Why son had to leave his home
EOS is a blockchain with a very unique market position with respect to its origin philosophy and a history full of twists and turns. It was first conceived by Block One (B1) but was launched by the community with a carefully engineered legal design of its initial coin offering (ICO) to avoid itself being categorized as a security by the SEC.
It became the largest ICO ever in the history of crypto raising $4.1B, without falling into the same basket as many other ICO projects which were launched by a company and then established a centralized foundation that would spend raised money, thus becoming a security per the Howey test.
However, the toll of its own success with the ICO was heavy. The community had to pay the price of suffering through the history that followed, just like any startup company that raised too much money too early. Below is what happened:
Although the agreement in the ERC-20 ICO didn’t guarantee anything to avoid being ruled as security by SEC, the community was naturally expecting B1’s centralized leadership and financial commitment post ICO.
In the course of marketing the project, B1 had promoted how they were going to deploy the capital they raised, building anticipation in the community.
But it wasn’t easy for them to follow through with the expectations. They now had too much to lose and became a very easy target for the SEC, having become the most successful ICO ever in the entire industry’s history. It was a very natural culmination that their legal and compliance departments became a bottleneck of every decision, making them extremely conservative and cautious about every possible move.
This caused many of their early endeavors to end in failure. The much anticipated Voice.com didn’t take off due to juridical complications in NYC, even after spending $30M on the voice.com domain, and having been forced to pivot into an NFT platform.
They also failed to deliver in two separate attempts the much anticipated EOS Foundation. This was due to significant perceived risk to engage in the establishment of a foundation that could lead to EOS being ruled as a security by the SEC instead of a commodity.
When B1 did settle with the SEC, their deal included a 5 year clause that if B1 broke the terms the settlement could be ripped up.
Of course, the SEC wasn’t the only reason for resentment and anger built up between 2018–2021. It was also the naivete of B1 that came after the $4.1B success of the ICO. They didn’t make it mandatory for the VC they are LPs of, to invest in only those projects that prioritize EOS. Slow and delayed communication after being filtered through from their legal department with a deafening silence made it even worse.
Story of independence and revenge
It was out of the sentiment of betrayal and abandonment, that the community rallied behind Yves, who designated himself CEO of the chain, filling the vacancy of leadership left by B1, with the establishment of the ENF.
Yves moved on to forcefully sever the chain’s tie with B1 by freezing the code for B1’s vesting schedule, framing this action as ‘the community taking power back from the dictator’, being B1.
Although controversial and divisive, his bold move seemed to be well received by the community in the beginning. It was because he had a reputation of making things happen and it was quenching the thirst of the leadership gap left by B1.
Indeed, he has done a lot throughout the course of 2022–2023. Yves and ENF did all the things that they thought needed to be done with centralized leadership that couldn’t be provided by B1: Antelope Coalition, bluepapers, Yield+, Recover+, EVM, etc.
The ENF took very bold budget expenditure allocating itself with 2% of inflation without being faced with many questions. So much money was spent without public scrutiny, because the ENF and Yves seemed like the only hope left for the community.
However, regardless of high hopes for Yves in the beginning, it is very unfortunate that even with all the endeavors and work that he and his team at the ENF have put in, they have ended up in rather underwhelming results. Especially considering the high levels of anticipation that the ENF had created for the community.
The stark contrast between the results, the amount of the money spent without being kept in check and the negative EOS token price impact, have raised serious concerns and questions among many in the community.
Here’s the withdrawal history of ENF’s admin.grants account into centralized exchanges in the last year between October 2022 and October 2023:
In the course of 35M EOS tokens being sold, the price plunged from $1.19 to $0.54. The price contrast is even more drastic if you look at the price when the ENF was first announced by Yves in August 2021. The price then was hovering around $5.50, which means the coin has now lost 90% of value since Yves took the leadership position with the current price at $0.54. It is such a tragedy showing how the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
There is also the intention and expenses paid to explore filing a Class Action against B1, which was announced 2 years ago. Other Class Actions have already been filed against B1, and token holders who qualify have been provided an opportunity to give their contact and trading information to participate. When the reopened $22M Class Action was asking for people to sign up, the ENF actively campaigned for the community not to.
Korea has more than 30% of the total EOS token supply. If the proposed Class Action won’t benefit Korean EOS holders, then who is it really for? Is it even happening, and more importantly is it worth the time, energy, and expense to do so?
Now, two years after its inception, it looks like Yves and ENF have left no rocks unturned. He did pretty much everything he could, and everything they hoped B1 would do. But it’s very unfortunate that what he did instead caused a counter price impact also.
The true abundance that is left back home
B1 and EOS’ original vision of “Profi”, with BTC wrapped on EOS and combined with the 140k BTC in their reserve, still remains a huge opportunity. This coupled with B1’s institutional relationships established with Bullish, we can see now more than ever before the incoming on-chain, KYC-enabled STO and real world asset (RWA) tsunami. (This is becoming a market of trillions, not billions.)
Institutions like BlackRock, Bank of America and JP Morgan are drooling on Defi / RWA but they simply cannot join the market because there’s no viable KYC-enabled blockchains with enough liquidity.
EOS can become the chain for this and as far as I see there’s no other chain that is better positioned than EOS in this changing monetary environment. This is only possible on EOS because of its unique conception, history and philosophy that cannot be copied.
Not recognizing its own true power, blaming the merciless mercy of destiny that teaches where true sovereignty lies in, EOS has spent 2 years wandering in the wilderness trying to become what it is not. (Beautiful thing is that this wandering in itself is still crucial part of the journey.)
EOS, It’s time to come back home.
While the ENF boasted the narrative of bringing the power back to the community, what the community has learnt instead, finally, is that true sovereignty never comes from the place of victimhood.
To raise a child, it takes a village. To build a successful blockchain, it takes talent, money, tech, culture, philosophy, vision, network, a community, and still so much more. For EOS to fulfill what it’s meant to become, we need both the ENF and Block One to contribute. It has to be ‘whole’.
Now the community calls for reconciliation. We want EOS to come back to Block One and work together to realize what it was originally trying to achieve with Profi (defi + KYC), Bullish and their 140k BTC. It is clear this original vision is becoming more and more relevant in this quickly evolving macroeconomic environment.
We acknowledge all the effort Yves has put forth thus far. He has accomplished everything he thought should be done on EOS according to the promises of B1. We would like to hereby suggest Yves on behalf of the EOS community, come to peaceful terms with B1, because that is where some hope remains.
Bullish’s previous SEC filings stated that they used to own more than 80m tokens but sold everything earlier this year.
Now that the price is much cheaper, it would be a good time for Block One to buy these tokens back and once again have a stake in the game as an ‘investor’, not necessarily as a founder.
Together we can complete the originally intended narrative of Profi and BTC wrapped on EOS, while maintaining the status of the token as commodity by the SEC.
