LONDON (Bywire News) - The long-awaited rebrand of EOSIO is here, with the birth of a brand-new community-led fork in the form of Antelope. Is this the game changer the community has been waiting for?
Antelope will be a community-run blockchain protocol led by a coalition headed up by the EOS Network Foundation and comprising members from EOS, Telos, Wax, and UX Network. All coalition members will share Antelope’s underlying blockchain codebase as well as a collaborative development treasury to continuously improve upon the core protocol that each of the public networks shares.
“The release of Antelope is the culmination of a historic effort undertaken by some of the most talented developers in blockchain,” said Yves La Rose, CEO and Executive Director, EOS Network Foundation.
“We are building upon over four years of battle-hardened code, and the cumulative knowledge of four L1 chains leveraging each other’s strengths, all united behind the Antelope protocol.”
It will be – in the words of Douglass Horn, Telos Chief Architect a “protocol built by its users, for its users.” It will set out to be the most user-friendly, stable and secure protocol for “building new chains that are infinitely flexible and constantly upgradeable.”
“The future,” he adds “is multi-chain and Antelope is poised to be an undisputed leader in web3 and blockchain technology. The partnership with EOS, WAX and UX networks represents a real alignment of incentives with game-changing benefits to Telos and all the Antelope chains.”
The launch of Antelope is the latest attempt to mark a clear separation from the bad old days of B1. Years of broken promises, stalled developments and toxic publicity had critically undermined EOSIO’s reputation.
It might still have been faster, more scalable and sustainable than its nemesis Ethereum but to the wider community, it was seen as a failure.
Since then, of course, EOSIO has undergone something of a community uprising. Led by the EOS Network Foundation, B1 has been pushed to the side. Investment has been pouring into the space, as EOS strives to make up for lost time.
However, getting that message across has been a slow and laborious process. To some, the name EOS will forever be associated with B1. The EOSIO rebrand, then, is an attempt to draw a line in the sand. It severs all remaining ties with B1 and marks a new beginning for a new EOS, as Yves La Rose tweeted.
“Rebranding EOSIO and hardforking EOS is a necessary part of the comeback and represents the start of a new chapter,” he wrote. “Under the leadership of the ENF EOS can finally break through its glass ceiling and reach its full potential.”
The arrival of Antelope, therefore, brings a new name to create a new story but this is about much more than just branding. It will bring a host of developments such as API improvements, history pruning and enhanced cryptographic functions to improve the efficiency and performance for operating EVM runtimes within Antelope smart contracts.
Several critical RFPs have been proposed by the Antelope Coalition for enhancing the protocol including proposals for faster finality, SDKs, and P2P code improvements. In addition, the Coalition is backing UX Network to deploy its Trustless Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) system that will enable Trustless IBC between participating Antelope-based blockchains.
In the early days the coalition will focus on technical improvements, but beyond that focus will turn to the broader Antelope ecosystem. Its open framework can be utilised by anyone who wishes to create next-generation dApps and web3 services that are anchored by a low-fee, high throughput blockchain.
From both a technical and PR perspective, then, this feels like a big moment for EOS. The combined talents of WAX, Telos, EOS and the UX Network are coming together to create a powerful protocol which is designed to power the next generation of web3 technology.
It will be a future based on user experience, speed and scalability, to give developers all the tools they need to write a new chapter in the development of the blockchain. For everyone involved in EOS and the wider blockchain community, this could be a game-changing moment.
(Writing by Tom Cropper, editing by Klaudia Fior)