The Telos Advantage - Lumeos Analysis
The telos network is built for DApp developers, so we were thrilled when Lumeos, one of the most highly anticipated DApps in Silicon Valley started talking with us to explore the possibility of deploying on the Telos blockchain. The Lumeos assessment follows.
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 utilising 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.
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.
FAQ:
Telos, currently has less name recognition than other blockchains, won’t this effect my dapps user acquisition?
No, Telos has just been announced and its name recognition is already growing quickly, but most importantly, the successful dapps and tokens of the future will prevail based on real utility. Real success will happen when dapps largely attract users who are not currently familiar with blockchain technology. Ideally most of your users will not care which blockchain is utilised in the background just like how most social media users wouldn't know which programming language facebook is using.
Using Telos, EOS or any other blockchain only matters to the extent that you can build the killer dApp that’s secure, reliable and adopted by as many active users as possible. We believe Telos may have an advantage in this respect.
Will Telos have many of the same tools/wallets/voting software of EOS?
Yes, we are working with all major EOSIO tools currently configured for EOS and have seen broad support for enabling the TLOS chain on existing software by go live date(4-6 week ETA). Telos is currently working with every EOS wallet or tool, including Graymass, Scatter, and simplEOS, and Genereos development toolkit.