Coffee & Coin – Issue #5: Struggles for Binance and EOS

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The Summaries:

Binance & US Trading:

This past month Binance started to ban the accounts of US (and accidentally Canadian) customers in order to comply with strict US regulation around the trading of securities. Initially, Binance had planned to have their US subsidiary “Binance US” live prior to the shut down, but, for reasons unannounced the rollout has been significantly slower than expected with user registration opening up this past week and deposits being slowly turned on for different coins each day.

But, time delay wasn’t the only woe Binance faced, it also announced that it will be unable to offer services in 12 different US states (Alabama, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Idaho, Louisiana, New York, North Carolina, Texas, Georgia, Vermont and Washington) leaving these users without access to any Binance service.

Users who wish to trade a variety of tokens have had to look elsewhere due to the limited selection offered by Binance US, and other US competitors like Coinbase.

Currently, KuCoin, Beaxy and COSS have been working aggressively to secure US users with additional promotions, token listings and discounts – including offer zero-fee listings for approved projects, right after it came out that Binance is still charging a listing fee of $300,000 USD + 3% of total supply for listing a token.

According to out reach, KuCoin, Beaxy and COSS, which all allow US users on their global platform, have their own native token and offer a wide variety of assets, have all seen a major uptick in the amount of US registration this month, likely due to the similar service offering they have to Binance.

Other US services, that only offered more conservative listings, lacked native tokens, or other services have not seen the same uplift.

EOS Collapsing?

In a scathing report CoinDesk reporter Brady Dale, outlined some of the major challenges facing EOS’ $3B marketcap ecosystem.

After Block.One, the company behind EOS raised more than $4B in their year long ICO, they promised their ‘Ethereum Killer’ would be the new standard for smart contract based blockchains.

This past year, with declining development, increased infighting and further centralization there have become a number of users concerned about EOS’ future potential.

Unlike other chains, EOS is basically an oligarchy run by elected ‘Block Producers’ (BPs) who earn for validating blocks. This helps to limit costs and accelerate transactions times at the trade-off of centralization. But, it is also the root of a lot of challenges EOS currently faces.

A quick overview of the on-going challenges:

  • Major BP ‘EOS Tribe’ announced they were leaving EOS to focus on other chains. They feel it is no longer profitable to maintain an EOS node, without involving yourself in ‘vote trading’ and other dirty politics among EOS whales.

  • Two major groups, one in the West and one in China, fought to launch the official EOS mainnet last year, but, the lack of communication between them left fractured communities who still oppose one another, leaving Western BPs and their voters feeling under represented.

  • At the current time, it is believed that of the 30 eligible BPs, all but 2-3 are located in China. This conclusion came after revelations that major BPs who had listed themselves as being in the US, Korea and Europe, were actually just holding companies for Chinese based firms with servers in China.

  • EOS reward mechanism allows consortiums of BPs to work together to game the top ranks, and therefore get the bulk of the earnings. By gaining this new EOS issuance, they are diluting the marketcap and making it harder for other BPs to compete with them in the future.

  • Top BPs have managed to miss entire rounds of validation (12 blocks) but not get voted out by other BPs due to backroom deals. Creating a slow, laggy and costly network.

  • On Twitter, EOS creator and Block.One CEO, Daniel Larmier is already hinting at his next blockchain project.

EOS stands as the largest blockchain offering of all time, and still leaves a lot of promises undelivered – but, to solve these problems, they’ll need to find ways to align the interests of global BPs, voters, and Block.One to continue to try and correct the path on this sinking ship.

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