EOS is a popular blockchain network that has been created to support smart contracts and offer decentralized applications. This blockchain’s unique design has established the position of EOS as a scalability solution. At the beginning, EOS was considered a serious rival to Ethereum. However, with the development of other scalable blockchains including Polkadot, Solana, and Cardano, EOS is no longer the only serious rival. So, how can EOS differentiate itself from the other rivals? Let’s see. In this article, we will explain how EOS works and what aims it has. Stay with us.

What is EOS and how does it work?

EOS is a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that aimed to support smart contracts, offer decentralized applications, and enable fast transactions with near-zero fees. However, according to many experts, EOS wasn’t successful in realizing its claims.

The ICO of EOS tokens began in 2017, and this network officially started its work in 2018. EOS uses a specific form of proof-of-stake consensus algorithm called Delegated Proof of Stake (DPOS). EOS consists of 21 delegates chosen by the network’s users. These delegates validate the transactions on behalf of all EOS owners. Using delegated proof of stake has increased the speed of the transactions, and has decreased their fees. EOS is able to process 4,000 transactions per second. In other words, processing every transaction in EOS takes only 0.5 second. This blockchain uses a native operating system called EOS.IO. In return for staking the EOS tokens, EOS.IO dedicates computational resources to users. This way, users don’t have to pay any fees for their transactions.

Besides, EOS uses innovative solutions for ensuring the security of the network and users’ assets. Despite all these facts, EOS still has a long way to public adoption. The most important reason may be the complexity of activating accounts in EOS. Running and activating an EOS account is a relatively complex process. For this reason, we will go through this process in the following sections.

How to activate EOS accounts?

In other blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum, accounts don’t need to be activated. The only thing you need to do for running a Bitcoin account is installing a wallet. But in EOS, you are not able to use your account until you activate it. Activating an EOS account means staking EOS tokens, and earning a part of EOS resources for making transactions. As we previously mentioned, for making an EOS transaction, you don’t need to pay any fees. Instead, you need to stake a small amount of your EOS tokens, and earn the resources instead. By resources, we mean RAM, CPU, and bandwidth.

When you choose an EOS wallet and install it, and then you select the EOS token and press the “receive” button, you figure out that it is not active. The wallet normally wants you to stake a certain amount of EOS. It requires you to change another token to EOS, or send the EOS you have in another account to this wallet. For simple activities like making transactions, staking 0.2 EOS is enough. If you choose the second way (sending EOS from another account to this wallet), you need to send at least 1 EOS, but when you receive it in your wallet, you figure out that it is a bit less than 1 EOS (around 0.8 EOS). From now on, you can transfer your EOS tokens without paying any fees. Moreover, you can unlock your EOS tokens whenever you wish. Unlocking the tokens frees up the resources, and these resources can then be dedicated to other EOS users.

Who created EOS?

EOS was developed by Dan Larimer and Brendan Blumer. This cryptocurrency and the EOS.IO operating system were backed by the Block.one company. Block.one is a private blockchain software company that helps developers build their crypto-related products. The whitepaper of EOS was published in 2017, along with a completely isolated testnet. After a long period of testing and debugging, the first official version (EOSIO’s Dawn 1.0) was finally launched in June 2018. This version has had some updates, and is now operating under the version 2.1.0.

The EOS token; market cap and price history

At the time of writing, each unit of EOS is being traded at $1.26. Its all-time high goes back to April 2018 when its price went above 20 dollars. EOS is the world’s forty-fifth-largest cryptocurrency by market cap. Its market cap (at the time of writing) is more than $1,252,000,000. EOS doesn’t have a predetermined max supply. At the time of writing, its circulating supply is more than 996 thousand units.

The EOS wallets

Like all other cryptocurrencies, you need digital wallets to store EOS. For storing EOS, you can use the specific wallets of EOS, or some general wallets that support this cryptocurrency. Some of the best options you can consider include:

• Ledger Nano S (hardware – general)
• Ledger Nano X (hardware – general)
• SafePal (software – general)
• Exodus (software – general)
• SimpleEOS (software – EOS-specific)
• Anchor Wallet (software – EOS-wallet)

Conclusion

As we previously mentioned, EOS still has a long way to go in terms of mass adoption and popularity. We also explained that a part of this issue may be due to the complexity of activating accounts in EOS. By the way, we shouldn’t forget that the whole crypto community owes to EOS, and its developer, Dan Larimer, for the delegated proof-of-stake consensus algorithm. This algorithm was developed by Dan Larimer, and a lot of crypto projects today are using it in different ways. Do you think EOS has a promising future, and it will be able to overcome the challenges? Share your opinions with us.