CWC Newsletter #28 (May 25, 2020)
By Taylor Ryker, Analyst
Top 10 Headlines of the Past Week for EOSIO
Last week saw some more developments and announcements that came out of the EOSIO ecosystem. However, there was much EOS and EOSIO unwarranted FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) spewed by Coindesk, a cryptocurrency news platform, on Block.one's class-action lawsuit and Block.one's upcoming vote. Uninformed crypto traders have called EOS a scam.
In speaking to the scam issue, Eyal Hertzog of Bancor and deWeb tweeted: "I was asked today why we built deWeb on EOS, given EOS's 'Reputation.' I explained that I'm not a technologist - I build consumer services that utilize blockchain tech, so I only care about: 1. Transaction Cost, 2. Liquidity to Fiat (Coinbase), 3. Programmability. EOS wins by large margin." Rest-assured, the EOSIO ecosystem is still thriving and it is apparent with last week's top headlines.
Below are the top 10 headlines of the past week for EOSIO:
1. Upcoming Launch of EOSOptions
2. EOS Costa Rica's Decentralized Application EOS Rate
3. Voice Update from CEO Salah Zalatimo
4. DAPP Network's Cross-Chain vRAM and Universal LiquidAccounts
5. Developer Tools in Focus with EOS Studios Temporarily Down
6. Chintai's Value Proposition in Medium Post
7. Updates to EOSIO Gaming Space: Upland, Chain Clash, Garbage Pail Kids, and V8ORS
8. Block.one, Brendan Blumer and EOS Venture Capital
9. Equilibrium and EOS's Growing Decentralized Finance
10. EOS Rio Releases Hyperion 3.0
1. Upcoming Launch of EOSOptions
According to their white paper, EOSOptions "is a decentralized platform which enables users to create and trade Over-The-Counter (OTC) options on-chain. Built on EOSIO technology, with 500 millisecond block times, EOSOptions is designed from the ground up to offer the fastest and most secure DeFi derivatives platform to date." EOSOptions will be tested on the Kylin testnet and then released on the EOS mainnet.
In order to maintain their price oracles, EOSOptions uses the DAPP Network's price oracles rather than popular Chainlink. EOSOptions' price feed is "aggregated from multiple exchanges an average of every 15 seconds by DAPP network DAPP Service Providers (DSPs)." In contrast, Chainlink is "operating 'properly' [when] the price feed can be a maximum of 2 hours old or off by up to 1%."
With the addition of EOSOptions, the EOS decentralized finance (defi) space is growing every week. This comes at a moment when Ethereum's defi experienced another mishap when this past week a coding bug forced the shutdown of Bitcoin-backed Ethereum token tBTC. In addition, this past week popular crypto lending platform BlockFi was hacked.
Speaking about EOSOptions with respect to the comparison between EOS and Ethereum, Nicolas Flamel highlighted in the white paper: "Spot prices are relayed to the smart contract multiple times per minute using LiquidOracles from the DAPP Network. This means EOSOptions' price feed is orders of magnitude faster than competing decentralized derivatives platforms on Ethereum."
2. EOS Costa Rica's Decentralized Application EOS Rate
Last week EOS Costa Rica, a Block Producer on the EOS mainnet, announced the release of EOS Rate, a decentralized application (dApp). EOS Rate is an open-source dApp that allows EOS token holders to rate Block Producers and Voting Proxies.
According to their website, EOS Rate "gathers ratings to help capture a global collective opinion, or 'wisdom of the crowd', and measure if voting patterns truly reflect voter sentiment." Through what EOS Rate calls "Liquid Democracy," they created a system "LEAF" (Liquid EOS Attribute Factors) to help users visualize the evaluation process of Block Producers and Voting Proxies.
With the upcoming Block.one Vote, EOS Rate seems fitting to extend the transparency and integrity of token voting on the EOS mainnet. There seems to be a recent trend of holding Block Producers or Voting Proxies accountable with developments such as the creation of Binance Proxies, EOSLaoMao's Block Producer Proposal, and EOS Nation's Worker Proposal System.
3. Voice Updates from CEO Salah Zalatimo
Voice CEO Salah Zalatimo posted an update on Voice.com on all their recent improvements and enhancements of the Voice application. Zalatimo detailed that the developers at Voice have made improvements to the post editor, the feed, sign-up process, aesthetics, and various bug fixes.
It is still disappointing to see that Voice will not allow non-registered users to view posts on Voice; which in this case, even if I linked Zalatimo's post, many won't be able to view it.
4. DAPP Network's Cross-Chain vRAM and Universal LiquidAccounts
This past week, LiquidApps announced the release of two new products to support interoperability across EOSIO blockchains: Cross-Chain vRAM and Universal LiquidAccounts. According to LiquidApps, Cross-Chain vRAM "allows contracts on any compatible EOSIO chain to read from a vRAM-enabled contract on a different chain. This creates a shared memory across multiple chains & opens the door for breakthrough use-cases."
Universal LiquidAccounts "is an account registered on an EOSIO blockchain that can execute actions on any other chain supported via LiquidX. With this solution, users no longer require a unique account for each chain and can utilize a single universal account for all EOSIO chains." The potential significance of these two new developments: "Imagine a world where a single account can act as a global keyring, transacting on any dApp and every blockchain. That future begins today!"
Over the weekend, Nicolas Flamel tweeted a speculation of a partnership between LiquidApps and Binance. Binance considers EOS a "promising blockchain for DeFi development, especially for its cross-chain capabilities." With the DAPP Network, cross-chain interoperability is possible.
5. Developer Tools in Focus with EOS Studios Temporarily Down
Late last week, Phillip Hamnett, CTO of EOS42 and Chintai, explained his difficulty to use widely-popular EOS Studios for dApp development: "Hey @obsidian_labs EOS Studio hasn't been working for over a week due to a server issue and no one on Telegram is responding about the status or when they think it will be fixed. Can I get an update please? I have a time critical task and the IDE (Integrated Development Environment) not working is my only blocker."
In response to Hamnet, Obsidian Labs tweeted: "Hi Phillip, sorry for the late reply. Our engineer @Leonleonliang has been in touch with you on Telegram and our team is working hard to fix the problem. Apologies again for the inconvenience, we will try our best to recover the service as soon as possible."
This brought into focus the developer environment within the EOSIO ecosystem. EOSRapid, a top-21 EOS Block Producer, responded to Hamnet with their own solution: Adappt IDE. With Adappt IDE, EOS Rapid says that "it installs in 2 minutes, runs on your local machines and has docker as its only dependency." EOS Rapid also provides an API service for dApp development. In addition, Block.one's EOSIO Quickstart Web IDE is available for EOSIO developers.
Although this incident was a small mishap, the FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) from Crypto Twitter and perhaps outside of the EOSIO community was shown through Ivan on Tech's Hamnet retweet.
6. Chintai's Value Proposition in Medium Post
In a Medium Post "Encoded Compliance: How this not so sexy aspect of tokenized securities will change the future of finance," the team at Chintai outlined how they will disrupt traditional finance and speak to the shortcomings of decentralized finance. Here's how they detail it:
"Chintai is an exchange and product suite for decentralized finance instruments. We service B2B white labeled blockchain technology for institutional finance--fully on-chain, compliance enabled DLT (distributed ledger technology) for issuance, management, and secondary trading of tokenized securities.
Conversely, competitors are mostly focused on issuance and cap table management software and do not offer high performance secondary trading capabilities. Since other solutions are built on protocols that cannot support low-fee, high performant, compliance enabled solutions fully on-chain, many aspects of issuance and management are handled off-chain. These sacrifices undercut the efficiency gains of a fully on-chain, transparent, compliance enabled solution.
[Chintai] sees an opportunity to build unique solutions that fully embrace the potential of blockchain technology with entirely on-chain compliance enabled products. By keeping all aspects of issuance, management, and secondary trading fully on-chain, Chintai preserves a vision that enables issuers, regulators, and other industry participants to maximize the efficiency gains of DLT."
7. Updates to EOSIO Gaming Space: Upland, Chain Clash, V8ORS, and Garbage Pail Kids
Last week saw a couple of EOSIO gaming developments with an Upland Partnership with Tilia and a Chain Clash partnership with Wombat Wallet. On the Telos Network, new game V8ORS is brought onboard the Qudo platform. The WAX Network saw the widely successful launch of Garbage Pail Kids.
Upland, a property trading game powered by the EOS mainnet, announced a strategic partnership with Tilia division of Linden Lab, the creators of Second Life. Upland "will be the first 3rd-party to use Tilia, letting players to sell virtual items for real money while US compliant." This development may lead to more popularity surrounding NFTs because it will allow investors and buyers an off-ramp into fiat.
Popular EOSIO wallet, Wombat Wallet, announced that they have added the blockchain game Chain Clash to their Daily Rewards feature. Chain Clash is a fighting game that pairs cryptocurrency personalities like Brock Pierce and John McAfee against each other. The draw is for cryptocurrency fans to compete and fight with other blockchain fans. With the help of a guide by Wombat Wallet, users of Chain Clash are be able to receive daily rewards in EOS.
Wax's partnership with Topps and their issuance of Garbage Pail Kids has been widely successful. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) of Garbage Pail Kids cards and other collectibles seems to be a positive development for more potential in the future. If you would like to trade NFTs, take a look at this trading website by Kurty: NiftyCap.
8. Block.one, Brendan Blumer and EOS Venture Capital
Recently, EOSIO community members on Twitter and Telegram have voiced their concerns about Block.one's venture funding initiatives, such as EOS venture capital (VC) partnerships with Galaxy Digital, Finlab AG, and SVK Crypto.
Last week, Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer tweeted that he will be more involved with Block.one's EOSVC: "A 2020 focus of mine has been to get more hands on with EOSVC. Very excited about our portfolio companies and upcoming investments. If you're leveraging EOSIO and are interested in collaborating, reach out to me at vc@block.one."
Many EOSIO community members responded to Blumer by pointing to the fact that it has been a very difficult process to either develop businesses or in securing funding from EOSVC. Adam Dorfman explained that "we were in the final stage of due diligence for 6 months, the two EOS VC associates managing our applications were fired one after the other (2 months in between each event) - we were never updated about anything - we just gave up on the process - nobody would respond."
Perhaps due to the inefficiencies behind EOSVC, Blumer is now addressing the problem by explaining to the EOSIO community on Twitter that he will be more involved. Blumer revealed that a new EOS VC website is coming soon to respond to some of the criticisms. Finally, EOS VC is currently funding over 70 companies, and Blumer's involvement will hopefully be a positive sign in supporting companies and projects that need funding and have benefited the EOSIO ecosystem.
9. Equilibrium and EOS's Growing Decentralized Finance
Equilibrium is a decentralized finance platform on the EOS mainnet where cryptocurrency users can stake, earn, lend, and raise liquidity through a USD-pegged stablecoin called EOSDT. This past week Equilibrium announced that the EOSDT stablecoin fee is 1.8% APR and provided a guide to borrow EOSDT using Bitcoin as collateral.
In addition, Equilibrium announced that Binance, EOSFinex, EOS Nation, and EOS Cannon would be the custodians of the Equilibrium platform with the authority to upgrade the network in the future. This is a positive development because these Block Producers are reliable, reputable, and effective.
EOS Writer viewed the partnership as a move towards setting a standard for all decentralized finance platforms: "Multiple independent companies will help eliminate any single points of failure that could compromise the safety of those funds, either due to an overlooked defective smart contract upgrade to the threat that comes with having a single entity control everyone's funds."
Decentralized Finance on the EOS mainnet could also provide the infrastructure for digital content creators and entrepreneurs. On twitter, fav outlined a possible EOS framework for OnlyFans that speaks to the needs for storage, universal accounts, a stablecoin, a database, and individual tokens.
Lastly, EOS Argentina published a post on Continuous Liquidity Pools (CLP) for their Evolution dex (evodex).
10. EOS Rio Releases Hyperion 3.0
Last week, EOS Rio announced the release of Hyperion 3.0, a history API for EOSIO-based blockchains. Hyperion is an open-source History API solution that is considered one of the best in the EOSIO space with frequent updates. Hyperion 3.0 is now equipped with more features such as advanced queries, integrated lightweight explorer, and actions streaming. EOSIO developer tools like Hyperion 3.0 will allow for enhanced dApps by remedying the challenges of History of Histories on the EOS mainnet.
Disclaimer: KJ Kingsley is not a financial advisor and holds the digital tokens or cryptocurrencies represented in the content above. This content is for informational purposes only, you should not construe any such information or other material as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice. Nothing contained in this post constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer by myself to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities laws of such jurisdiction. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of any of the author’s employers.