EOS is both a coin and software and infrastructure for decentralized apps (dapps). EOS, launched in June 2017, has released 1 billion tokens, with 10% of them withheld for the founders of the project. EOS is currently 9th in terms of market capitalization with a market capitalization value of about $8.445 billion.
How EOS works
EOS uses the Ethereum blockchain and is implemented as a set of smart contracts on top of the Ethereum network. EOS is designed to run decentralized apps in parallel with thousands of actions per second. This is unlike other blockchain based applications, which are single threaded and thus limited to only a few transactions per second. EOS has no fees for users of smart contracts – instead, the developer of the smart contract must come up with a monetization strategy. EOS limits a developer’s smart contract resource usage based on the number of EOS tokens a developer holds. One way a developer can expand their capacity on the EOS network is to rent capacity from other EOS token holders, thereby giving them a passive income and making holding of EOS tokens attractive.
Another feature of the EOS network is that it gives developers a better place to start. Rather than providing just the infrastructure for smart contracts, EOS also provides the infrastructure for hosting a web-based app, provides a database, and provides a system to manage permissions. These are all commonly needed things when creating smart contracts, and EOS provides all of them on its network. In addition, smart contract programming is done using a programming language that’s similar to JavaScript – a very popular programming language among web developers. This means the learning curve for understanding smart contract programming is a lot less compared to other smart contract programming languages and platforms. Another feature of EOS is the ability for developers to freeze and fix apps quickly – this capability improves security and safety.
EOS Exchanges
Unlike bitcoin, EOS tokens cannot be mined, as a result, the only way to get EOS tokens is to buy them. Exchanges where you can buy EOS include:
- hitbtc.com
- yobit.net
- bitfinex.com
- binance.com
- kraken.com
- kucoin.com
There are many other exchanges where you can trade EOS.
EOS Wallets
Because EOS is implemented on top of Ethereum, EOS tokens are ERC-20 compatible and can be used in any ERC-20 compatible wallet. You store you EOS tokens in an ERC-20 compatible wallet which includes: MetaMask (Chrome browser addon) or MyEtherWallet.
Conclusion
This article introduced EOS and described that it’s both a platform as well as a token, described how its different from bitcoin, and explained how to trade and store EOS.