EOS meetup 2019 in St.Petersburg
Following the summer EOS meetup that took place in Moscow, a similar event was organized in my home city of Saint-Petersburg. And I rushed to check in without any second thought as soon as I heard the news.
It was Tuesday evening and the time was short, so only 3 speakers had a chance to take the floor. However, the topics they covered were pretty interesting for an EOS addict such as myself.
Problems with developing dApps on EOS
In his introduction speech, Alexey Pupyshev, the founder and CEO of Ventuary Inc., spoke about some problems that dApps’ developers in his team came across when they started working with EOS.
One of the biggest problems that he mentioned referred to the CPU resources needed to accomplish any action in a decentralized app. The resources provided by every block producer may not be sufficient and transactions may simply fail. So you can’t just do something in a dApp and go about your business. You have to monitor it till you get a solid confirmation.
Not very pleasant news, to be honest. However, not fully unexpected either. It’s been less than a year since EOS mainnet was launched, too little time has passed for the system to get stabilized.
PockerChained
Website: pokerchained.com
The next two speakers from Graphene Lab represented an EOS-based poker game. The game copies the rules and the mechanics of traditional Texas Hold’em available in any real-life or online centralized casino.
The main challenge of transferring the game to the blockchain is that the cards are distributed through the open network, but the players shouldn’t be able to see who gets what. To resolve this task, the cryptographic protocol Mental Poker was used.
The logic of the game is as follows:
- The deck is generated with each card being signed with a special key.
- The cards are shuffled many times and given out to the users.
- Each user gets 2 cards.
- The game continues for many rounds with bets, folds and other poker stuff (see Texas Hold’em rules).
- After the last round, the showdown follows and the winner is detected.
Developers came across the same issues that have been mentioned above. Due to the instability of the network, transactions may fail. Also, if a player leaves before the game is over, the game can’t be finished, the bets are sent back tot he users and nobody can get a reward.
The project aims to make profits on commissions which are charged from every pot. Hope, the team will manage to resolve all the issues and reach all its goals.
EOS Nation
Website: eosnation.io
The final speaker, Stephane Bisson, a co-founder of EOS Nation, has told about the path that their company has treaded since its launch.
EOS Nation is a Canada-based EOS block producer. According to EOSNetworkMonitor, the company doesn’t take the place among 20 active BPs. They only get a chance to contribute to the network as the 21st BP when selected from the pool on a rotating basis. However, even under such circumstances, they have already managed to produce several millions of blocks.
Their current profits are not very high due to the overall market state. All the revenue they get they reinvest into the company’s further development.
After Stephane’s speech, the questions from the audience followed. I asked about EOS-based stable coins (the topic of my particular interest). He mentioned Carbon USD. Combined with zero fees and incredible throughput indices, this could become a really great solution.
My next question was about decentralization. Stable coins are typically issued by a single company, which leads to centralization and security problems since users have to rely on this company (I covered this and a few other issues in an article about stable coins). To this, Stephane answered that huge financial institutions such as Circle standing behind these projects are pretty reliable and there’s no reason to doubt them. Also, the model of decentralized stable coin utilized by DAI can be applied for future projects.
Another question from the audience was about how EOS block producers come along with the local laws and if any of them has been pressed by local authorities. None of BPs has come across such a problem yet, it seems. However, if such a situation occurs, no one can prevent a BP from removing itself from the election and transferring the business to another location.
Summing up
The EOS meetup was great, just as expected. It’s wonderful to know that the project evolves.
Just like all other blockchain projects, EOS still has many problems to be resolved. But with the solid community and the funds raised during the one-year-ICO, I’m sure, devs will manage to overcome them.
