CWC Newsletter #52 (April 22, 2022)

By Taylor Ryker, Partner

An EOS Perspective: Where we are and where we came from

Welcome back everyone, apologies for the long hiatus since last Fall 2021.

I have been patiently observing and watching to see what the EOS community would do in light of separating from Block.one since late last Fall 2021. However, I want to say that I am enthused to see the growing progress in the EOS community since the split from Block.one.

With the leadership of the EOS Network Foundation (ENF), it is becoming clearer that there are now better people at the helm that the community can trust. Shout-outs especially to Zack Gall & Yves La Rose for taking the initiative, you have my dearest respect.

What happened over the past 3 years (2018-2021)?

Block.one starved the EOS community of funding, which led to an exodus of developers and builders to other crypto ecosystems, while not building the necessary developer tools, such as a wallet, and documentations for easy on-boarding.

However, Block.one did provide grants and specific funding to startups while hosting an EOSIO developer course. BUT, the impact, reach and effectiveness of Block.one's actions for the community have not amounted to or lived up to the expectations of everyone in the EOS community.

What we learned from the Block.one debacle are (1) the EOS community is resilient and is not defined by one company or person (read: decentralized), (2) EOS is now led by the community via the ENF (and the ENF has been doing a damn good job in funding the community, attracting developers, and bridging to other crypto ecosystems), and (3) for the first time, coordination, funding and collaboration are churning a path forward for EOS with a defined roadmap supported by strong leadership.

Now, the EOS community is in a better place than it has been for the past 3 years. And I think that we need more community members and users to help with the marketing of EOS as a new and improved blockchain that can support legacy blockchains that are too slow or too expensive to allow for mass adoption.

Apple, the tech company, was told in the early 2000s by the large telecommunication companies like Motorola, Blackberry, and Nokia that they would never take away their dominant market share. But Apple did. How? They re-invented the phone from just making phone calls to a device that became the smartphone.

Why I bring up Apple is the fact that I see a potential historical parallel happening before our eyes. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) environment includes the majority of the most mainstream blockchains in the space, such as Avalanche, Matic (Polygon), Binance Smart Chain, and others.

However, what we have realized is that these chains are still too slow and too expensive for mass adoption. For DeFi, these slower and more expensive transactions are allowable, but for GameFi and SocialFi, these industries will need faster and cheaper blockchains to allow their users the same Web2 experience but with more financial equity with the advent of Web3.

This past week, the ENF had their official launch of an EOS EVM called Trust EVM. On their roadmap for the deployment of Trust EVM, the ENF is projecting the release of the EVM with a developer suite of tools and a DEX by Q3 of 2022. With the coming EVM in the near future, I have already seen major dApps such as JulSwap begin to look into Trust EVM to see how they can leverage faster and cheaper transactions to make a better experience for their users.

So, in closing, I do not support the fact that Block.one, years ago, championed EOS as the "Ethereum Killer," which really pissed off the entire crypto-space and turned off many developers and users to the EOS space. However, with Trust EVM and the leadership of the ENF, I am happy to see that EOS will be more of an "Ethereum Saver" by allowing EVM dApps to reach their full potential -- mass adoption for the beginning of Web3.

See you all next time for another CWC Newsletter. And thanks to Tothemoon for nudging me to begin to write again. With all the progress and development on EOS, I am now more hopeful for EOS's future.

Disclaimer: Taylor Ryker is neither a financial nor legal 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, commodities, cryptocurrencies, or other financial instruments in this or in any other jurisdiction in which such solicitation or offer would be unlawful under the securities and commodities 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.