EOS: Scaling and Usability in Blockchain

In the tumultuous landscape of blockchain development during 2017, when Ethereum was struggling with scalability issues and countless projects promised revolutionary solutions to cryptocurrency's growing pains, one project emerged with perhaps the most ambitious vision of all: EOS, which its creators boldly proclaimed would become the "Ethereum killer" and the foundation for a new generation of decentralized applications. The project's scope was breathtaking in its audacity, promising not just another blockchain but a complete operating system for the decentralized web that could support millions of users and thousands of applications simultaneously.

The man behind this grand vision was Daniel Larimer, a serial blockchain entrepreneur whose previous projects had already established him as one of the most innovative minds in the cryptocurrency space. Larimer's journey to EOS began with BitShares, a decentralized exchange platform that introduced revolutionary concepts like delegated proof-of-stake consensus, and continued through Steemit, a blockchain-based social media platform that demonstrated how cryptocurrency incentives could bootstrap new forms of online communities. Each project had pushed the boundaries of what blockchain technology could accomplish while also revealing the limitations that would need to be overcome to achieve true mass adoption.