This is the final part of a series to critically asses the EOS project. Here are the first 6 preceding articles:
Part 1 - Yet another ico?
Part 5 - The crypto that comes with a constitution

So this is the final article of my EOS - peeking under the hood series, where i have looked how the EOS project will deliver on the huge promises it makes. And the journey of this series turned into the establishment of my presence on the steem blockchain.

But first things first, i'll briefly summarise what we've been trough so far, before i will talk about the practical conclusions i will draw from my analysis, as announced in the first part.
Btw. as i will also undertake some financial speculation, note that this is NOT financial advise, do your own research if you intend to invest!

As the company around Dan Larimer, building the EOS tech, will not implement the EOS blockchain, i looked into the mechanism of block producers in the DPOS system and discovered an incredibly bustling microcosm of block producer candidates and an ambitious community around @eosgo leaving no doubt the critical mass has been reached to carry this project from launch, more than that: establishing decentralisation and community governance processes long befor the blockchain has even launched.

Taking a closer look at the development of the EOS.IO software on Github, as well as community testing efforts and feedback showed that this is one of the most active crypto projects, and that there are so many demonstrations of how implement all the features available in the test environment, including quite positive feedback on the quality of the software provided from individual developers.

With the steem blockchain having implemented a lot of features that we will find again in EOS, specifically the DPOS mechanism, it is natural to examine it as the proof of concept for EOS. Although the steemit realm isn't without issues, it is far superior to the vast majority of blockchain tech out there in terms of usability and scalability. It might not be able to compete with off-chain Social Media platforms from a user experience point of view, but it effectively manages to establish a decentralised alternative.

And finally the intended blockchain constitution for EOS, not only solves central governance issues of other blockchains, by establishing a system of governance, that is explicit and adaptable by vote, it even might turn into a global legal and regulatory framework of crypto, outpacing efforts by official and national players. Which is maybe the most far reaching feature of EOS.

So where do we go from there?

EOS - Peeking under the hood - Summary - Getting ready for the Dawn of blockchain 3.0?

Even thought this series is to provide an indepth analysis, there are still so many aspects of EOS that i even haven't mentioned. Mostly because i didn't see any possible weakness in them, but still things like feeless transactions (although use of EOS itself isn't strictly free), user friendly account handling, or the involvement of huge VC projects, these are all fairly relevant for EOS! So i will try to asdress these as we go along...

Latest developments

I looked back and since i started this series, there have already been major updates from EOS! So whereas from Ethereum all we have heared, are some theoretical speculations and rants by Vitalik, since the beginning of this year, it was really challenging to stay up-to-date with the EOS side of things!

On the block producer and genesis end, we have an updated list of block producers candidates,
https://steemit.com/eos/@eosgo/block-producer-candidate-report-5-april-4-2018
There are already 50 bp candidates, and more strickingly already a good number fulfills large parts of the requirements set up by the community. There is a variety of set-ups and degrees of professionalism and activity, so there will definitely a choice of of candidates to vote for and, also backup producers to jump in if some should fail.

Also new to me, that you will need a 15% rate of approval by holders, before the proper EOS tokens (not the ERC20 ones), will be transfarable. Meaning that for a EOS chain to launch, it will require owners support.

The most important update came from Dan himself, is the announcement of the Dawn 3.0 test net; 1 day ahead of schedule:
https://steemit.com/eos/@dan/eosio-dawn-3-0-now-available
I'll really try to pick out the most striking parts of it, basically Dawn 3.0 includes the following:
- Feature completeness
- Transaction rate of at least 1000 TPS up to 6000 in realisitc scenarios.
- EOS.io core regulations will be implemented as a smart contract, thus policy changes will not result in a hardfork
- Multiblockchain-Communication, allowing cross-chain confirmations, which will enable scalability via an unlimited number of EOS blockchains. Their one genuine tokens will always be EOS!

The last one is certainly the most striking news, and maybe the final aspect, where Ethereum would have had an advantage over EOS, since with sucess the scalability via sharding and Plasma, would have been superior to the limits of increasing the server-sided performance, even with multi-thread implementation. But now that EOS is announced to be scalable via inter-chain communication this, if indeed working out as intended, would be suitable to take ETH its last promised advantages. But let's see how it works out and what test-net implementations of inter-blockchain-comm will produce.

There have been no upates on the constitution, in the past two weeks, unfortunately, but as said these are complex things, and its worth to take their time. Neverthellse Thomas Cox, has provided furhter valuable insigth into governance mechanisms in the last weekly Q&A:
https://busy.org/@eosgo/thomas-cox-weekly-q-and-a-3-eos-go-live-episode-6-on-eosrad-io

Anything left to fear?

So is there anything that still could let the EOS project fail? When it comes to Dan himself, there is often criticism, that he has left his projects for newer ones. There have been lots of replies to this already, so i wont go into that. But aside his announcements of intending to provide a Steemit 2.0, the strong community base of EOS is in my view a guarantying factor, that EOS will still be a success in the event of Dan deciding to go for something else.

If he would leave or (god forbid) something should happen before the mainnet launch, this rather unlikely occasion would still mean a major blow for EOS, but my assumption would be, that at this stage, it could still launch with major features delivered.

Beyond that, a quick look at the venture captial agreements, shows, that there are going to be huge funds available for furthering the chain and dapps for EOS, here just the announcements of the past weeks:
https://medium.com/@eosio/finlab-ag-and-block-one-36cf89e8d17a
https://medium.com/@eosio/block-one-signs-200m-joint-venture-partnership-to-accelerate-asia-focused-eosio-ecosystem-c06ba10ebbe7
https://medium.com/eosio/block-one-and-mike-novogratzs-galaxy-digital-announce-joint-venture-for-new-325-million-eos-io-5fad0354bd01
https://medium.com/eosio/block-one-and-tomorrow-blockchain-opportunities-announce-formation-of-eos-io-65383d9e1977

Aside the 1 Billion from EOS token sales, that block.one has announced to reserve for EOS based developments, these VC activities go into the hundreds of millions, Without a question, there are more than enough funds to have the eco-system thrive!

The path to mainstream adoption of blockchain?

The promise of EOS is to solve the practical problems of currently existing blockchains, which on one hand is usability and scalability on the technical side. Here a user-friendly account handling ensures that you are protected from losses, by human failure or other incidental aspects, which really is a issue in every day handling. A scalability that allows a multitude of dapps seamlessly run on the same chain is another important factor, that should EOS help to succeed.

Also have a look at blogger Dallas Rushing's latest video

The really ground-breaking features of EOS are the constitution, that will guarantee a consistent development of the EOS chain, as well as again security of users to be protected from fraud, erroneous code etc. by arbitration, which if EOS suceeds and booms, might become a unique global code of law for the blockchain.
An yet, being superior to other chains, the EOS constitution would only allow for a limited degree governance, where likely a small community of whales would be able to steer EOS to meet their own ends in a blockchain monopoly, as i have tried to demonstrate in my last article on the example of steemit.
But, with a multitude of EOS chains and related constitutions competing with each other, everything changes!
This makes @Dan s latest article on crypto governance much more clearer, where he basically argues that the one blockchain with a constitution beneficial to the majority will outperform weaker, more corruptive constitutions.
Now the problem is inertia, and lacking interoperability between different blockchains. I can imagine Steemit still survive faced with a superior Steemit 2.0 developped by Dan, because you can't simply transfer your assets and reputation and connections.

The brillance now with a flexible governance system via a constitution combined with inter-blockchain communication, that allows for scalability and a consistent access to your account, funds, reputation and connections at the same time, makes each chain and the constitution infinitely more permeable. If one chain, doesn't work out to your advantage, you simply switch over to another, where you get your requirements met better (Like i have personally left steemit for busy).

I cannot stress enough how groundbreaking and unbelievably effective this is. As i have demonstrated (sucessfully so as i think) in this series, there are several aspects of EOS, that are solid and far ahead anything other blockchains have to offer.
But beyond that, it's the masterful combination of these core features, which make it something completely new, and which is suited to effectively disrupt the whole platform economy, for one thing (Just think of Google, Facebook and Amazon, who currently count to the biggest fish in the global economy). In combination, the EOS constitution might bring with it a new framework of global business laws and regulation, which might become a standard for crypto. On the horizon it could go well beyond that, it could even go so far and lever out international policy making as such (not to speak from the national level).

It's always amazing, how reading one of @Dan's announcements, i am left wondering "now how in the world would you ever be able to make all your fancy talk real?" and then diving-into it all the non explicitely mentioned concepts come to the surface, and are just brillant and interconnect by such an amazing manner!

Financial Assassement

Just to repeat all of this is my persoanl speculation and not financial advice. For investment decisions, do your own research.

From an investment-perspective, the immediate benchmark in the crypto-world is clearly Ethereum, and once the mainnet has sucessfully launched, a similiar market-cap should be in reach for EOS, but my assumption would be, that as of now a lot of issues of ethereum are already priced in, so it could be quite a bit higher (maybe Ethereum's ATH can be taken as upper end).
Personally I don't see Bitcoin as relevant technology anymore, mainstream adoption will simply go for the better tech, so it's valuation is just irrelevant for EOS in the long term (currently of course, all crypto answers to it of course).
But if the the potential really starts to unfold, and we get things like a Social Network, able to compete with the offchains ones, or any other platform enterprise, their market caps can serve as benchmarks, and here we are already talking of hundreds of billionsof $ (e.g. Amazon 680B, 450B, Alphabet 690B, just to compare, the whole Crypto Market Cap is currently at some 266B$.
What share of the total online business, EOS could take as a platform is in that light irrelevant. Just to reach the allover crypto market cap would mean a price of one EOS token of roughly 350$, and this would still be far away from the cap of one of the major platform players.

What i deduct personally for my own investment decision, is that, EOS has become by far the largest crypto asset in my portfolio. I've basically sold all ETH, and also the remaining BTC i kept for hedging. Leaving a few alternative 3.0 coins for that purpose. But beyond that i intend to - for the first time - shift a good portion of speculative stock holdings over to specifically EOS.

So going to the moon might in fact be a conservative outlook, but let's see, where this journey takes us....

Conclusion

The development of this series also turned into the development of my presence on the Steem blockchain, making lots of interesting and aspiring connections and gaining some grip funds-wise (at least from a plancton persepctive ;-), which is due to the great support from all of you, and especially the approval by Dan the man himself, which was a big boost, and got me out of depending on the noob delegation:

Apart from that, I think learning how steemit works is a good exercise for understanding what EOS might be like, to learn its concepts and how to maneuver.

In my view, EOS currently is one of the most interesting things taking shape, not only as an investment, but as new technological basis, which might even influence the shape of future global decision finding and policy-making.

I hope you have liked this series, and that we will stay connected. I certainly will continue to cover EOS its aspect and taking shape in the near future!

The information provided here sums up the results of my own - finite - research. If you've found this piece interesting or useful, please up-vote and resteem and help spread the word. If you have spotted any addition, or if you see things differently, please throw in your thoughts and comments! I am always happy to discuss and learn!

EOS - Peeking under the hood - Series:
Part 1 - Yet another ico?
[Part 2 - How is the EOS blockchain established?] (https://steemit.com/eos/@conceptskip/eos-peeking-under-the-hood-series-launch-blockchain-establishment)
Part 3 - Is the EOS infrastructure solid?
Part 4 - Lessons learned from Steemit?
Part 5 - A platform constitution, how does that work?
Final Part - Summary & Outlook <-- YOU ARE HERE