DAN LARIMER: Visionary Programmer of BitShares, Steem and EOS

Daniel Larimer is a software programmer.[1] Larimer created the cryptocurrency platform BitShares (2014), was co-founder of the blockchain social platform Steemit (2016), and is CTO of EOS, with the company block.one (2017).

Larimer developed the blockchain technology Graphene, which powers BitShares and the Steem token cryptocurrency.

bitshares =BitShares is an open-source, public, blockchain-based, real-time financial platform. It provides a decentralised asset exchange – similar to NYSE but for cryptocurrencies and without the need to trust a central authority to handle all the funds – that facilitates trading using an international network of computers, in which anyone can take part. BitShares also provides a cryptocurrency token called "BTS", which can be transferred between accounts and is used to collect fees for network operations and as a collateral for loans. The platform was designed by Daniel Larimer, an American programmer and entrepreneur, and launched in July 2014. Since March 2016 the project has been a part of Microsoft Azure Blockchain as a Service package

EOS.IO is a cryptocurrency token and blockchain that operates as a smart contract platform for the deployment of decentralized applications and decentralized autonomous corporations.

Steemit is a blogging and social networking website on top of the Steem blockchain database. The Steem blockchain produces Steem and Steem Dollars which are tradeable tokens users obtain for posting, discovering, and commenting on interesting content.
Steemit, Inc is a privately held company based in New York City and headquartered in Virginia. The company was founded by Ned Scott and Dan Larimer, creator of BitShares, and EOS.

I am not an expert on Dan Larimer, however, I have a bit of insight into this enigmatic programmer who is the visionary architect and engineer behind BitShares, Steem and EOS

Dan is one of those rare super gifted nerds (I use the term, ‘nerd’ affectionately in this case) who is so busy working out the details of his next invention that I’m pretty sure he doesn’t make time for things like going out with friends or relaxing with a beer or two. In fact, Dan told me that he has never even touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Well he corrected me recently: he has had wine but never has been drunk before. Don’t we all wish we could get those brain cells back? Dan never lost his.

Dan is a programmer, but I think of him more as a visionary inventor of systems. Dan’s stated mission in life is

Dan is one of those rare super gifted nerds (I use the term, ‘nerd’ affectionately in this case) who is so busy working out the details of his next invention that I’m pretty sure he doesn’t make time for things like going out with friends or relaxing with a beer or two. In fact, Dan told me that he has never even touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Well he corrected me recently: he has had wine but never has been drunk before. Don’t we all wish we could get those brain cells back? Dan never lost his.

Dan is a programmer, but I think of him more as a visionary inventor of systems. Dan’s stated mission in life is

Dan is one of those rare super gifted nerds (I use the term, ‘nerd’ affectionately in this case) who is so busy working out the details of his next invention that I’m pretty sure he doesn’t make time for things like going out with friends or relaxing with a beer or two. In fact, Dan told me that he has never even touched a drop of alcohol in his life. Well he corrected me recently: he has had wine but never has been drunk before. Don’t we all wish we could get those brain cells back? Dan never lost his.

Dan is a programmer, but I think of him more as a visionary inventor of systems. Dan’s stated mission in life is

“to find free market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property for all.”

It’s easy to get sucked into the Dan Larimer rabbit hole once you start studying his projects and lucky for you and me, we can experience his inventions first-hand by participating in the social media sites, Steemit and Busy, which run on top of the Steem blockchain. If the phrase, “run on top of the Steem blockchain” sounds foreign to you, think of it this way: instead of data being stored in a company’s central server, it’s distributed all over, in a peer-to-peer, decentralized system that is transparent. This is the driving force behind the exponential growth of cryptocurrencies in recent times. Why? Because centralized systems are vulnerable to fraud, hacking, abuse of trust and wealth hoarding. Decentralized systems are not perfect, but they are much better than their centralized counterparts in these and other areas.

If you really want to dive into the Dan Larimer rabbit hole, watch this video where he asks Vitalik Buterin some tough questions about Ethereum in 2014:

If your head is spinning from all this information, keep in mind, I’ve only just scratched the surface of his inventions. After Dan successfully built the Steem blockchain, he moved onto his next project, EOS.

If you thought BitShares was hard to grasp, EOS, is perhaps even more ambitious and difficult to understand for the average person. It took me several weeks just get a basic understanding of it, but thankfully, the EOS White Paper has just been released.

EOS is easier to understand when you recognize what problems it’s trying to solve. Right now, blockchains have several problems that need solving: they are hard to scale up (look no further than the Bitcoin scaling war), they are costly (Ethereum charges a gas fee to use its network), they lack interoperability and they are difficult for legacy companies to navigate. Blockchain technology is redefining the entire internet, but for most company owners, there’s no easy way to adopt this brand-new revolutionary technology. I believe EOS is trying to make blockchain technology easy to adopt, by creating a blockchain operating system for companies.

Here’s an abstract from the EOS White Paper:
“The EOS.IO software introduces a new blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. This is achieved by creating an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across hundreds of CPU cores or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that scales to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees, and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.” -EOS White Paper

I wonder what Dan Larimer will invent after EOS? Like all visionary inventors, I am sure it will be something revolutionary and amazing. Dan Larimer’s inventions have already changed more lives than can be counted, and mine is one of them.

post credits =viki and stella stephens

thank u ..