The B1June event organized by Block.one, creator of the EOS blockchain, included a number of exciting announcements, such as top story: the Block.one social media platform named ‘Voice’.
Top News
Welcome to our first bi-weekly roundup of the most discussion-worthy news content related to the EOSIO blockchain network from Block.one, and it’s cryptocurrency ‘EOS’, in addition to a brief look at periodical price movements.
June 1st
‘Voice’ – A Social Media Platform Based on EOS Announced, Before Price Sharply Fell
Block.one issued a press-release on the 1st of June coinciding with a launch at its B1June event in Washington, D.C. on the same date, in which the segment closing off the keynote was for the launch of social media platform ‘Voice’.
The press release states that Voice exists with the aim to cultivate “creation, sharing, discovery, and promotion of content on social media platforms.”
Conversely, the presentation is overwhelmingly negative, as Blumer spends a majority of his time discussing the flaws of existing social media titans (without naming names), rather than appropriately conveying how they plan on competing with these rivals’ massive user-counts.
“Social media has not been a good friend to us” opens Brendan Blumer, “People are footing the bill for what an elite few have decided are the rules of engagement”.
Blumer cites, in detail, the problems he and Block.one perceives with current social media platforms. They include data theft, misinformation, and rampant cyber bullying.
“You can’t rebuild a house when the foundation is crumbling… social media was designed to use its users.”
Long before people know these details, the news of Block.one purchasing $25million worth of RAM in EOS before the event (on the 27th May 2019) began something of a pre-announcement hype.
This is particularly visible when looking at the price and market movements, with several bursts of appreciation leading up to a June 1st peak – from which these values sharply fall.
Out of who bought the hype, only those who sold before the event were rewarded, as the market cap and price fell massively following the announcement. This suggests that the news may not have been exactly what people were expecting.
More recently, on June 6th 2019, Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer told The Block that the project cost $150 million and took one year to create.
May 22nd
Block.one Privately Re-Purchases Stock From Seed Investors
It has been confirmed by CEO Brendan Blumer that Block.one had conducted a private repurchase of stock from its earliest investors recently, this year.
The buy-back was detailed in a report by Bloomberg from 22nd May, which is based on an internal letter the publication allegedly received in March 2019 (neither the contents of nor the existence of the letter have been officially verified by anyone at Block.one).
According to the report, Block.one is currently (or has concluded) offering its backers a repurchase price of $1500 per share, “up $6567 from original price of $22.50” with the intention of re-acquiring 10% of it’s total stock.
One day before the Bloomberg story broke, Michael Novogratz’ crypto merchant bank Galaxy Digital issued a press-release stating that it had accepted the offer and was selling all of its stock for a total of $71.2 million.
In the statement, Novogratz stated the following
“The acceptance of Block.one’s tender offer reflected a decision to rebalance the portfolio to maintain an appropriate level of diversification after the position increased due to its substantial outperformance relative to the remainder of the portfolio.“
“We continue to work closely with Block.one as a key partner across a number of our business lines, including the Galaxy EOS VC Fund, which invests in companies building on the EOS.IO protocol, and remain excited about the EOS.IO protocol.”
Lastly, CoinDesk made a separate confirmation of the story on June the 6th 2019 citing its own “familiar” source – although no new details.
Except for the inclusion of a statement from Brendan Blumer acknowledging the buyback (in the past tense), but offers little more information beyond official confirmation.
“The buyback was designed for seed investors, who had been in for a long time, and it made room for potential future strategic shareholders in a way that didn’t unnecessarily inflate our balance sheet”
May 30th
Coinbase Adds EOS Pairs To Its Exchange Offering + EOS EARN Announced
There are two stories regarding Coinbase + EOS this issue, released in short succession.
On May 30th 2019, Coinbase published an official announcement that the Block.one token EOS was available on its trading platforms: Coinbase.com, as well as the Coinbase Android and iOS apps. Previously, it had been available on Coinbase Pro (since April 2019).
Coinbase customers on these platforms “can buy, sell, convert, send receive and store EOS”. The announcement continues with the disclaimer that, whilst available in most jurisdictions initially, it will not initially be available for residents of the United Kingdom or New York state.
This news was followed up on June 1st 2019 at the B1June event, where CTO Dan Larimer brought Balaju Srinivasan (Co-founder of Earn & former CTO, Coinbase) and Tim Wagner (VP Engineering at Coinbase) on stage.
Tim Wagner explained:
“in the next few weeks EOS will be added to Coinbase Custody as another supportive asset”
The primary reason Srinivasan and Wagner were on stage was to reveal EOS Earn, which is the latest addition to the Coinbase Earn program.
Like with other participating partners, when users participate in learning and successfully test their resulting knowledge about EOS and the EOSIO platform – they be rewarded by earning EOS tokens.
More Stories
June 1st
Tether Launches USDT on EOS Blockchain
Tether (USDT) has officially announced that it has added EOSIO to its list of supported blockchain networks “following [the] widespread success of Tether across Omni and Ethereum”.
The official statement reads:
“By bringing Tether to EOSIO, Tether strives to unlock the true potential of a blockchain-based stablecoin by appealing to individuals seeking a borderless, efficient, and free peer-to-peer value transfer.”
The Tether EOS smart contract was developed by Tether, and it has been deployed to an official Tether EOS account by the name of ‘tethertether’. It has been peer-reviewed by EOS Canada.
“Tether on EOSIO thus provides a stablecoin with the preconditions necessary for a thriving peer-to-peer micropayment infrastructure.”
Benefits officially cited include faster transaction speeds, and increased levels of blockchain interoperability.
June 1st
‘EOSIO 2’ announced, Along With ‘EOS VM’
CTO of Block.one, Dan Larimer (ex-Steemit) took the stage at B1June to announce a significant upgrade to EOSIO fittingly titled ‘EOSIO 2’ which is set to ship Summer 2019
New features cited include:
- Enhanced performance and support for the latest web standards.
- Will make using blockchain applications even easier for the masses.
- ‘WebAuthn’ (for signing transactions, optional): new partner announcement / integration.
- EOS VM.
EOS VM is designed specifically for blockchain, and will be the default web assembly engine for EOSIO 2 upon release. One of the primary benefits of EOS VM, according to Larimer, is that it will be able to both lower costs and increase the scalability of the applications built upon it.
“Designed as a lightweight header-only library… It is designed from the ground up for the high demand of blockchain applications.”
According to Larimer, with EOSIO 2,
“we believe we can execute web assembly 12 times faster than when we launched one year ago”
May 21st
New User-Friendly Explorer for EOS Developers Released By Block.one: EOSIO Explorer
The final entry in this issue’s series of product and feature announcements from Block.one is the ‘EOSIO Explorer’.
The Block.one team’s aims for EOSIO Explorer is that it will help to reduce the development time for on-chain apps by making the process more user-friendly and accessible.
From the announcement blog-post, it is a new web-based graphical-interface designed with the intention of improving the developer experience for interacting / monitoring EIOSIO-based developments (from applications, to networks);
“Using the EOSIO Explorer and their browser, developers can now easily explore blocks in their development nodes, create and manage their development accounts and keys, quickly generate new transactions or resend transactions sent previously, upload smart contracts via a graphical drag-and-drop interface and use other helpful features.”
Features, according the the post, are split into two different categories:
Inspect:
- Allows developers to view connected blockchain information; individual block, transaction and action details; and accounts details with associated smart contracts.
- Most useful for verifying data transmitted between app and blockchain (and verifying functionality of a smart contract).
Interact:
- These features allow developers to edit, import and create development accounts; with relevant key pairings, upload and deploy smart contracts and generated ABIs, and push actions coded in smart contracts.
- Most useful for user testing and verifying accounts interacting with your application.
Price Movements
Information correct as of 00:20 PM, GMT 10th June 2019
