RE: A Big Step Towards Our Decentralized Future: I've Joined the eosDAC Launch Team!
You certainly seem like the right person to be part of a project like this; so congratulations on your decision!
I have read a lot about EOS as one possible gateway towards a decentralized future, and I see a lot of people (at least in the crypto/blockchain and developer fields) be excited about it.
Perhaps you can explain though — to someone non-technical — what EOS "does," aside from providing some sort of supremely innovative infrastructure, and a token? What does it DO (or have the potential to do) that will directly impact the average person on the street?
The only analogy I can think of is oil and gas. Oil is a "commodity" that trades (a bit like token) on world markets, and a lot of people get excited about exploration, extraction and refining. But that doesn't amount to a hill of beans to the average person in the street... they just want to know what the product is, that will help their daily lives.
So what does/will EOS actually DO, at "street level?"
Thanks for your time!
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Excellent question. Thank you for asking.
Maybe a similar way to think about it would be task "What does the STEEM blockchain actually do?" OR "What does the BitShares blockchain actually do?"
By themselves, they do nothing. They are just decentralized, globally distributed, immutable, cryptographically-secure ledgers (i.e. databases). I know, that's a mouthful for "street level," but those are the best words I've found so far to describe what's going on.
Now, when you look at the Bitshares wallet/decentralized exchange or at Steemit/DTube/UTopianIO/DLive/etc... then you might start to get a feel for what's possible. The EOS blockchain itself is more like a protocol. TCP/IP is just a protocol, but it enables the entire richness of Internet we all enjoy. SMTP is just a protocol, but it's what makes email work. EOS can be looked at like the Amazon Web Services (AWS) of blockchain technology. Much of the internet runs on AWS right now because they have a huge economy of scale with proven tools that have worked for a very long time. EOS, in a similar way, will enable corporations around the world to have enterprise-level access to blockchain technology to build the systems of the future. It can deliver on promises other blockchains have made, but can't handle (such as Ethereum crashing due to cryptokitties).
Dan Larimer is building EOS because he wants to build the low-level protocol that he can then build everything else on top of. Every aspect of society and governance that will be improved via distributed ledger technology could then be built on top of EOS. It's a really exciting time to be alive. :)
Thank you for taking the time to reply!
Some of this is becoming a little clearer; the comparison with AWS was helpful. I do remember the cryptokitties "meltdown;" not impressive. At the same time, exciting because it seemed like one of the first retail level blockchain events. At least to some extent.
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