EOS RAM bubble — does it make sense to develop a dApp with current RAM price?
I am writing this article with EOS RAM price of 0.40 EOS/KB
Yesterday drama with EOS RAM price hitting 0.92 EOS/KB forced me to take a deep breath and take a look on EOS from wider perspective.
EOS better that Ethereum?
Our decision to choose EOS as a blockchain solution for our application was related to our strong focus on delivering what we plan to do. We did not see a chance to make it happen on ETH so we took the steep path to develop on a fresh environment, with hardly any documentation and a lack of tools to facilitate the development, but with a promise of scalability and performance needed for real-world applications.
Promise vs. Reality
Right now I wonder if the current RAM price of 0.40 EOS/KB really fulfills all the promises given by Daniel and his team at the start of the project and how any dApp can host a product on the platform if the price of the critical asset to run an application can grow 40 times during 2 weeks. What has changed during last 2 weeks that the price of storing a basic contract grew from 15 USD to over 900? How can we attract new users outside of our present community, if the cost of creating an account is 25 USD?
No pressure on Block Producers
I wonder how it is that currently our Block Producers run on machines of 64 GB and are paid for that over 10.000 EUR/day, if on Azure the cost of a server with 256 GB is 1.500 EUR/month. On the free market some of BP candidates should offer increasing the RAM, the existing BPs in order to keep their position should also increase the RAM, or their should be voted off. This is how it works in theory — in practice we have still a “cooperation”. Maybe after a month of cooperation time to start competing?
dApps developments slowed down
The success of EOS as the platform in the long run is dependent on how many projects decide to choose it for their developments.
Can we really convince anyone that EOS is best option, with a new user account of 25 USD, token smart contract deployment of 600 USD?
Our project was the first to decide to run an ICO, while others preferring the airdrop model. I wonder now how they will accomplish their goals with an airdrop cost of over 200.000 USD. Still for us it is not just about an ICO — it is also about planning long-term development. What was a clear advantage of EOS was the ability to pay the transaction costs for the users, so they do not have to pay for the transactions. However, it means the cost is covered by the app. How can we calculate the cost of our service, it accessing RAM is basically a complete random somewhere between $0.01 and $1.00 USD?
20% fixed ram growth great for speculators
I have watched Dan’s interview in which he presented his position on RAM increase and proposed a fixed 20% yearly increase. I think this removes the only real threat for RAM speculators. If you know that in every moment you risk RAM increase and losing your money you may decide to buy only what is needed for your dApp. A public statement that the RAM size will not be changed makes buying RAM for speculation much safer bet.
