The New EOS – 1 Year Anniversary Of The ENF – Huobi X-Change Interviews Yves La Rose

In this very wide ranging talk on the occasion of the one-year anniversary of the EOS Network Foundation, Huobi Ambassador, Darko, interviews CEO of the EOS Network Foundation, Yves La Rose on the history, and future, of the EOS Network.

Transcript:

Introduction

Darko: Welcome back everybody to Huobi X-Change. My name is Darko, your host this evening. And tonight, we are joined by Yves La Rose. Did I say that correctly? Yves La Rose.

Yves: Yeah, you did.

Darko: He’s the CEO and founder of the EOS Network Foundation. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Huobi X-Change. How are you feeling this fine evening or morning, depending which part of the world you are from?

Yves: Morning for me. I’m feeling great. Thank you for having me on. This is pretty awesome. Your energy’s pretty good already just to kick it off.

Darko: And so yours. And I’m feeling the chemistry. So I’m anticipating a very, very, very good show. And also we cannot forget everybody watching in the official Huobi global app. In the life chat box, please smash that like button, leave us your comments, let us know which country you’re watching from and leave us some questions, because we might just take a couple of questions from the main man here, if you are lucky. So please grab yourself a drink, grab yourself a snack, put up your feet and enjoy the right.

Darko: Now Yves, tonight I’m going to ask you a series of questions and pick at your brain, and I’m pretty sure I’m going to learn a few things tonight. I am familiar with EOS. I’ve been around crypto a long time, and so has EOS, but I still have more questions. So without further ado, let’s get straight into it. So for the people who aren’t aware and for the newbies who are thinking, “What is EOS? Who is EOS? What is this EOS?” What exactly is the EOS Network Foundation?

About the ENF

Yves: So good question. Good intro. Good energy again. Hopefully we’ll keep at it right now, like you said. Put your feet back up, grab some popcorn, grab a drink and listen in. So the EOS Network Foundation is actually a foundation born out of the community in EOS. EOS is arguably is one of the largest, if not the largest DAO in the world because of the way that the consensus mechanism works and the way that it’s operated. And the EOS Network Foundation is born out of that.

Yves: And so traditionally, other ecosystems launch with a foundation. So they launch with an entity that’s appointed at first. That entity typically gets a share of active token supply, and can provide that function that only centralized efficient organizations can do at the onset. That’s really important.

Yves: For EOS, we didn’t have that. And so the community did establish a foundation. The foundation is essentially appointed by the community, but three years in. And its mission and mandate is to enable businesses developers and individuals to build on the EOS Network. It acts somewhat as a core development and coordination funding arm for EOS, for financial and non-financial support. And it manages a treasury that it can access in order to facilitate that development on the EOS network.

Darko: Sounds like a lot to swallow.

Yves: It’s not so bad. Essentially, it operates just like any other foundation, except instead of being appointed at launch, it was created afterwards. And so that brings about some extra accountability within the ecosystem, because technically the foundation could be replaced within another foundation. So it’s not locked in that sense because it doesn’t own any tokens as having launched with an active token supply. So it continuously has to ask the Network for funding to provide that key function.

Darko: So just a quick question before we move on to the next official question that I really want to ask you is, do you remember the last day of your life before you were part of EOS? And what made you decide to take this step?

Yves: EOS or EOS Network Foundation? Because those are two very different last days of my life. For the foundation, prior to joining the foundation, or prior to creating the foundation, or prior to joining EOS, let’s say, four years ago?

Darko: Let’s go both. Let’s say prior to joining EOS, and then the foundation. So what were you thinking both times?

Yves: This gray hair did not exist, that’s for one. There was none of that. So prior to joining EOS, I was in the crypto space, but I wasn’t involved day to day. And making the leap into EOS four years ago, 2017, 2018. So 2017 is when the ICO ran. 2018 is when the network launched.

Yves: EOS had a lot of promise in terms of what it was going to deliver on based on the white paper. It had a massive community, tons of developers, a huge fund potentially that it would have access to continued development. And so the day before joining EOS, or I guess the day before the network launched, there was a lot of hope, a lot of optimism, things were looking good. This was 2017. This was crypto summer. Everything was booming.

Darko: A lot of heart back then.

Yves: Crypto and blockchain was just going to take over the world. And then there was a bear market for a couple years. And EOS in particular really got hit hard in the face because the community members weren’t the ones that were recipient of those funds. And all the promises and the commitments made during the ICO really fell flat. A lot of them, anyways, fell flat because all of those funds went to a private entity. Didn’t actually go to the community. And the community didn’t have the Foundation. So that’s stepping aside that, and I’m sure we’re going to talk about that a little bit more.

Yves: The day before ENF launch is the dark contrast to what I just mentioned. So instead of having that hope, that optimism, it was very dark. And that’s why the foundation was launched essentially. Its purpose was to come in and essentially fill the gaps that had been created over the last couple of years. And so the mountain to climb, how steep it was, and the challenge ahead, how difficult that was going to be is really what inspired the foundation to be created. It Was to really give it one last go, kind of a Hail Mary for EOS because of the previous three years at the time of its existence and what happened with that.

Darko: Sounds like raising the dead, resurrection.

Yves: Very much so, yes.

Darko: Like a phoenix rising from the ashes.

Yves: It’s what the ENF was put in place to do. The ENF is the EOS Network Foundation. What it was put in place to do, why it came about, and what inspired its creation is very much raising of the dead type of environment for sure.

Darko: So this is it, go hard or go home now. This is it.

Yves: Pretty much. And that was a year ago. Now we just celebrated our one year anniversary a few days back. So we’ve come a long way since then and the network is in very different shape than it was a year ago. And again, we can get into that for sure. But I think those are stark contrasts. The day before EOS, the day before ENF are black and white types of things, complete polar opposites.

Darko: As you would know, in crypto, things can change very, very quickly, even overnight, literally. A lot can happen overnight, a lot. So next up I want to ask you is why did it take three years after the EOS main had launched to establish the foundation?

Yves: It’s a really good question. I mean, like I said, EOS didn’t launch with a foundation. So the idea during the ICO was that it was a one year ICO. It ran for quite some time. And that really decentralized the token holdings on the network. And that was seen at the time as being a positive.

Yves: And the idea was that a large percentage of the token raise that was going to the entity at the time, Block.one, would be redeployed back into the system. But in the form of a centralized entity that would essentially be fulfilling the role of a foundation without necessarily appointing a foundation at launch. And so it was a very different approach. When we look at the token distribution for a lot of the other chains, there’s a founder’s portion, there’s a foundation portion. There’s a lot of different, strategic advisory and such.

Yves: EOS was really, if you go back and look at it, 100% decentralized. There was a token vesting component that was going to be unlocked over a period of 10 years. The tokens would be going to the original founders, Block.one, at a rate of 10% per year until that full 100% vested. It would’ve accounted for 10% of active token supply.

Yves: But the idea behind that was that it was keeping that entity, Block.one, accountable and vested over a period of time over that 10 year period. It was intended to keep them committed to build on EOS. They would be getting a portion of the tokens, but over a large period of time to complement the funds that they received through the ICO. The ICO ran for a year long. It raised roughly $4 billion, a little over 4 billion dollars. By far it was the most successful ICO. There’s not even a close second place.

So especially in this space, everybody talks about decentralization, centralization and how centralization perhaps is bad. But centralization affords a lot of really good benefits like efficiency, capital deployment, quickness and speed of deployment and such. EOS never had that.

Yves: And the idea was that they were committing roughly 25% of that. So a billion dollars is what they made the public commencements for. And they were going to be deploying that capital back into the ecosystem as much as possible in various ways. And so we had EOS VC, we had more of the foundational type of offerings, like more of the code development, more of building out infrastructure, more of grant giving, that type of stuff.

Yves: But that didn’t materialize. So for three years, EOS was starved of that funding. So everybody bought into the token sale. Nothing was promised in the token sale. But the commitments that were made in terms of what was going to happen afterwards is really what drained and starved the ecosystem of funding.

Yves: And so it really took three years to be able to reach consensus because EOS is so decentralized. Because of that token sale, to reach consensus on how could we go about and actually reign this back in and institute a centralized entity. It was sorely lacking. So especially in this space, everybody talks about decentralization, centralization and how centralization perhaps is bad. But centralization affords a lot of really good benefits like efficiency, capital deployment, quickness and speed of deployment and such. EOS never had that.

Yves: And so when it became apparent that it was a do or die type of situation, the token holders got together in a very decentralized fashion. It was all open, all public and on-chain. Like I said, EOS is arguably the largest DAO in the world, and decided that this was needed. They needed to appoint a foundation that it would fund in order to fill that void that was created without leadership, without coordination, without funding, et cetera. It was to be able to kickstart the ecosystem once more.

Yves: But it took a long time. It took three years because EOS is still decentralized, because that decentralization brings about chaos essentially. It’s very difficult to actually rally everybody in a very decentralized ecosystem. And so it was left onto brink of death to actually create the environment to launch a foundation.

Darko: Let me get this straight. EOS ran one of the longest running ICOs in crypto history, probably the most amount of money raised.

Yves: By far, yeah.

Darko: $4 billion, correct?

Yves: Yeah.

Darko: And you’re saying now that that money didn’t go to EOS.

Yves: It’s exactly what I’m saying. So very little of that actually went to the EOS community or to EOS developers. It essentially went in the coffers of a for-profit entity.

Darko: Is this legal?

Yves: In a for-profit entity, yes. It is legal because that for-profit entity essentially is accountable to its shareholders, not the token holders or the network. The incentives weren’t properly aligned. I think that part of it is the ICO was too big, too quick. And so it quickly became we’re no longer a blockchain entity. We’re now a hedge fund, and we need to protect the assets that we just raised because legally that’s what they needed to do because they’re a for-profit entity.

Yves: So the incentives right from the get go just became broken because the raise was too big, too quick. And so the priorities changed. But, and this is the part that’s tricky is, they never advised anybody of that. They kept pretending the charade for quite a long time and making more commitments. And so that really created a very toxic, starved community that was left to fend for itself, but with very little resources.

Yves: And a few of the components found in the white paper never materialized. The key one being a WPS, a worker proposal system. And so the only way to access funds on the network was to become a BP, a block producer, the equivalent of a miner in the traditional POW system. And that just really created an environment that made it very difficult for the chain to actually be able to pick itself up and move forward under the constant reminders that, “Hey, we’ve got all the funds. If you don’t behave in a certain fashion, we’re not going to be deploying those funds”.

Yves: But they had no intention on deploying those funds. And we saw that after a long period of time. No matter what the network did, no matter how many times the network came together and reached consensus, this overbearing entity with misaligned incentives essentially blocked everything to a certain extent.

Darko: That would’ve been heartbreaking.

Yves: It’s been incredibly difficult for sure, yes. The gray hairs definitely came about in the last couple of years where the tremendous potential of the tech that was created, and the tremendous potential of what we’re sitting on in terms of a foundational product. But everything that’s needed for an ecosystem to thrive was lacking. So the core base was extremely solid. Everything around that was sorely lacking. And this is what the ENF is able to come in and help provide. We can amplify the core base, the tech stack, and bring in the extra components that typically make an ecosystem thrive from what we can see in other L1s.

Darko: So let me get this straight. So they got the money that they wanted to keep, and they also are continuously getting vested tokens over a 10 year period. Is that correct?

Yves: That was the case until… So the ENF was created last August, at the end of August 2021. And in December 2021, so early December, nine months ago or so, the network reached consensus on essentially firing that entity and stopping of the vesting of tokens.

Yves: So those tokens, think of it like it was a contract where I pay you to do work. Well, if you’re no longer doing the work, I’m just no longer paying you. And so they were essentially fired, and the ENF has now been the one that is in charge of or responsible for the core code development alongside what a traditional foundation would do.

Darko: As you just said that I was getting the hairs raising on my arms, when you said we voted and fire them.

Yves: EOS really embodies that spirit of Web 3.0. I mean, the decentralized community. The DAO reached consensus on taking on corporate greed. And part of why blockchain was created in the first place was this at the base. And unfortunately, EOS is the poster child for that corporate greed within the blockchain space that took over. But it’s also now the poster child for a community rising against that, all on-chain, everything in a DAO fashion. We came to consensus and decided to move forward and kicking out that entity.

Before the ENF

Darko: So why did it take three years to launch the foundation after the Mainnet, was that because of uncertainty, you weren’t sure if there was a right path to take, or was there other obstacles in the way?

Yves: I mean, we could spend easily hours and hours just on this. The community reached consensus on multiple occasions to create initiatives such as a WPS, a worker proposal system. So the community recognized early on that it needed access to be master of its own destiny, and not solely rely on one entity. As we were seeing that entity’s alignments weren’t in line with the actual network.

Yves: But every time that came about, the entity would come back. Block.one would come back and say, “Listen, we’re working on something. It’s coming out soon. It’s coming out. Just trust us. It’s coming, it’s coming. If you do this, maybe we won’t be able to support you anymore.” And going back, you need to realize that was the only entity with capital. It was taking care of the code stack primarily. All these other commitments that they made, those are subjective as to whether or not they fulfilled those. We strongly believe they did not, and the numbers don’t add up.

Yves: And what they did invest in or produce really was, in large part, irrelevant to EOS. But that code component, that was black and white. You could see it on GitHub. You could see that they were committing code. And that really was the last leg that they were standing on.

Yves: So everything else, anytime the community would come and reach consensus on doing something, it was being squashed. But it was also being told. “Don’t worry about it. We’re taking care of it. It’s coming. We’ve got the coffers. We’re good.” And kind of like the boy crying wolf, after a certain amount of time, you just stopped believing it. And the community just had enough. But the final nail in the coffin is where you can go see on GitHub. Block.one, in June of last year, stopped. They committed no more development on chain.

Yves: And so very quickly thereafter is where the community reached consensus. “Let’s create a foundation very quickly and thereafter let’s stop the vesting of tokens to that entity, and let’s take over the code base.”

Yves: All of which then leads to just last week. We just released our first upgrade called Leap 3.1. EOSIO was rebranded. We can go through it. But throughout this whole process, EOSIO, the core code stack was also rebranded. The first iteration of that community-led version just came out. And we’re working towards a hard fork where that symbolic gesture of kicking out the previous folks is occurring in September.

Darko: Sounds like you went through a bit of emotional blackmail in my unprofessional and irrelevant opinion, but that’s what it sounded like. Oh, just wait, wait, wait. We’re working on something. Wait, don’t go anywhere. It’s coming. It’s coming. It’s coming. Run, run, run, run, run. Not very nice.

Yves: Very much so. I mean, it’s a complicated backstory, but that’s why it took so long. It was not as simple as that. This is one of the largest catfishes, if not the largest catfish, in crypto history.

Darko: So that you were basically the rabbit, and they were swinging the carrot in front of you going, “Come on, chase the carrot. You’ll get it eventually. You’ll get it eventually.” And by the end of it, they just throw the carrot as far as you can’t reach it anymore. And that’s it.

Yves: Pretty much.

Everything that we do, we do very strategically, extremely resiliently. Every bet that we make or any initiative that we undertake, we really go about this in a very strategic fashion. And so we try to contain costs. And now good times are a little bit more rolling and there’s a little bit more track record under the ENF’s belt. The overall market is more receptive on what we’re doing, and that core resilience and frugality is definitely starting to pay off.

Darko: Well, you know what? It’s a blessing in disguise because you learned things along the way that other companies, other brands, have yet to learn the hard way.

Yves: Well, if there’s one superpower that EOS has, there’s a few, but resilience is one of them. I think it’s embedded now in everybody, especially in the last three years in a bear market. And then you have the community itself, starved of funding, developers starved of a funding, no leadership.

Yves: The community that did remain up until the launch of ENF have seen things changed considerably. But everything leading up to that, the people that were still there were extremely resilient, and also extremely frugal. I think that’s one thing that’s really, really important that we have as a skillset that other ecosystems may not have. We’ve never had good times. So it’s really dire. But we’ve never had the opportunity to sit on massive treasuries to be able to do partnerships like that.

Yves: And so everything that we do, we do very strategically, extremely resiliently. Every bet that we make or any initiative that we undertake, we really go about this in a very strategic fashion. And so we try to contain costs. And now good times are a little bit more rolling and there’s a little bit more track record under the ENF’s belt. The overall market is more receptive on what we’re doing, and that core resilience and frugality is definitely starting to pay off.

Darko: So going by all the information you’ve shared with us tonight, if you had any advice for any new upcoming startups, what would it be?

Yves: That’s a really good question. I think one of the things that I would say that is important is to surround yourself with core passionate people that really see the mission. If the mission and the vision is not solidified, then everything can break down. All these external factors that are outside of your control will come and hit you on the face one way or another. So you’ve got Murphy’s law.

Yves: Having a core, solid foundation and team goes a really, really long way in being able to remain strong throughout those hardships for sure.

The New EOS

Darko: That makes sense. So for the people who don’t know yet and aren’t aware, what exactly is the New EOS?

Yves: That’s a good question. It was the community actually that started branding it as the New EOS. And it was really to come and exemplify what has happened over the last couple of years, and how the token itself remains the same. So we talked about there’s going to be a hard fork coming on September 21st. And I think we’ll talk about that a little bit more later.

Yves: EOS hard forks in the same fashion as other chains hard fork. I say that with a caveat, because it probably means something to you when I say hard fork. But EOS was really built so that it could, through its permission sets and really inherent properties, upgrade itself without having to go through the same hard fork process that other chains do. Or what has somewhat become the norm or what people see when they hear “hard fork”. And so there’s no new token. Basically, all nodes on the network have to upgrade or else they get kicked off the network. They essentially lose sync with the network. But there’s no new token.

Yves: And the idea behind that was that let’s say the network needs to go through major overhaul. It was built in a way that it could do so without causing uncertainty to businesses on it. If you’re a business running on EOS, if you’ve got an application deployed on EOS, or whoever you may be as a stakeholder, your EOS doesn’t change. The network upgraded, it’s now faster, it’s more performant, more reliable, whatever that change may be. You on the other end though in terms of user facing interaction with the network, nothing changes.

Yves: So everybody has to upgrade. The network now has those extra inherent properties or functionalities. But the result though is that if you had a business on EOS, nothing changes for you. You don’t need to decide whether or not you’re going to go with token A or token B. EOS classic or not. You don’t need to redeploy your contracts. You don’t need to make any logic changes on chain either. Everything just works.

Darko: That’s different.

Yves: Kind of like if every time you need to do upgrades to your phone or to Windows. Before installing the new Windows, you would need to reinstall all your applications. That’s not the case. The idea is just this is an upgrade. So the network infrastructure providers do that upgrade. You on the end user side see no difference.

There’s no other chain that has been able to reach the performance benchmarks of EOS. At some point, we were doing 125 million transactions per day. To put that in perspective, in one day, EOS was doing more than Bitcoin and Ethereum in a full year. And we were doing it consistently for months. And that’s two years ago.

Yves: And the New EOS really came about in terms of branding from the community, people seeing that things have changed. We’ve turned a chapter in our history. And the New EOS is very different than the old EOS in terms of branding, narrative, and what it can provide in terms of financial support and non-financial support to the different types of stakeholders on the network. It really is a new EOS in a way.

Yves: We’re starting to see, with discussions with stakeholders, that what was the past is very different than the direction that we’ve been heading in the last year or so. And what was perhaps a distressed asset is now an undervalued asset. And this idea that in the space, as an L1, there are very, very few people in our position that has four years of battle tested tech. The network has never gone down. Literally zero downtime in the last four years. And so the tech and the foundations are incredibly solid, and performant as well.

Yves: There’s no other chain that has been able to reach the performance benchmarks of EOS. At some point, we were doing 125 million transactions per day. To put that in perspective, in one day, EOS was doing more than Bitcoin and Ethereum in a full year. And we were doing it consistently for months. And that’s two years ago.

Yves: So the tech underlying it is incredibly strong. Everything else that goes alongside the tech, is what is missing. But now that’s present. Those foundations have been laid. Those systems, those initiatives, are now in place. They’re scalable. They’ve been running now for a period of time. We’ve got various funding buckets. We’ve got funding and non-funding support for public goods for open source code. So all that side of things has now been running for a while. It really is the New EOS.

Darko: So just curiously, you mentioned it was distressed for a certain period of time. But was this well public knowledge back then at the time, or did this all come out later? Because I never heard about this before and I’ve been around a while.

Yves: Very much so. The way you would’ve heard about it is you would’ve heard of EOS, and then you didn’t hear of EOS. So when we created the foundation a year ago, the main messages that we were getting were twofold. EOS is a scam is one that was quite prevalent because people associated EOS…

Darko: I lost your audio. Did you press a button?

Yves: There you go. I’m back. I accidentally touched my mic. So the idea was either that EOS was a scam because EOS equals to Block.one, which equals scam. Therefore EOS equals scam. So that’s one of the big narratives that we had on our radar.

Darko: But then again, which crypto project hasn’t been called a scam?

Yves: But this was at an order of magnitude greater than anything else. The largest token raise in history. And the other narrative that we heard, or the other responses that we heard was what? Isn’t EOS dead? Kind of like what you said, “Hey, I’ve been keeping up, but what’s been going on?” And so this idea that it was distressed in that sense was that it was either non-existent or it had a terrible, terrible reputation.

Yves: So moving past that, moving away from that, and showcasing that EOS is essentially still and was always alive, the community was always alive, the tech stack itself is incredibly performant, the developer community was always very strong, but everything was associated to this one entity that arguably was nefarious to a certain extent. We are moving past that.

Yves: So one of the analogies that I’ve been saying recently, is like if EOS was a patient, a dying patient in the hospital. It was on the floor and it was bleeding out. And not only were people walking by this dying patient and not doing anything to save it, but they were also kicking and spitting on it. That’s how bad things were. And that is no longer the case. And like I said, we just celebrated our one year anniversary. Things couldn’t be better that I could have imagined, and things can’t be any more different than what they were just a year ago.

Darko: I must give you some credit. You’re a very patient man, because if it was probably any other person, CEO from any other project, I don’t think they would have the patience. They would’ve just, I’m just generalizing, and I know I shouldn’t, but I assume, and when you assume you make an ass of you and me, but I assume that people wouldn’t stick around that long and keep fighting the good fight.

Yves: Most people left. I mean, there’s reason why I have a lot of gray hair now. I think that’s part of it. That resilience that I talked about earlier, that really embodies our community, those that did stick around.

Yves: So a year ago, people had left. And when we started reaching out to people to create this foundation and get people back, a lot of people didn’t want to join. They’d left EOS and they were good. They were happy about that. The emotional distress that they went through, the financial hardships that they went through, the lack of support, it was really bad. And we’ve now seen a lot of people, new people come in, which is incredible, but also old people coming back. And a big thing that we hear repeatedly is this sense of unfinished business.

Yves: EOS was so well primed to succeed. It had everything going for it. And a lot of people joined for that reason. A lot of people saw a future, a vision. They saw what this could become. And when it didn’t become that, it hurt a lot of people. And a lot of people were happy with leaving. Didn’t want to come back. But the people that did come back and the people that did stay, have this fire inside of them because they still see the potential. EOS just doesn’t want to die is really at the core of that.

Well, we do have some public funding mechanisms. I’m sure you’re aware of Gitcoin. So we have our own version of Gitcoin. We worked with them to be able to create it. So Gitcoin is created by an algorithm of quadratic funding created by Vitalik. We’ve got our version on EOS. It’s called Pomelo. And in Pomelo, there have been a few seasons now where that exact pitch of let’s create a movie out of this, let’s write a story about this.

Yves: But now, we need to move past that as well, where it’s not just about unfinished business. It’s now new business that’s coming about. Now we’re primed. Here are the things that we’ve laid out that now create the base foundations so that we can start running again.

Yves: So in this analogy of the patient, I would say that in last January, it was that patient on the floor, it’s bleeding out, people are kicking in and spitting on it as they’re walking by. The patient is now definitely back. It’s stabilized, it’s walking. And in year two that we’re entering, it’s going to run. Everything that we’ve done is now positioned so that EOS can start running again. And people should expect to see that definitely.

Darko: Sounds like the stuff movies are made of. You could probably make a movie out of this and even write a book. And I could just visualize driving it down before making the next big step to save everything and everyone. You’re driving your Lamborghini towards the office about to make that first phone call to say, “Hey, we’re resurrecting this baby.” And the movie starts from there. Honestly, I’ve interviewed probably over 70 brands. I’ve never said this before. But hearing your story, I could visualize it becoming a movie one day at some point. That’s a pretty deep story.

Yves: Well, we do have some public funding mechanisms. I’m sure you’re aware of Gitcoin. So we have our own version of Gitcoin. We worked with them to be able to create it. So Gitcoin is created by an algorithm of quadratic funding created by Vitalik. We’ve got our version on EOS. It’s called Pomelo. And in Pomelo, there have been a few seasons now where that exact pitch of let’s create a movie out of this, let’s write a story about this. We’ve got somebody making a zine right now out of this. The artists are coming about right now and trying to tell the story, because it is an insane story. This is literally what movies are made out of, for sure.

Darko: Literally. So maybe we might see you on the big screen one day.

Yves: I’m already a character apparently. So my nickname in China is Big Beard, Big Beard Samurai. That’s where that comes from. People started calling me Big Beard a while back. And I’ve now been turned into a cartoon character on multiple occasions telling part of these stories. I think it’s just a matter of time until it becomes a full feature length movie.

Darko: I think. So I think Netflix awaits. So next up, I want to ask you what is the Antelope framework and Coalition?

Antelope Coalition

Yves: So when the ENF launched, there were three particular buckets, or I guess pillars, that we wanted to address and really solidify. It was community, funding and development. We were reaching out to stakeholders to figure out what this thing would be, and how we would position it, what would its mission and mandate be, what should we be addressing. If we’ve got limited resources, limited time, and this is really a Hail Mary and you don’t have a second chance at this, what should we be focusing on?

Yves: And so those three pillars really came about. And another thing that was very apparent is that EOS didn’t necessarily have partnerships. Not just within the EOS, whereby the community was very toxic and it was very difficult, but even just inside of the EOSIO family. So EOSIO being the core code stack, which is open source. Other entities were running on EOSIO. They were prominent blockchains like WAX, Telos, UX.

Yves: And so we got together with those other chains. There was some history there too. There really wasn’t any partnership. There were no allies. People weren’t friends in that sense. And we very quickly realized that the one thing that was uniting us was that core code stack and that performant, reliable, extremely scalable core code stack.

Yves: And so we started discussions with them to look at what would this be if we formed a coalition whereby we would deploy funding for that continued maintenance and growth of the core code stack? What would it look like, because we’re all competitors? What would it look like if we actually joined forces? Where’s that overlap? What could we work on? And where could we see eye to eye?

Yves: And that was eight months or so ago. And out of all the chains that we reached out to, essentially four of them, including EOS, so three plus EOS, ended up forming a coalition. And at that time, it was called the EOSIO Coalition. So that was comprised of Telos, UX and WAX, like I said.

Yves: And we started making formal commitments in terms of capital deployment towards specific initiatives and/or protocol upgrades, those that were deemed of the highest priority for all networks. So hey, you’re doing this, here’s your business case. And you’re doing this. But where do we have this intersect if we wanted to actually deploy capital towards increasing? Where would that be? In what kind of priority or what kind of initiative?

Yves: And so we went through that exercise with the partners. The coalition was formed. Capital was deployed. We started an RFP process towards securing teams to build those core functions. And throughout all of this, one thing that also came about was this need for a rebrand. So I keep mentioning EOSIO. That’s what the core code stack was called.

Yves: But there was this sense as well from the other chains that they weren’t also mentioning the fact that they came from EOS because like I mentioned earlier, EOS equal Block.one, Block.one equal scam, therefore scam. And they were also fighting against that narrative. They were very much also hearing, when they were talking that they were building on EOSIO, that they were getting some pushback.

Yves: And so one of the things that we did early on was to hire a branding firm. We started working towards a rebranding of that core code stack. That was just released a few weeks ago. The new core code stack is called Antelope. So that is the name of the software now. The first iteration is called Leap 3.1. And that just came about last week, the final iteration. So it’s been in beta now for a while. There was release candidate one through four. Final release candidate just came out.

Yves: And the four chains essentially that embody this is are called the Antelope Coalition. So they’re the ones that are tasked with determining the priorities of where we go next with that core code stack, funding that, and essentially guiding that.

Yves: But we’ve opened this process up so that anybody else who leverages what now is Antelope can come and help and contribute. And we’ve been doing this now for about eight months where everything is open, everything’s public, everything’s transparent.

Yves: When we took over the core code stack, there was a long list of maybe 2500, 2600 issues that were still found in GitHub. All of them were closed down. And because we started closing those down one by one, the community of developers out there started seeing that there was life again in the system, and they started issuing more issues and more pull requests (“PRs”).

Yves: And historically, that really hadn’t happened for a few years because of the previous owners of that repo, Block.one, were never really receptive to the community. And so the issues would just pile up. PRs were never merged. There was no communication. So basically people gave up.

Yves: But as things started changing again in the New EOS and with this coalition, we’ve seen tremendous onboarding of new developers and new people participating in this. RFP processes going out, new teams coming in, core developer teams now seeing an opportunity for them to get compensated and for their work to be valued. A coalition, so a body being able to make decisions on where should we go. Where should we spend those resources? Its all decentralized because none of the coalition members have delegated authority or functional authority over one another. We’re all competitors to a certain extent. So coming about and creating that governance around side that, it’s been pretty magical. It’s been pretty insane.

Yves: And really that is the first, if we want to talk about it. It is kind of a peeling of an onion. We peel the layers. Well, let’s do it in reverse. We’re adding layers to the onion. And that first layer around just EOS, the new EOS, is Antelope. It’s the larger ecosystem. And the next chapters will add another layer. Outside of EOS, this is what we’ve been working on. This is what year two is going to be focused on.

Darko: Very good analogy. That’s strange one, but very good. The reverse onion.

Yves: I guess it works, the reverse onion works. Well, instead of starting off centralized, we are incredibly decentralized, too decentralized. So much so that’s why it’s been so difficult. That’s why it took so long. And we’re adding layers of centralization, but in a way that keeps those layers very much accountable to the previous layer. And so the accountability mechanisms in all of this are incredibly strong and everything’s on-chain. So we’re expanding the functionalities, but within a very solid framework. We’re doing it in a reverse way than what everybody else did.

Yves: But the advantage of that is that we have hindsight of what the others have done. So we can see what worked in other ecosystems. But more importantly, we can see what didn’t work in other ecosystems that we can learn from. So we do have that hindsight advantage to a certain extent. We’re running from behind, but very much we’re catching up much faster, and we have no liabilities because we never had those partnerships before. We never had that luxury before.

Yves: So we’re able to avoid mistakes that perhaps others have done. And that’s, alongside what I mentioned earlier, that resilience, but that frugality as well. It enables us to do things at a much cheaper cost and much more efficiently because we don’t have to go through all the iterations than others perhaps had to do to get to where they are today. We’re able to fast track that.

Partnerships on EOS

Darko: So if I heard correctly earlier, you mentioned that for the first few years, there was no partnerships at all. Is that correct?

Yves: I mean, EOS as a whole. Not so much because the idea was that Block.one would be the centralized entity taking on the role of a foundation in a way that would be funded and that would be positioned, legally as well, to be able to make partnerships. But those never came about. It never happened.

Yves: And EOS itself outside of Block.one was a decentralized network. So you’ve got 21 block producers that are producing blocks. You’ve then got another 50 to 80 standby block producers that are being incentivized by the system, that are getting paid. But none of them are large enough to act as a foundation. And traditionally, and very typically for obvious reasons, in order to make large scale partnerships, you need a foundation. You need a centralized entity that has that as its mission. Typically, it’s a non-for-profit.

I mean, it’s magical. I think I would say in one word, it’s humbling. The situation that we were in just a year ago, to where we are today, where people wouldn’t take our phone calls and people didn’t even want to associate themselves with EOS because of that scam reputation. It is being completely flipped over and now people are reaching out to us, other foundations from other ecosystems are reaching out to us. Other layer ones, top tier VCs are reaching out, other developers from other ecosystems are now starting to come in. It Is incredibly humbling. It’s pretty magical.

Yves: So sure, block producers can make little partnerships here and there. But that’s very different than having the official foundation of the network support a particular initiative or create a particular partnership. So even if a block producer, for example, in the first three years, reached out to a media outlet, or reached out to any type of exchange, or any type of fund or anything, a lot of the responses we’d hear is, “Well, who are you? Who’s your foundation? Who’s the centralized entity that I want to speak to?”

Yves: Well, we don’t have one because we’re a decentralized network. Well, that’s nice. But how do I know that you are actually representing the network? Well, you don’t. That’s the whole point. And so it kind of a catch-22 or chicken/egg situation. Again, we did basically everything in reverse. We’re that very lean onion now adding layers to it.

Darko: So how would you describe the feeling of going from no partnerships to now finally having partnerships? How would you describe that feeling alone?

Yves: I mean, it’s magical. I think I would say in one word, it’s humbling. The situation that we were in just a year ago, to where we are today, where people wouldn’t take our phone calls and people didn’t even want to associate themselves with EOS because of that scam reputation. It is being completely flipped over and now people are reaching out to us, other foundations from other ecosystems are reaching out to us. Other layer ones, top tier VCs are reaching out, other developers from other ecosystems are now starting to come in. It Is incredibly humbling. It’s pretty magical.

Darko: I had a feeling you’d say something similar to that. But you said even more than what I was expecting. So it’s obviously played a huge impact on team, on morale, basically.

Yves: For sure. I’d say that the community sentiment, the developer sentiment, the various stakeholder sentiment is, if not at all time high, it’s pretty close to what it was during the honeymoon phase.After the Mainnet launch where people had so much hope of what this could become. We’re there again.

Yves: The three and a half years, four years in between, had a lull in community sentiment. Now We’re back. We’re definitely back. The New EOS is here.

Antelope Hardfork

Darko: So what does the hard fork … So the hard fork for Antelope on September 21st, what does that mean exactly for EOS?

Yves: So it means that symbolically we are no longer running the Block.one software stack.

Darko: Officially.

Yves: If you’re not running Leap, you are booted off the network essentially. You’re no longer in sync with the network. So symbolically, it is quite massive because it is the first iteration of core software stack fully built, maintained and operated by the community. There’s no more links to Block.one. If you are still running the Block.one repo, you will no longer be in sync with the network. So from a symbolic point of view, it’s quite massive.

Yves: It also brings about the New EOS. It really kind of nails that coffin, where now there’s a complete break. There is no more linking. And that’s more on the branding, on the narrative side, which is quite big, because a big part of what we were lacking was that branding, that narrative. And a big part of what was pulling us down was that branding and that narrative. So I really try to highlight it because it is very important.

Yves: On the tech side, there are tons of improvements in Leap 3.1 that simply weren’t present in the current version that was being run. Like I mentioned, a lot of the issues were closed. A lot of new PRs. A lot of improvements in terms of speed, reliability, performance. We’re now going to have IBC, inter blockchain communication, between EOS chains. That will be enabled because of this, and that will be deployed in the next two months or so. So right now, it’s going through an audit.

Yves: That was something that was promised during the Mainnet launch, or I guess leading up to the Mainnet launch. We’ve now actually just taken that over. And one of the partners within the coalition, the UX team, are the ones that developed IBC over the last couple of years. And we’re now implementing this and the framework around that.

Yves: We also have the EVM. So EOS wasn’t EVM compatible. The EOS the network wasn’t EVM compatible. So that’s coming about. It’s been running on Testnet now for four months. It’s being launched on the Mainnet in early October. That comes about with full RPC compatibility. There are a lot of new intrinsics. And so there’s a lot to talk about that there.

Yves: We are working towards being sustainable. But also the growth component, how we set that about, how we have RFP processes so that people can come and take on priorities and be compensated for that. It’s about how we determine what those priorities are, and how we involve people because it’s all about community. It’s all about that communication with your respective community members, stakeholders. And we now have the frameworks around that. All of that comes about with that new fork coming up.

Darko: So you’re not mucking around, you mean business?

Yves: Yeah. I mean, that’s our mission. That’s our mandate, for sure.

EOS Roadmap

Darko: And speaking of business, what else is on the list of the upcoming roadmap for EOS?

Yves: So like I mentioned, the coalition settled on three large priorities that it’s funded. So we’ve committed and we’ve already earmarked $5.8 million for three main initiatives. One is faster finality. And so currently, LIB, or last irreversible block, on EOS and EOS networks is around three minutes. So the block times are 0.5 seconds, incredibly fast. So blocks are propagated on the networking extremely rapidly.

That’s really, really important because when we look at GameFi, we look at DeFi, we look at being able to close the loop, essentially, as quick as possible, it makes a significant difference. And paired with the other initiative that I mentioned, IBC, inter blockchain communication, now you have this idea that if you want to scale EOS, instead of being limited to one iteration, you potentially could spin off multiple chains, have them link together, now they communicate in a trustless fashion. It Is the first trustless IBC. So there’s no bridge. It’s very, very novel. There’s nobody else that has it. It actually has intellectual property assigned to it right now.

Yves: If you’re on EOS, effectively as an end user, your LIB is almost instant. However, if we want to talk about certain instances where the stakeholders want that final confirmation, that’s roughly three minutes. And so one of the things that we are working on now that we’ve already assigned the work to, and it is currently under development, the contracts have been signed and such, is to reduce that time from three minutes down to roughly two seconds, between two to six seconds.

Yves: We had an iteration of that a few years back. But the way it was done, there was a little bit more overhead, and it wasn’t really adopted. There was no, let’s say, stamp of approval. It was never merged into the code. Well, now we are the code owners. And so we’re able to do this. And so it’s bringing that down to roughly, like I said, between two to six seconds.

Yves: That’s really, really important because when we look at GameFi, we look at DeFi, we look at being able to close the loop, essentially, as quick as possible, it makes a significant difference. And paired with the other initiative that I mentioned, IBC, inter blockchain communication, now you have this idea that if you want to scale EOS, instead of being limited to one iteration, you potentially could spin off multiple chains, have them link together, now they communicate in a trustless fashion. It Is the first trustless IBC. So there’s no bridge. It’s very, very novel. There’s nobody else that has it. It actually has intellectual property assigned to it right now.

Yves: If you have this alongside faster finality, that means that you can effectively scale Antelope, and Antelope iterations, horizontally. It’s almost infinitely scalable. How that will come about, what kind of use cases that will open, is still yet to be seen. But we can envision where an application actually requires more than one chain for whatever reason. And so they deploy certain logic on one chain, certain logic on another chain, but these chains can talk to each other almost instantaneously. So faster finality reduces that lag. So it fits two seconds on each side. Then within four seconds, basically the trains are completely irreversible. That makes a huge difference in terms of scalability and use case potential. And the third part that we’ve … Oh, go for it.

Darko: I was just going to pitch in. So interoperable, is that the word we would use here?

Yves: Yeah, exactly. Interoperable between different Antelope iterations. But that means also that if I’m on EOS and I want go interact with applications on Telos, for example, or on WAX, I’ll be able to do so almost flawlessly. Essentially me as an end user, I won’t see the technical. A lot of the technical background will be abstracted. I don’t need to know that it’s actually running on two different chains or that this application has logic on two chains. From my point of view as an end user, it’ll just be abstracted away. And so that’s really cool.

Yves: And then in order to do a lot of that, one thing that we also prioritize, which is in the roadmap, are SDKs. We have SDKs specific to be able to break down that barrier and abstract away for developers and for end users the experience of interacting with the chains. So if you have a better end user experience, or you’ve got a better developer experience in being able to connect to these chains more flawlessly, then you’re able to focus on your product. Or on whatever use case you want to bring to the table, without needing to actually learn the blockchain itself as much.

It completely opens doors to Solidity developers and people, because Ethereum has done an amazing job at creating an ecosystem that facilitates building on Ethereum and EVM related chains. So that is a huge component of what we’re doing in the roadmap. We want to open those doors for others to be able to come essentially build on EOS because it’s full RPC compatible. The barrier of entry is practically non-existent. You just deploy your smart contract as you would in Solidity, and then it just runs on EOS.

Yves: And this is one of the things that we saw was quite complex, and it’s still very much complex in all chains. Blockchain is still hard. A lot of those building blocks are still not built. So if you’re an application builder, or if you’re a business, you still need to figure out the blockchain component, very much so. A lot of resources go into that.

Yves: If we can abstract as much of that away as possible, you can focus on your thing and then the building blocks are in place so that you can do so. Those are the three things that we’re going to see in the upcoming roadmap that are larger, alongside the EVM that I mentioned earlier. It completely opens doors to Solidity developers and people, because Ethereum has done an amazing job at creating an ecosystem that facilitates building on Ethereum and EVM related chains. So that is a huge component of what we’re doing in the roadmap. We want to open those doors for others to be able to come essentially build on EOS because it’s full RPC compatible. The barrier of entry is practically non-existent. You just deploy your smart contract as you would in Solidity, and then it just runs on EOS.

Yves: And because EOS is so performant, it can effectively run all of Ethereum in one smart contract. So in terms of scalability of EVM, EOS is really, really interesting because although others have done a really great job, they’re limited by their block times being between 12 to 14 seconds. So they’re inherently capped with those block times being higher. EOS has 0.5 second block times.

Yves: We have started performance benchmarking. Right now the EVM we have is currently running on Testnet, and that’s being deployed early October. We’re already seeing that, performance-wise, it’s in a league of its own in terms of transactions per second or swaps per second, which is the new standard that people are looking at in terms of benchmarks.

Darko: Well now, before I get into the Trust EVM with you, I just want to ask you on the topic of the roadmap, where can people go to find out more? So website?

Yves: Sure. I mean, it really depends. Actually going back as well, one of the things that wasn’t happening in the last four years was communication. Very, very little communication was coming out from the official entity that was deemed with this job.

Yves: And so one of the things that we did with ENF right away is increased communication thousandfold. I mean, it’s not even comparable. I think in the first two months or so of existence, we had communicated more than the last four years combined.

Yves: So the website is one of the ways that people can absorb information on eosnetwork.com. The blog section there has a lot of resources. Might be somewhat imposing because there’s a lot of things going on. If you want, let’s say, a more summarized version of that,  follow my Twitter account @BigBeardSamurai. I create a lot of threads there where I really condense down the information to 180 characters multiplied by five or six tweets. And you get to know what’s important if you really only want to spend a little bit of time.

Darko: I saw that earlier today,

Yves: If you really want to deep dive and you really want to go into a lot of detail, we host fireside chats every Wednesday. Wednesday 3:00 PM Eastern, whereby completely informal, anybody in the community can come join, ask questions. And then we publish those as well on Twitter spaces, we publish those on YouTube. So people can go back and listen to hours and hours and hours of video if they really, really wanted to. And then you get your scale anywhere in between. So it really depends on how much you want to get involved. I’d say the website and my Twitter is probably the two best places to start.

Darko: It was eosnetwork.com, you said?

Yves: Eosnetwork.com, and @BigBeardSamurai on Twitter

Darko: @BigBeardSamurai on Twitter as well. Awesome. So I guess you won’t be shaving anytime soon with a name like that. You’ve earned that title now.

Yves: I don’t think I can anymore. So when I first launched ENF, I didn’t have the beard. My beard grows really quickly. And I didn’t have the beard at the time. And people hadn’t seen me on camera for a while. And I got the nickname in China of Big Beard, just two characters, big and beard. And so I needed to grow out the beard. And now I guess, yes, it’s not coming off.

Darko: Got to live up to the reputation.

Yves: I have no choice at this point, yes.

Trust EVM

Darko: So moving along, can you tell us more about the Trust EVM, and before you answer that actually, to people watching in the official Huobi global app, if you have a question, and we are able to see it because the live chat box is pumping, we might just take one or two quick questions before we give this stream a wrap soon as well. So now is the time. Again, as long as we see it, because there’s a lot happening and there’s a lot of spamming as well. But there’s a lot happening in the live chat. So back to Yves, can you tell us more about the Trust EVM?

Yves: Sure. So EVM as a functionality is something that the ENF funded, or put as a high priority to fund. We then ultimately funded a team to do so at the end of 2021. And so EVM as a functionality. Why I make the distinction is this idea that, now there’s code that enables EVM, but it still doesn’t mean that a business is now actually going to run that code and actually make a product out of it.

Yves: So what we did, because we didn’t have that luxury of waiting to deploy the code and then to see whether or not somebody would pick it up, we alongside deploying the code, also secured a team that immediately started working on the product essentially so that when the code is deployed and the functionality is live, that there’s a product that goes alongside it. And that product is called Trust EVM, and is the official EVM version on EOS. So it doesn’t mean to others couldn’t somehow do this. But we wanted to have one that would be official, that would inspire confidence for people to join right away.

And we saw that Solana was the highest rated one with just under 300 swaps per second … And it was by far the fastest one. EOS already in test nets, so all live, not even optimized, is already running 800 or more swaps per second. And we believe that by launch we’ll have roughly 1200. So about four times faster than the closest competitor right now.

Yves: And trust EVM was launched as a product, as a brand, early on this year. As I mentioned, it’s been running on Testnet now since April. It will have silkworm compatibility. It’s full RPC compatible. That just means that it opens the door to large pool of Solidity developers to start building on EOS using the SDKs, the tooling, the libraries, and all the open source code that they’re already familiar with. It’s really important so that the barrier to entry is incredibly low.

Yves: What we added on top of that is the EOS flavor. It’s the fact that we run on EOS at the base, or we run on Antelope at the base, at the core software stack, and that inherent property of half second block speeds. One of the new benchmarks that are coming about from Dragonfly Research that came out, I think about three months ago, that compared various EVMs and their capacity to swaps per second. That’s really what’s important. So transactions per seconds are great. But in reality, what does that mean when you actually want to do an action, a real action? It really comes down to swaps per second.

Yves: And we saw that Solana was the highest rated one with just under 300 swaps per second. I think there were like 273 or 296 or something like that. And it was by far the fastest one. EOS already in test nets, so all live, not even optimized, is already running 800 or more swaps per second. And we believe that by launch we’ll have roughly 1200. So about four times faster than the closest competitor right now.

Yves: And a big part of that is the block speeds. The other ones are limited at 12 to 14 second block speeds, whereas we inherently have 0.5 second block speeds. And with faster finality, it will just close that gap even further because it limits the amount of data, or it decreases the size of blocks, which just makes them perform even faster.

Yves: And so that is one thing that’s going to be incredibly exciting is that EOS always had this capacity. I mentioned this earlier, of doing a large amount of transactions. And that is really its use case is if you want to scale your applications, or if you want to run something really running on blockchain, and you want a bunch of people to be able to run their things on blockchain. We’ve seen that other L1s are somewhat limited, either limited in their performance because they’re a generation two L1s. The other generation three L1s, they’re plagued with reliability issues. So they keep going down, they keep getting out of sync. They keep having to shut down. There’s some of them that are famously open nine to five, Monday to Friday type of thing.

Yves: EOS doesn’t have that problem at all. EOS has been battle tested for four years. It’s the third longest running blockchain in existence after Bitcoin and Ethereum. EOS is incredibly reliable. So you add to that that performance, that upgradeability, and that reliability. Trust EVM, watch out for it.

Darko: That’s very exciting stuff. Now, the Testnet is still ongoing, is that correct?

Yves: Correct. So what we’re doing is hackathons. We’ve got two hackathons running right now, so we’re incentivizing people to come and experience the EVM for themselves to be able to deploy contracts on the Testnet so that they can get ready for the Mainnet launch. And really, they’re already able to see. I believe the Testnet is currently locked at … I think it’s two or five second block times and already it’s more performant. And like I said, then by launch, it’ll be at half second block speeds. But it gives a taste of that full RPC compatibility whereby you just log into your MetaMask, deploy your smart contract. That’s it. There’s nothing to do because it’s full RPC compatible.

Darko: Beautiful.

Yves: It’s really that easy.

Darko: So the Testnet, I assume it will keep going on until the Mainnet launch. Is that correct?

Yves: Yeah. And then likely the Testnet will keep going afterwards as well. So on EOS, we have multiple Testnets that are always operational so that people can come, test out first, make mistakes, deploy, iron out bugs, before they deploy on Mainnet. So we’ll likely continue that Testnet for the EVM long term as well.

Audience Questions

Darko: Beautiful. Love it. So next I want to have a quick look at the official Huobi global app and see if there are any questions.

Yves: Let’s do it.

Darko: So like I mentioned earlier, I hope I find questions because there’s so much happening. I just picked up the phone, and I see one question already, which is awesome. So we’re going to get at least one question in tonight.

Yves: At least one.

Darko: At least one. And Taylor Sid is asking will EOS be affected by the Merge?

Yves: That’s an interesting question. I will answer. I think that the whole blockchain space will be affected by the Merge. In what ways? I’m not too sure. We do see that the Ethereum Merge obviously is at top of mind for everybody. This has been ongoing for three years or so, give or take. So leading up to that culmination of the Merge actually happening, seeing how the markets will react, how it will actually change things, I think everybody is anticipating that, not just EOS.

Yves: And then Ethereum is such a large player in the ecosystem. What they’ve been able to build, that ecosystem around Ethereum, I think is incredible. I think there’s no reason why anybody would want to downplay that. So it’ll be really interesting how that helps out EOS, and it helps out others, and how we can all benefit from the Merge, and how we can essentially amplify that in our own ways.

Darko: Well, going by the recent photo of Vitalik Buterin that we saw recently, he’s obviously very excited about the Merge.

Yves: Yes.

Darko: Very excited. I’m just going through the app looking for questions. I’m not looking for comments, I’m looking for questions. There’s a lot of comments, but I’m not looking for comments. Is there anymore? And unfortunately, there’s a lot of things written in different languages. So we do have questions that could also be in a different language. I did scroll past, I did see a nice comment there as well, a really nice one saying happy anniversary.

Yves: Thank you.

Darko: And it’s mostly comments, not questions. I’m going to scroll down to the bottom because I was like, I don’t know which point I was scrolling from.

Yves: Maybe from the top.

Darko: Yeah. It’s not a question, but it’s a worthy comment. I mean, all comments are worthy, to a point, more worthy. 536, that’s the handle, their handle, he’s saying, EOS is strong. However, due to this market, it looks like nothing goes on. Thanks to this stream, I can say that you have been building nonstop. So no questions.

Yves: Awesome. I think I’d like to comment on that too, because I think being in a bear market essentially really is, to a certain extent, a blessing because people can focus on building. So there’s less noise in the market. People are less looking for the new shiny thing, and they’re more looking for the fundamentals to be worked on.

Yves: Let’s not kid ourselves. With every bear market comes a culling. Things will come and go, and a lot of them will disappear. And in a bear market is when you really see which ones have fundamentals and have those foundations. EOS is definitely poised to make a big comeback. And we’ve seen that in the last month as well, where the market’s been red as a whole. And market sentiment is obviously very much speculatory. But it does indicate that people are seeing that there’s something under the hood. And we’re really excited to be able to showcase that the next time the doors open again, whereby new people are coming in and they’re looking for where they should be building or joining the community. EOS is going to be ready to receive them.

Darko: And Theca is asking will there be a reduction in circulating supply? So I’m assuming they’re asking is this deflationary or will it be, or how does that work?

Yves: Good question. So the EVM itself will have a burning mechanism. EOS though, however, is a different token model than others. So EOS didn’t launch with a large token supply that then it reduced over time or it assigned over time. EOS is the opposite. It launched with a set token supply, and it inflates over time.

Yves: But that inflation is limited. That inflation is directed by the block producers. So EOS launched with 5% inflation, 1% going to block producers, 4% going to a savings bucket. Two years in or so, the network validators, the block producers determined that inflation was too high, that there was no need for it. The tokens in the saving account were simply accumulating, and there was no use case for them. So not only was there no use case, but there was nobody or entity that could actually leverage them.

Yves: So they burned all of that. EOS burned roughly 68 million, a little over 68 million tokens a few years back. At the time, that was a value of a little over $350 million. And then it also reduced the inflation. So it then stopped the extra 4% going to savings. EOS has been at 1% for eternity at this point. When the ENF came about, the block producers reignited two extra percent, which has been going into saving. And that’s what the ENF is a steward of. It can request funds through its accountability mechanisms.

Yves: But yes, when you look at the other blockchains, when you look at other layer ones or even layer twos, it’s a completely different mechanism. So when you actually look at the inflation rate, EOS is always on the lower end because it didn’t start off with a lot and then curved down over a period of time. The inflation level stays the same, but the amount of tokens in circulating supply goes up very, very slowly. Different approach.

Darko: Awesome. Now that pretty much nails it for this stream. Is there anything else you wish to add to the audience watching before we give this a wrap?

Yves: No. I think if people want to learn more, if people want to get involved at this point, we have well-oiled funding mechanisms. We have well-oiled community participation mechanisms, either through Eden, through Pomelo, through the Grant Framework directly. All of that information is found on our website, eosnetwork.com. Telegram channels, extremely active as well, and we can drop that maybe in the links afterwards, and/or just reach out @BigBeardSamurai on Twitter.

Yves: We’ve built mechanisms essentially to try and reduce the time between somebody reaching out, or a team reaching out, or a business reaching out and wanting to build on EOS. We’re able to find a place for them. And so all of our mechanisms, all of our buckets, are designed with finding a place for people as efficiently, as quickly as possible.

Darko: Awesome. Well Yves, it was an absolute honor and pleasure to meet you. And I hope we see you again in the near future with some more updates. Perhaps even after September 21st, maybe you can come back and have a bit of a talk and let us know how things are going. But really interesting conversation tonight. And I learned a lot from you tonight. I mean, like I said, I always heard of EOS. But I go through so many projects, I lose track and I forget things. But I totally underestimated how much crap you guys have gone through. And here you are, resilient, still here, still standing and optimistic, ambitious moving forward into the future, which is really exciting because as you mentioned just a few moments ago, during the bear markets, it’s a culling period. And a lot of these brands, projects just disappeared, they get kicked out, that’s it.

Darko: They didn’t even go through the crap that you went through, and they still disappeared, got culled out. And here you are standing strong and excited about what’s next, which you don’t see very often in crypto considering the current environment that we are in, especially. So good on you. Credit to you and keep fighting the good fight and hold onto your dreams and keep battling on. And it’s very refreshing to hear the things that I’ve heard tonight coming from you, really refreshing. So now good on you. Really excited about that.

Yves: awesome.

Darko: And to everybody watching, if you enjoyed the stream, please share it on Twitter, Telegram, Facebook, share it with your friends, your neighbors, share it with your pets, share it even with your worst enemies, and let us know how that turned out. But we know you don’t have enemies because you are here, right here, right now, watching this, which makes you an awesome person. Yves, thank you once again, and hopefully we see you again back soon. And until next-

Yves: For sure. Thank you very much Darko for having me on.

Darko: Awesome. Thank you. And until next time, please be safe, be healthy, trade wise, and as always, rock on.