As Lumeos we have always been evangelists of EOS from the beginning and great supporters of Dan Larimer. The price of Ram alarmed us a bit and we took this as an opportunity to analyze the pros and cons of building on top of Telos. Here’s the analysis we made:
Quick Introduction to Telos
- Telos is a new blockchain code-forked from EOSIO open source software and therefore shares a similar code base to EOS and all EOSIO variants
- Telos has improved upon token allocation (Telos Network and the Token Cap)
- Telos has improved upon voting by utilizing inverse-weighted voting. One must select and vote 30 block producers in order to utilise the full weight of their vote. Without doing this the value of the vote will be proportionally reduced.
- Telos infrastructure and governance will be run by high quality and trusted custodians individually referred to as a Block Producer(BP)
- BP compliance will be strictly code-enforced and non performing BPs will be sidelined
Telos is for Development
One of the key reasons Lumeos is researching Telos is because it focuses on the needs of developers and user adoption. It is still running the same EOS IO code, afterall.
Lets focus on some key areas that Telos makes for convincing blockchain developers to develop on, particularly if you want to utilise the speed and smart contract advantages of EOSIO.
1. Cost
Getting to 1 million users on Lumeos will cost us around $10,000,000 only to create those users! In contrast, Telos has announced a RAM grant to support 1 million free addresses.
Math:
$.31(cost per kb) * 4(kb for accounts) * 1,000,000(first million users) = 1,240,000 EOS or $9,920,000
Lower Development Costs:
One TLOS token provides 3x the utility of one EOS token
By introducing a maximum of 40,000 tokens for each address in the ethereum snapshot, Telos decentralizes the distribution and lowers the overall token supply significantly. The lower token supply has an added benefit for developers in the utility each TLOS token provides. Given Telos Block Producers use similar hardware to EOS and the token supply is expected to be ⅓ of EOS, each TLOS token will provide as much as 3x the “bandwidth” of EOS.
Lower Ram Price makes Telos affordable to develop on
RAM is precious and there are some technical reasons for it to be considerably more expensive on EOSIO blockchains than RAM in centralized solutions, however the speculation-driven prices on EOS are still not a reflection of real value but a reflection of speculators buying up a limited resource with the knowledge others will have to pay to develop or use EOS.
On Telos, RAM is held back strategically until it is required and will be introduced in a way that dilutes the potential upside of speculation.
There will be a number of other measures in place to ensure developers and users get access to the RAM and not speculators, including a published guidance price at which RAM will be sold to bona fide developers. Lots of work and thought is going into this area as we speak and we will always be proactive to ensure Telos is developer and user friendly.
The end result for dapp developers will be fairly priced cost of deployment, with a larger pool of real users due to 1 million free and later inexpensive account creation. Large amounts of active users are what will fuel your dapps value in the long term.
Video: Telos Network and RAM Pricing
Early adopter TLOS grant being proposed
Details are coming soon, but the Telos Launch Group is planning to provide early adopter dapps necessary TLOS to purchase RAM and have the throughput to create world beating dapps. These will be in the form of TLOS and/or RAM grants, not “strings-attached” VC investment.
2. Customer Adoption/Acquisition
“Lower account costs will aid fast adoption of Telos”
Lower ongoing RAM price means easier customer acquisition
Whether users or other dapps fund the RAM costs to open accounts, lower RAM fees make user acquisition a lower hurdle.
First million accounts free
There will be 0 cost to onboard the first million new users. This provides a far greater audience of users to Lumeos. User numbers are critical for any social or gig economy challenger. EOS has less than 250,000 accounts currently. This is a fraction of the users required to build a network of true economic value.
3. Network Security and Reliability
With improved voting and distribution we will see the best block producers rise to the top and any mistakes on their part in terms of security or reliability will result in real consequences/loss of income. Of particular note, standby block producer testing is inbuilt into Telos. All 30 standbys are rotated through to produce blocks (6 hours every 5 days) while top BPs are given a weekly 12-hour maintenance window. This allows all active block producers to make critical improvements to both security and reliability and ensures standby readiness is proven at all times.
The Telos BP pay structure further ensures network resiliency as all BPs receive the same pay rate and standby BPs receive half that rate. In EOS the ratio is closer to 9:1, which relegates the rarely tested standby BPs to increasingly falling behind top 21 BP standards. Telos is concerned with better pay equity as a means to ensure excellent infrastructure and support.
Another advantage of Telos is the strictly enforced BP compliance they are putting forward to remove non-producing/non-compliant BP’s, sidelining BPs that aren’t producing blocks or aren’t in compliance with the Ricardian contract.
Cons
- Telos is not as widely adapted as EOS and has less brand recognition
- Telos is much less funded than EOS and has a much smaller developer ecosystem
Conclusion
Given that Telos is 100% code-compatible with EOS for dapp deployments, while at the same time focuses on security, developers, and user acquisition, Telos is definitely on the Lumeos radar.
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