When I first saw the EOS presentation at Consensus I was very impressed by Dan's ability to articulate the problems with Ethereum and advocate for a future where the dream of Decentralize Everything could be achieved using a massively parallel block production architecture. It harkened back to Larimer's groundbreaking advancements in single-threaded design that ultimately resulted in Graphene, the enabling technology behind Steem.
I knew I'd invest, but the ICO made me think about when to invest. Fortunately it did, because I'm no longer going to invest and here's why.
Back in 2014 in a critique of Ethereum, Dan Larimer himself was quoted as saying, "If all you care about is names, all you care about is one smart contract, all you care about is gambling, why do you have process all the transactions of the New York Stock Exchange?" See the video below (go to 0:44 for the quote):
Fast-forward to today and Dan now claims EOS can scale to process all the world's transctions, but how does that change the (un)necessity of attempting it? Just because you can doesn't mean you should (go to 7:54):
The EOS party line right now is that future blockchains need to interoperate, but is that really so? Does Steem, currently using less than 1% of its capacity, need other blockchains to interoperate with? It's a debatable notion at best. Dan takes credit for having invented the DAC/DAO concept of which Steem and Bitshares are examples, but let us not forget the 'A' stands for Autonomous.
In essence I'm betting that standalone blockchains like Steem are actually the future, and they can interoperate over exchanges like they do now, over interledger protocols such as ILP, and in ways not yet imagined. Blockchains are public and programmable by definition so interoperability is something they already solve rather than lack.
Additional reasons why I've changed my mind and decided not to invest:
- The mass of ETH now held by EOS parent block.one creates a potentially huge conflict of interest. Sure they may sell most of it, but there's no guarantee they will. Ethereum appears to be the target of disruption for EOS, but block.one is about to become one of Ethereum's biggest stakeholders if guys like Brendan Blumer and Brock Pierce weren't already.
- Further compounding this conflict is the fact that block.one advertises themselves as Ethereum consultants!
- Speaking of the big VC money behind EOS, why do they even need a fundraiser at all? The EOS token is essentially fuel to run apps, so they don't particularly need a wide distribution either, just get it in the hands of developers when you actually have a product.
Disclaimer before my last points: I'm a huge Dan Larimer fan. He's shaped our industry in many ways and I wouldn't be posting this on Steemit were it not for his vision, blood, sweat, and tears. But this is about investing and I'm being perfectly honest.
- Dan left Steemit behind for EOS and now says he always planned to do so. Even so, Steem, being a social network, may ultimately prove far more important than an incremental technological advancement. I'm not convinced he should have left so soon.
- block.one is electing not to "sharedrop" coins onto Steem and Bitshares holders, when it makes perfect sense to do so. The Bitshares community in particular funded Graphene and stood behind Dan and his team when they were being ridiculed by the greater crypto community.
- I'm worried Dan may be closer to burning out with the tremendous demands and hype behind this ambitious new technological undertaking. He's now done at least 4 massive projects of this scale in about 5 years.
I wanted to post this tonight for anyone trying to make sense out of the crowdsale. Please upvote if you found this useful.
I'm rededicating myself to Steemit so I look forward to seeing you all around!