Logically Consistent Principles for Token Distributions

in eos •  7 years ago 

Today we are excited to announce our Token Distribution schedule, which will commence June 26th 2017 at 13:00 UTC.

EOS Token Distribution Process

The EOS token distribution is run entirely on the Ethereum blockchain over a period of 341 days. A total of one billion (1,000,000,000) ERC-20 compatible tokens will be distributed during that time. Two hundred million (200,000,000) or 20% of the total number of EOS tokens will be distributed during the first 5 days and an additional seven hundred million (700,000,000) EOS tokens will be distributed in two million (2,000,000) increments every 23 hours thereafter. Lastly, one hundred million (100,000,000) or 10% of the total EOS tokens to be distributed will be reserved for block.one as the developer of the EOS.IO software and cannot be traded or transferred on the Ethereum network for the entire distribution period.

The EOS token distribution approximates an auction where everyone gets the same price and that price is equal to the highest price anyone is willing and able to pay within a given period. At the end of the 5 day period and at the end of each 23 hour period referred to above, the respective set number of EOS tokens set forth above will be distributed pro rata amongst all authorized purchasers, based on the total ether (“ETH”) contributed during those periods.

Principles

The structure for the EOS token distribution was created using the following set of logically consistent principles:

  1. Nobody should get something for nothing
  2. Everyone should receive a market determined price
  3. Everyone should have an equal opportunity to participate
  4. Developer incentives should be aligned
  5. Economic disincentives for buying more than 50 percent of a distribution
  6. Minimize transaction costs (mining, fees, etc.)

Let’s dive into each of these principles a little deeper.

Something for Nothing

In a free market, two people make a trade when both parties are satisfied that the trade is fair. If either side finds the trade “unfair” then the trade would not occur. If one side of the exchange provides nothing then it is considered a hand out or free lunch. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a real free lunch. Someone has to pay for that lunch which means for everyone who gets something for nothing, someone else gets nothing for something.

When token distributions attempt to simultaneously sell 90 percent of the tokens at a price below market value, someone is getting something for nothing and someone else is getting nothing for something. A token distribution that is truly fair is one that enables the market to determine the price, ensuring that parties on both sides of the transaction are content with their trade. This also minimizes the potential for extreme losses to the buyer and extreme opportunity cost to the seller.

Market Prices

Unfortunately, it is impossible to guess a cryptographic token’s market price. It can only be discovered with reasonable trade volumes on a public market. These markets can take the form of exchanges or auctions so long as they are public, transparent and open to many. Furthermore, even if the price could be accurately determined at the beginning of a token offering, it could change the very next day.

A market price for something is a balance between supply and demand and falls between the price no one is willing to sell at and the price no-one else is willing to pay. In effect, the market price is a unanimous market consensus as demonstrated by the spread of disagreement among all buyers and all sellers.

Equal Opportunity to Participate

Giving everyone ample time and opportunity to participate means utilizing a widely used platform and allowing sufficient time for people to learn about the project.

A token distribution structure should show minimal bias for or against those with time, money, or technical skills. For example, mining favors those with technical skills, time, and money while capped distributions favor those with money and technical skills to automate a fast order.

Developer Aligned Incentives

When you support a community, you want everyone to have aligned interests. This is true regardless of the nature of your participation - whether it be by building an app, purchasing a service, investing directly in a business or by purchasing a cryptographic token.

A developer who sells 100 percent of tokens at the very start of a project does so at the lowest possible value and then has “no skin in the game” to motivate him/her to continue to add value or add value in a timely manner. A developer who commits to selling 90% of the tokens over the course of almost a year has incentive to make as much progress as possible as early as possible. It also allows token holders or potential token holders to see the software being developed over time. The remaining 10% of the tokens keeps the developer aligned for the long-term.

By distributing tokens over a long period of time developers have extra alignment of incentives develop quickly and complete as early as possible because the market is watching.

Economic Disincentives for Buying 50% or More

Cryptographic tokens have the most value when they are held by a wide range of people who support the growth and use of the blockchain. If the majority of tokens are held by a single person or entity and the tokens are not well distributed, this leads to centralization risks.

Token sales with fixed prices and/or caps quickly sell out generally to a small number of (usually wealthy) speculators and leave little room for anyone else.

It takes time and competition to encourage wide distribution. Furthermore, the EOS token distribution makes it cost prohibitive for any one individual to buy the majority of the tokens.

Let’s see how this works.

If we assume that everyone but one rich guy contributes a combined $1 million dollars, the rich guy would have to contribute $99 million dollars to acquire 99% when he could acquire 50% for $1 million dollars, 66% for $2 million, 75% for $3 million, etc. In other words, buying the second 49% costs 99x as much as it cost to buy the first 50%.

The EOS token distribution structure has been devised so that the more small contributors there are, the more expensive it gets for any individual or entity to acquire the majority of the tokens.

Minimize Transaction Costs

The original crypto currencies were distributed using proof of work or by mining, which represents a large economic loss in electricity consumption. More recent token sales experience losses in the high fees people will pay to be first. These economic losses can cause a potential loss of value in the cryptographic token for both the buyer and the seller.

EOS tokens have no pre-determined price; rather price is set by market demand. This mimics mining without using electricity.

Conclusion

These principles are in stark contrast to the expectation that token distributions be capped at a valuation based upon the expected cost of development. Valuation capped distributions force below market pricing based upon the economic fallacy of the “Cost Theory of Value”. This below market pricing causes a race where the first buyer gets something for nothing when they flip the tokens at market prices all while giving advantages to those who can buy large quantities all at once.

The EOS Token distribution has been designed to hopefully create a distribution that is widely perceived to be fair based upon what we believe to be logically consistent principles.



We would also like to thank @rubenalexander for providing the art derived from the shapes in our logo!

Authors get paid when people like you upvote their post.
If you enjoyed what you read here, create your account today and start earning FREE STEEM!
Sort Order:  

It's very disappointed that you choose to do this ICO on the Ethereum blockchain. According to what happened with the Status ICO -- the Ethereum network has been clogged easily for quite some time, we can image that nobody but only geeks / mining pools can participate in EOS ICO, normal people will have no chance. Image that you only receive 1 ETH in the first 5 days and even less in the following 350 days..

By the way, is it clear that how many ETH's that you got from the ICO will be recycled into the ICO again? No matter as salaries to employees or anything else.

The last point in the FAQ seems to say no, they will not be put into the ICO:

26. Will block.one be contributing to the EOS Token distribution?

No, during the entire EOS Token distribution period, block.one will not do any of the following:

  • block.one will not purchase EOS Tokens by any means;
  • block.one will not pay any dividends to its shareholders; and
  • block.one will not perform any share buybacks.

block.one intends to engage an independent third party auditor who will release an independent audit report providing further assurances that block.one has not purchased EOS Tokens during the EOS Token distribution period or traded EOS Tokens (including using proceeds from the EOS Token distribution for these purposes). This report will be made available to the public on the eos.io website.

That said, what the individual employees do with their own money or the money they get paid? That's a different story. I assume the 10% they are keeping for themselves is the incentive to keep the team motivated.

As to it being on ETH, that's also covered in the FAQ a bit. I think if there was a better, decentralized, transparent, provably secure way to do it, they would. ETH seems to be the best approach available right now and Dan generally seems to go with the best approach available on stuff like this.

Nice post! What will happening, if someone resteem your post?

I thought about it also. Why not using bitshares and make the best demonstration that everything works like it should be?

One thought I had @abit @lujestokes and @liondani Keeping it in ETH allows them to exchange large chunks of the ETH on the open market when they need it for development purposes... Without hurting the price of @bitshares.

Maybe I'm being a bit naive.

You should know in BitShares there are smart coins (fiat-pegged value-stable tokens), although the supply could be insufficient for the ICO, but, using the smart coins won't hurt the price of BitShares. ETH price is far from stable especially when they have to dump a lot.

Thank you for advice

The reason for not using Bitshares is lack of liquidity. There is a huge supply of capital in Ethereum tokens that wants to diversify. So block.one is doing the distro on the platform where the money is.

+1

I feel the same way. I want in on EOS but not via an ETH ICO.

Patience is a bitch :)

Just follow the money.. a lot of people already invested in Ethereum (and anything that uses Ethereum) and it's a smart idea to relocate value held in Ethereum to an independent EOS shares/Tokens Blockchain after one year.

I get that ETH makes it easier to successfully ICO, it's been used and it's where the money is but I agree it's disappointing. ETH ICOs are harder for normal investors to get in on, they've been proven to have issues(Status ICO) and for a coin that's supposed to be the next amazing coin to use broken tech to ico is worrying. I'm left questioning how EOS will do after the initial pop. Are they just focusing on market cap and not tech? I'll probably try to invest but I'm definitely going to be more cautious now.

Being an investor just the way you are and wait for the time what you feel and realise what is the right time for investing and got some profit.

what do you think about the 21 million ico?

I share your disappointment. The reason for not doing it on bitshares or others was that that would have required them to setup a server or bot on bitshares to handle the distribution. Pretty weak excuse if you ask me, since all the proceeds of the auction will go to a single party. The trick they seem to use is that block.one will have nothing to do with the launch of an eos blockchain, anybody will be able to launch the official eos chain.

Maybe they just want to flash crash the eth-price to help launch eos.

Another thing that comes across as a little icky, is that not only does block one get 90% of the auction proceeds, but they get 10% of the network as well. If block.one employees are able to use the proceeds to get a bigger stake in eos, that does sound kinda bad.

see above. block.one says it will not use the funds from selling tokens to buy tokens. its employees are paid in fiat currency. If the employees choose to buy into the token they are doing it with their own money, just like everybody else.

Looking forward to see EOS in action. Though I will not be able to participate in ICO, no more extra money to invest. I'm still working hard everyday to get some steem :)

Follow me @Yehey
Thank you.

I too upvote .. but im a noob. So i hope my on cent adds up... same with you need more money to get in!

Here's some :)

Thank you!

I hope my Vote Up will help you too.

Thank you!

You're very welcome. It's time to shout for Joy! @Yehey

The nice thing about our community, every votes count!

Thank you very much.

voting is fun !

Absolutely, it shows :)

Thank you,
Follow me @Yehey then you may shout for Joy!

hope that helps. :)

Thank you very much sir @marco-delsalto

Highly appreciated a up vote from a steem whale like you :)
Cheers
@Yehey

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Here's some more :)

Thank you sir @joele

One day, I will be one of the "Whale" and will return the favor to every minnow in steemit community.

Highly appreciated the Up Vote
Thank you,
@Yehey

hey it's me ur minnow

Well, I am not a pretty girl but also a new steemer with high hopes and planning to stay. Any upvotes appreciated and followed back (I like following ppl with something to say like it is so in this chat :)

hehe, ditto.

Yes you have a legal team but also all this EOS is supposed to work like 'license' 'token' to use the platform. If you have it you can run apps on it, to a scale. So why do you think EOS token can be regarded as security and try to dodge Us person. You could have waited until a proof of concept is running and tell the buyers that they are actually buying a license to future live platform of which beta has already been released.

There are other laws that have nothing to do with being a security

Ok, thank you. I really like your engagement. You are the man.

:(

US-IP detected, participation not allowed

Use Tor!

Before


Screen Shot 2017-06-21 at 11.11.28 PM.png

After


Screen Shot 2017-06-21 at 11.12.49 PM.png

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Ah, isn't Tor bugged by the NSA ? :)

Great idea, I was considering a VPN...

realistically there is nothing that is private or hidden. I am convinced that everything is bugged and has been probably for longer than we will accept. The tech being used is beyond what most can imagine and it is not leaked or revealed or seen unless it is permitted. They have never operated under mans laws or constitutions and there are no rights. Anything a birth certificate person says or views can be held against them - if the rulers choose. This leads people to give up and permit surveillance which is consent - mass consent permits the rulers to advance their plans unchecked. There is strength in numbers. When masses adopt forbidden but harmless practices, the rulers dont completely destroy everyone or the system to prevent the practice, but they do set some examples - prosecute a celebrity who has not played ball - they accuse them of tax evasion or worse.
tax evasion could be proven for almost every person because of the ways the tax codes are. I would say the more people that use a work around, the safer they are but there is no safety. I would like to figure out how to use vpn. I began researching it but gave up when I was told it wont be secure.

Use MetaMask Chrome plugin...

isn't that just for processing payments?

Use Tor Project browser, make sure use Circuit not in United States you should be fine.
https://www.torproject.org/

If this help, please Up Vote.

Thank you,
Follow me @Yehey

By the way as noted in EOS.IO website.
U.S. citizens, residents and entities should not purchase or attempt to purchase EOS Tokens.

Too bad.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Yeah can someone please shed some light here?

In US we are very excited for EOS. Congrats on already getting this far :)

Please and thank you.

@eosio

By the way as noted in EOS.IO website.
U.S. citizens, residents and entities should not purchase or attempt to purchase EOS Tokens.

Too bad.

I think its possible to use a VPN or an Ip adress hider to purchase

hey thanks. is this 'legal' ?

lol the coin is decentralized.. i don't think anyone is going to track you down. As far as your question goes it is not illegal, a lot of people do it. I think they put those rules in place to prevent big U.S whales from buying big chunks.

oh ok, just making sure. I suppose this is what has to happen.

Time to setup the Raspian VPN :)

Heres where you could run it legal issues : if/when you attempt to convert said EOS to cash in the united states you're triggering the FinCEN rulings for cryptocurrencies being labelled NOT as currency. FinCEN says cryptocurrencies are an asset. If your keys are held in another country I cant imagine how you would be breaking the law until you attempted to access them here in the united states =-)

Interesting... I wish there was more information out there on this..

Good luck steemit comrade! subbed.

thank you !

I am very confused by ICO's, so bear with me! My question is, and this is the first ICO I have seriously considered investing in, is it worth it for a poor college student like me to invest 0.5 ETH? Will I actually get anything in return that will be worth it? Or will I get eaten up by the whales and people with money? Thanks in advance!

If you're comfortable losing .50eth then yes, it's very much worth it. That's the worst that can happen. The best that can happen in you 10x - 20x your money and you invest longterm.

Thank you sir!

great answer - just went through this line of reasoning with myself - invested in 21million ico check it out Im excited

Same here! Broke college student. Robert, think of it like this: the maximum you can lose is 0.5 Eth the potential return is infinite (can keep going up) 10 fold, 30 fold who knows?. So

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

This sounds better than the 63% of top 100 premined coins on coinmarketcap. I am very interested to see how EOS progresses..

Peercoin has stayed away from developing any thing for Ethereum, but perhaps EOS and Peercoin may be ineroperable especially with our new upcoming feature "PeerAssets" which are transportable on other blockchains.

Good luck EOS but I doubt you'll need it...

Loving this recent PeerCoin (PPC) influx lately. Thanks for your contribution! Go EOS ! Go Peercoin!!

This is going to change everything! 🔥🔥🔥

how so?

Innovative toke sale... really innovative blockchain OS... executed by someone with an amazing track record.

are there not to many ICO's at the moment? cant keep track any more

do a search for ico calendar - I was looking at skincoin ico but I found 21million and I was in - my first ico and it looks like a great project - they are using the funding to make a movie about taking down the banking system

Oh wow, wow, wow. I've been waiting for this one, and I thought it would be weeks or months from now. 5 days, are you kidding me!

This is like Christmas in June!

I'm so excited and yet, I know this will be a long, ongoing sale so there's not reason to get all emotionally irrational. But still... with all the trouble ETH is having, the sooner this platform launches, the better.

Great work, team!

since Dan Larimer is involved with EOS, I expect nothing less than a top notch system with whatever he creates!

If you are holding ETH, I'd recommend buying EOS with it for sure.

I've come to expect the same. It's pretty amazing to have such a great track record of delivered products in a space that is so new.

Same for me. The beauty of EOS is that it solves ETH problems and will be able to eventually run all types of smart contracts, including Ethereum's dapps and contracts. Hopefully, if tau langage is delivered, tau dapps and contracts will also run on EOS. Maybe a possible bridge with IoT solutions like IOTA ...

This is like Christmas in June!

I know a good song that fits to that :D

It really feels like it. Merry Christmas!

Great effort team.. wil surely subscribe to this offering as I don't wanna miss...

On lighter note, I made one lame humorous attempt to review Eos website.. check this

https://steemit.com/eosio/@bsameep/eos-io-website-review-this-will-send-shivers-down-your-spine

doNt kill me please. :)

The distribution process is pretty inclusive as everyone pays the same price.

It could have been more equal distribution among people if the coins are delivered logarithmically for the money paid. However this would penalize those who want to buy more coins, the opposite of bulk purchase discount. This would disincentivize buyers which is not a good idea.

It looks pretty fair scheme for a distribution. What do people think about the 10% block.one share?

will the price change during the year? would it be better to get tokens on the first 5 days? will I pay the same price to get it six months later?

"Everyone should receive a market determined price", except for the developers. This coin will be no more successful than the most successful coins that reserve a large portion of coins for the developers. The most successful coins will be those that distribute coins to everyone (including developers) at market price.

As much as i want to invest.. i don't have any money to invest. :( . Ill try to pick up extra hrs next week to get in.

A developer who sells 100 percent of tokens at the very start of a project does so at the lowest possible value and then has “no skin in the game” to motivate him/her to continue to add value or add value in a timely manner.

But EOS guys at first proposed to give away 100% in the first draft, and it seems that you change it to 90% after very angry comments on telegram.

So i wonder is you really interested in having skins in the game or it's just a smoke screen.

We always planned to have skin in game, we just pivot in response to market demand.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

But when will it be cheaper to purchase EOS Token? During the Pre-Sale or after a few months? Will the price rise after the Pre-Sale? Could someone explain please? Thank you!

How to participate in the EOS Token distribution:

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

I appreciate you posting this... I have been confused about purchasing the EOS tokens, as I lack the technical skill of many crypto programmers.

That being said once you send your ether, do you get sent your EOS at this point? From what I understand you then need take several other steps to actually receive EOS. Could you follow up on these steps.

Furthermore, I thought I understood that no actually EOS was to be distributed till around July 2018, which make me wonder if the EOS being sold on exchanges is the actual tokens or not.

Thank you in advance for clarification! Or anyone else for the matter.

#EOS

How to participate in the EOS Token distribution:

thanks for the post on the EOS ICO

I've been waiting for these details! Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to June 26th and the year to come

Nvo wallet is functional but is still under development. It lacks a stable way to read the blockchain so the sending feature is still unreliable and transactions might get stuck if multiple transactions are sent too fast. Save your private keys first if you want to test the demo wallet.

Smart idea to save the private keys first.

better safe then sorry.

ty.

The EOS toke might hold a great promise so let us see how far the project goes.

Why not on the BitShares blockchain

@ Dobro88888888 thanks for informing, we will wait with impatience and prepare for this start

I can buy EOS only with ethereum, or I can use BTC?

The most anticipated ICO ever.

It is a bit ironic that EOS launches on its competitor that it is supposed to surpass but that's where we are now. The team spend a lot of efforts trying to make the ICO mechanism fair and spread out. For those hesitating, there will be ample time to see where this coin is going (in terms of development and price action on third party exchanges) after launch. There is no obligation to jump on the first train. Very cleverly though out.

In terms of applications, I look forward to the launch of Ethereum 2.0 (you know, the version that does not choke under high transactions per second) on EOS in a few months ;)

Shut up and take my money

@yehey why did you turn off payments - you said you needed money for an ico?

:) thanks for the reference!

I participated in the test twice and I agree that the windows after the 5 day period will spread out opportunity.

There is no known market price until after we donate. Your principle # 2 fails. We could be paying a reasonable valuation or not, nobody knows. This is silly.

You can not expect this market to rationally determine a price for your project given that they have not seen the project, do not understand it as you do, and literally can not understand it like the devs do. Anyone of you might not be woking on the project in a few months due to any number of reasons. This uncertainty cripples your notion of market price. You are playing off their emotions that you will make them rich. At the same time asking them to donate not knowing what you are valued at.

ok i learnt a lot and am keen to see the outcome - i can't invest as i have below nothing

The coin is very interesting. The principles that the coin works on reminds me of my ethics class in college. However, Ethererium has had problems recently. Also, people are having trouble purchasing the coin please add help for U.S enthusiaest .

Great Distribution Strategy ! Great Promises behind EOS ! Great Team !

We are going to do our job: great support !

I'm getting my battle-scarred ETH ready for the auctions. Thanks for an excellent article. Of course, I upvote it!

The unique Token Distribution Process is probably one of the fairests launch in the crypto world ever, well done.

Also see some real world practicality and end user friendliness in the whitepaper, exciting stuff.

Vpn smartdns or proxy? I am sure they will work it out.

Amazing... but weird that ETH has not yet started to rise!

I am not a fan of choosing ETH, but now you could lock up the contributed funds, so a reinvesting would technical not possible. Why does they choose to not do this, but plan to have an auditor?
Does not make sense.
What I also not like is only "block.one" does not do this, but anyone who will get the collected ETH will be in a position to contribute again and make it for every one much more expensive.

What prevents a fat whale cloning a bunch of IP's through a VPN and getting in through small batches throughout the year?

nothing, all systems are hackable

Nothing EXCEPT that if you decided to do something like that you might just wind up with the world's most expensive piece of software that has yet to be developed in history. I strongly encourage people NOT to buy pizza with their Bitshares right now as well.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

Good luck with the sale. At the same time, can you please make sure to avoid silly errors like point 3 (in example) at https://eos.io/information (you missed the number 16)?

Not really sure how this will pan out for small folks who want to just invest 1 ETH... personally I never had success in participating with any of the big ICOs. I hope with this new model there is some hope!

I have ETH stored on MyEtherWallet with Trezor, the private key is kept on Trezor device and cannot be exported by anyone even myself. So does that play well if I participate EOS ICO? Am I able to migrate the EOS token from Ethereum blockchain to EOS blockchain one year later?

Hey Alphatoken, we recommend following the instructions on eos.io and using our interface with metamask.

Thanks, and how can I register the public key after purchasing the EOS token? The info on EOS website is not very detailed.

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

"US-IP detected, participation not allowed"

I am logged in from Greece and I get this message when trying to "participate"

EDIT: when I scrolled down all the agreement the message was not pop up again ... obviously wrong "error"message when somebody don't scroll down before clicking to continue(!)...

What will the token be used for? Or is this just raising funds for the EOS project?

i didn't understand a thing:(

How come a Dutch auction process was not adopted, given the Market Price principle?

  ·  7 years ago Reveal Comment

I want to know master @eosio why the payment of reward in your post was in strikethrough.?
Please give answer for me whoever answer me thank you.

new currency.. market expands, thats good

Very excited for this launch, have great faith in EOS and what they have to offer. Never expected the ICO to start this quick, but am very much looking forward to it. Thanks for the update team!

The idea is great. However, as we saw for others ICOs, lots of people don't understand or don't take time to understand the process. So, at least for the first distributions, there will be some huge amounts of ether sent blindly, which will spoil the price.

Happy.man- theres a function built into the crowdsale which is going to keep it very humble. Meaning you get diminishing returns if you try to put ALOT of money into it. I encourage little investors (like myself) and whales to look into this crowdsale! If you don't know the rules and you decide you want to play ... well @ash says no pain no gain

This project introduce complex token distribution process to collect investor money without distribution token to investor,so think 100 times to invest in this project
as example

to claim EOS in myetherwallet ,you asked to set up gas limit 3141592,why so much high, if i buy EOS for 0.02 ether ,and for claim this token in my ether wallet,you asked to set up gas limit 3141592, for this gas limit Tx come 0.087964576 Ether. how this funny, i buy eos for 0.02 ether, for claim this token in myetherwallet i have to spent 3141592 gas limit(Tx 0.087964576 ether). this is completely funny for investor,

I am not able to claim my EOS tokens in myetherwallet. I have read and followed all the instructions. Are my tokens lost or can I still somehow get them?

I started investing in cryptos late august and feel like i'm late in the game. but now i get it why EOS are doing the 1 year token sale.

Just curious, how do we actually earn money in EOS? Do we have to sell the EOS tokens ? Or do we earn a percentage of the income when holding on to the tokens?

I'm not only into this for the money, honestly, that's why I ask because I don't want to sell my EOS coins...

I'm trying to compare this to NEO, wherein you earn GAS when you hold the coins.

I still dont understand why this was done on the Ethereum blockchain. This would have been a good opportunity to bring some activity to Bitshares.