needs long-term planning if it wants to regroup.

EOS.IO founder calls for "reinvention"

Just after this series of events, the founder Daniel Larimer (nicknamed BM), who had already left EOS.IO, also jumped out.

On December 10, BM revealed that he is developing new projects Contract Pays and 3 Sec Finality, and is currently planning to raise funds. Among them, Contract Pays is a payment tool that allows users to transfer tokens directly through keys without creating an account, while 3s Finality can increase the final confirmation time of blocks from 3 minutes to 3 seconds.

It is speculated that BM’s new project may be based on EOS, may receive funding from ENF, and the founder of EOS is likely to return.

The speculation is moving towards being confirmed. On December 11, BM said in the community that it is time to reshape the EOS brand. EOS will not only change its name, but also re-establish a new vision and new goals that can inspire community members to participate and promote investment. EOS is the largest DAO.

BM suggests rebranding EOS

His words put the EOS community into a state of temporary excitement, and even EOS, which had been silent for a long time, briefly rose in the secondary market.

But EOS’s brand reshaping is obviously not something that can be accomplished by just shouting slogans. In fact, EOS has never lacked slogans during its development, but their implementation has been limited.

When EOS first raised funds, its slogan was "Ethereum Killer". After the mainnet was launched, EOS wanted to be the largest DApp gathering place, but its most "glorious" moment was the large-scale deployment of gambling games on the EOS network in the second half of 2018. The network was later called the "spinach chain". After DeFi became popular, a batch of DeFi protocols quickly appeared on EOS, but most of them were one-time flows. When the wave rolled to NFT and the metaverse, EOS simply fell silent.

Over the past two years, EOS has gradually fallen from being an "Ethereum killer" to a laughing stock in the industry. Despite its efficient network performance, its ecological development is weak and its vitality has been lost. EOS is constantly being overtaken by new public chains.

This time, the EOS community "expelled" B1, will things be different?

Public opinion was the first to deteriorate. In the market, many users still expressed their distrust of EOS. “They just shouted slogans but did nothing. I am afraid of being cut.”

Ultimately, if EOS wants to reshape its brand, its primary task is to develop its ecosystem. Only when ecological projects form a system and successfully attract traffic can it change the long-term weak ecological structure of EOS and regain the trust of users.

ENF realized this and wanted to change B1's style of "taking money but not doing anything" and tried to build a complete donation framework, with the EOS ecological financing platform Pomelo as the main carrier.

On December 1, Pomelo completed the first phase of the funding plan, with a total of 209 EOS ecosystem projects applying for funding, and 1,022 independent users initiated 5,796 donations for their favorite projects, with a total donation amount of 30,759 EOS, equivalent to approximately $133,276. In addition, ENF also provided Pomelo with $500,000 worth of EOS for funding distribution.

ENF said that Polkadot's Web3 Foundation (W3F) is their learning target. Following the example of W3F, ENF will also fund individual projects according to different situations, and provide detailed funding plans for projects that can lower the threshold for EOS ecosystem development. "The purpose of building a complete funding framework is not only to provide funding, but also to provide one-stop support services for developers, project parties and individuals to promote the rapid prosperity and development of the EOS ecosystem."

A senior EOS holder told Fengchao Finance that BM is not the savior of EOS. For the community, he is just an opinion leader who is trying to boost morale, and he also has the purpose of raising funds for new projects. "EOS's revitalization requires the efforts of the community. The top priority is to develop ecological applications to bring it back to the mainstream asset vision, so that the lost trust can be reunited."