LONDON (Bywire News) - It has almost been two weeks since the start of the new year, and if you’ve been involved in the EOS ecosystem, the last 12 months and 12 days have been one hell of a roller coaster ride. From the departure of Dan Larimer from B1 (block.one) in January to the creation of the EOS Network Foundation and a full-on, cold, then warm, then cool again civil war, 2021 has had more ups and downs than a pensioner in the night. Here’s part one, where we, building on the work from Alfredo de Candia, look at how the most tumultuous but potentially critical of years played out in EOS news.
January
- 07, the Bullish.com website is updated
Bullish is to be the next big thing hitting the EOS ecosystem – an exchange designed to attract institutional class investors into the sector. This would be the money-making machine that B1 had been looking for, but already murmurings of discontent were building and they were just about to burst to the fore with Dan Larimer dropping the first in a series of major bombshells…
- 10, Daniel Larimer resigns as CTO from Block.one
In news that shocked everyone in the blockchain community, Dan Larimer decided that enough was enough and resigned as CTO of B1.
In a statement, he said: “I will continue on my mission to create free market, voluntary solutions for securing life, liberty, property and justice for all. I do not know exactly what is next, but I am leaning toward building more censorship-resistant technologies.”
Censorship at the time appeared to be top of Larimer’s hate list. Meanwhile, he announced he would be boycotting Twitter over its growing censorship in a move thought to be sparked by the platform’s banning of Donald Trump. He also hit out at Apple’s (at the time rumoured) decision to ditch the right-wing social network Parlour.
In a press release, the company described him as leaving to pursue personal projects but rumours of discontent were never far from the surface. In his exclusive interview with Bywire, Brock Pierce suggests tensions had been growing for some time leading up to Larimer deciding to ‘ragequit’, the company he helped to launch.
The decision sent shockwaves around the network with even hardened EOS faithful users choosing to sell their stock as the price dropped. Others decided to ‘buy the dip’ in the hope of a speedy recovery. Larimer’s exit started a number of departures with talented developers choosing to follow him out of the door. It would be a major talent drain, the damage of which is still being felt by EOS.
- 21 B1 transfers more than 20 million EOS to Bullish
B1 made a bold statement to the sector when it transferred more than 20 million EOS from its accounts to Bullish. The move was a clear statement from the company that this was where its focus now lay, but many people were crying foul.
- 25, ImmuneBytes launches an audit service for smart contracts on EOS
As great as EOS is, it is still emerging as a technology. Tools, technologies and practices around developing smart contracts are yet to mature, and will inevitably contain bugs. ImmuneBytes set out to offer a smart contract service to make it easier to identify issues before they become more serious threats.
- 30, Daniel Larimer blasts B1
In an interview with Amelia Tomasicchio, Dan Larimer accuses Block.one of hindering development on EOS. With questions supplied by Michael O’Sullivan of Bywire, Larimer argued that the company’s need to comply with regulations meant it “will never be able to build and promote technology that frees people from dependence upon the powers that be.”
He went on to say that: “truly decentralized technologies are hard to monetize and regulate as there are no centralized points of control where fees can be extracted or regulations can be enforced. This makes it difficult to justify R&D expenses on such technology to shareholders as the liabilities outweigh the profit potential.”
February
- 2nd B1 launches second hackathon, Beyond Blockchain
B1 announces its latest EOSIO hackathon in partnership with Google Cloud, Mythical Games and Galaxy Interactive. Entitled Beyond Blockchain it will, as the name implies, focus on projects which expand further than the narrow horizon of the blockchain to have a tangible impact in the real world.
- 4, the Greymass team announces Anchor Wallets 1.10
The team behind the Anchor Wallet announced the launch of a new account creation functionality. It would initially be restricted to the EOS network but would eventually be rolled out across other EOSIO based networks.
- 9, B1 launches EOS VC for India
Brendan Blumer announces that Block.one has launched the EOS VC fund for India. In a statement on Twitter, he said: “The Indian market holds extraordinary promise and we remain hopeful India seizes the opportunity to be a leader of the internet of finance.”
He made the announcement in response to a Tweet from Balaji S. Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, promoting an article in which he argued that India should buy Bitcoin.
- 24, B1 launches PowerUp Model
After a period of gathering user feedback, B1 launches its powerup model which means that from this moment on all transactions have a processing cost (a minimum of about 0.0003 EOS). Under this model, a user pays a fee and powers up their account for 24 hours to transact on the network. EOS token holders can then deposit unused EOS tokens to receive a percentage of the power-up fees generated by the entire network.
- 25, Block.one and LACChain promote blockchain in Latin America
The LACChain Global Alliance was set up to accelerate the development of an open and interoperable blockchain ecosystem in Latin America and the Caribbean. At the end of February, it added B1 as a strategic partner. B1 provided technical expertise alongside existing partners EOS Costa Rica and EOS Argentina to empower local entrepreneurs and governments using EOSIO to improve economies, infrastructure and supply chains.
March
- 1, Voice.com announced the creation of NFTs for their articles
In a major about-turn, Voice.com, which had been set up as blockchain’s answer to social media, announced a massive pivot into the world of NFTs. Its first step was to announce that they would create non-fungible tokens for all their articles. NFTs had been attracting a growing level of attention in recent times as people sought to create new forms of digital proof of ownership.
- 2, The "Beyond Blockchain" Hackathon opens
It was starters orders for B1’s hackathon as hundreds of the brightest minds in the EOS ecosystem got to work, creating exciting innovations on the EOSIO protocol and having their applications deployed on the scalable Google Cloud. Participants would have the opportunity to interact with mentors from across the blockchain ecosystem including from B1 and Google Cloud.
- 3, Daniel Larimer makes his next move
A few weeks from his departure from B1, Dan Larimer is back in the EOS community with his new project, Clarion OS. Intended as Layer 0 of the EOS blockchain, this would be a decentralised communications platform to replace existing centralised services.
- 12, EOSFinex announces its next closure but opens its code to everyone
The Bitfinex team announced that it was closing EOSFinex operations but would give open-source access to its core infrastructure and intellectual property. This, they hoped, could start a new generation of top-performing decentralized EOSIO exchanges. Trading on EOSFinex was to be disabled from March 22 with all deposited funds returned to users.
However, Bitfinex would continue to support EOS via the centralised exchange and several EOS tokens were to be listed on Bitfinex over the following weeks.
- 17, EOS Market Place goes big in Venezuela
A Tweet from EOS Israel hailed the impact EOS Marketplace has been having in Venezuela. They tweeted, “Where #Crypto is truly needed, $EOS is there,”
“@eosmarketp is helping people all over Venezuela and their amazing #EOS community is living proof that the great technology built on EOSIO is improving people’s lives.”
It’s a big boost to EOS, demonstrating how it can serve as a valid alternative to fiat currency.
- 18 B1 sows the seeds of Pomelo
EOS Nation and EOS Asia received more than $630,000 from B1 to fund the creation of a decentralised platform to encourage and reward the development of dApps on EOS. The platform was to enable community-driven funding to encourage transparent collaboration and ongoing enrichment of the ecosystem. If you’re thinking that sounds a bit like Pomelo you’re not far wrong. The platform is now up and running and closed its first series at the end of November.
Announcing the move, Kevin Rose, SVP, Public Blockchain Engagement at Block.one had this to say: “As a long-standing member of the EOSIO community, we have seen first-hand the power that comes from community contributions and innovation. Block.one is excited to tap into that collective dynamism by supporting the launch of a crowdsourced funding platform, which could also serve as a reservoir for sharing project ideas and developer best practices.”
- 20, Brendan Blumer talks DeFi
B1’s Brendan Blumer on ProFi (Programmable Finance) or a DeFi (Decentralized Finance) with KYC (Know Your Customer), writing on Twitter he said: “#DeFi is too often an intentional excuse to violate KYC & AML laws, but this will end abruptly. Compliant programmable finance will radically transform our financial system by displacing inefficient fee-taking middle-men and driving more value back to end-users. #ProFi on #EOS.”
- 27, Daniel Larimer a roadmap for EdenOS
In a blog, Dan Larimer unveils a roadmap to making EdenOS a reality to make the EOS community the most decentralised, transparent, democratic governance process of any blockchain.
“In particular,” he wrote, “it is more important than ever for the community to have a means of reaching consensus on who to trust to utilize community funds for the benefit of everyone.”
He also announced that he had ‘reached out to Brock Pierce’ and had arranged for a non-profit organisation named EOS Alliance to manage the efforts of bringing EdenOS to reality. This, he said, would serve as a bridge between the real world and the Eden community.
By this time, we also know from our exclusive interviews with Brock Pierce, Dan Larimer and Yves La Rose that discussions were already underway over the future of EOS and the vesting tokens. It was a discussion that would explode big time later in the year as we will see in the coming articles.
(Research from Alfredo de Candia and Tom Cropper, writing by Tom Cropper, editing by Klaudia Fior and Michael O’Sullivan)