Will 2023 Be the Year of EOS?

The EOS blockchain is opening up to the world. That is the clear message from Yves La Rose, Co-founder and CEO of the EOS Network Foundation (ENF), the nonprofit organization that has taken over the network’s management since its messy divorce from Block.one.

The momentum EOS has spent the past few months building has been hard to ignore. Among the many positive developments was the launch of a $100m ecosystem fund dedicated to onboarding web3 builders and entrepreneurs. The platform also rolled out support for Tether (USDT), unveiled a slew of DeFi projects (Yield+, Recover+), and teased the upcoming launch of the most powerful EVM on the market.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, La Rose was also included on CoinTelegraph’s 2023 rundown Top 100 influencers in crypto and blockchain, coming in at #46. The question is, will the EOS Network Foundation’s recent power plays see the smart contract platform realize its considerable potential in the months ahead?

EOS: A New Beginning

What a difference 12 months makes. The early days of 2022 were a dark time for EOS, with La Rose admitting the project was on life support. In the ENF’s Q4 report, the EOS O.G. elaborated, noting that the Foundation’s core team consisted of just three people “who believed in the possibility for EOS to emerge from the chaos of neglect and uncertainty that had been holding it back.” 

That team has grown considerably since, with over forty members now serving the community. Everyone loves a comeback story, and the blockchain platform at the center of the biggest ICO in history finally seems poised to make an impression, having basically missed out on DeFi’s first bull run.

Bringing the Ethereum Virtual Machine to the EOS network has long been a goal of the blockchain’s brain trust, as it will allow developers to use familiar tools and code, meaning the brightest and best will be incentivized to work on building out its dApp ecosystem. For a while it seemed like a pipe dream, though La Rose recently earmarked April 14 for the launch date of the long-awaited EOS EVM.

“Combining the performance of EOS with the familiarity of Ethereum, Solidity developers are in for a treat,” he enthused, adding, “At 800+ swaps per second, EOS EVM will be by far the fastest EVM, benchmarked 3x faster than Solana + BNB and 25x faster than Avax.”

Time to Build

EOS may have watched the DeFi parade go by over the past few years, but the arrival of EOS EVM signifies that it’s ready to make up for lost time and become a best-in-class Web3 smart contract platform. The kind genuinely capable of living up to a term frequently bandied about in crypto circles: “Ethereum killer.” 

To be fair, EOS was already a highly performant blockchain: its codebase powers the world’s most active blockchain, WAX, and it can handle over 100 million daily transactions. EVM takes things to a new level entirely though, combining the reliability and security of Ethereum with the speed and scalability of EOS. 

With the arrival of EOS EVM, the ENF team is also adding fresh utility to its native EOS token, in a move that echoes the EIP-1559 of Ethereum, whose burning mechanism to reduce supply created some valuable deflationary pressure. One major change is that $EOS will serve as gas, with previously announced plans for an $EVM token economy (‘Trust EVM’) shelved. Interestingly, the EOS token pumped by 10% after La Rose announced the date for the EVM launch.

With a grant program to help developers build on its EVM, and a Web3 war chest for promising projects, there’s an undeniable feel-good factor to EOS right now. Solidity developers will certainly appreciate the ability to bring their open-source code, libraries, SDKs, and tooling (Hardhat, Truffle) to the network, not to mention the ability to quickly deploy dApps. And there’s another point worth noting: while the dApp landscape of Ethereum and others is crowded, EOS is not. This fact could compel developers wishing to corner a certain market (NFTs, metaverse, etc) to set up shop in EOS’ box-fresh dApp playground. 

At the moment, EOS sits just outside the Top 20 blockchains for Total Value Locked (TVL). It’s not a bad place to be, all things considered. If the ENF have their way, 2023 will be the year it starts to steadily climb that table as its ecosystem matures. Exciting times.

Disclaimer: This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.