Block.one Touts EOS as Largest Token Sale; Announces VC Partnerships and Everipedia Airdrop

Blockchain startup Block.one hosted its first event for its EOS.IO software in South Korea, one of digital currency’s largest markets.  Block.one CEO Brendan Blumer announced that their EOS Token Sale is the largest in history with $1.1 Billion funds raised and will conclude in June 2018. Currently working on a live testnet, Block.one plans to launch their live product in June of this year.  In addition, they have launched EOS VC to support innovators working on projects in the EOS Blockchain ecosystem. Block.one will be working with two Venture Capital (VC) firms to deploy the capital and that they made a “call for entries” from entrepreneurs, developers, and VCs at vc@block.one.com.

With a surprise announcement, Los Angeles-based Everipedia, whose team is building a wiki-based online encyclopedia, took the stage.  Everipedia CEO Sam Kazemian announced that they would be building exclusively on the EOS Blockchain and will not conduct an ICO or Token Sale for their IQ coin. Instead, IQ tokens will be distributed via airdrop to EOS token holders. According to Kazemian, he’s “excited to set this precedent and give value back to the community that makes the platform we’re building on possible.”  Wikipedia Co-Founder Larry Sanger had previously joined Everipedia as their Chief Information Officer in December 2017.

Other notes:

– Former Bithumb CEO, Richard Jung, announced he is joining EOS parent company, Block.one, to work on EOS’s operations in South Korea.

– In a development update, it was noted that lost EOS private keys may be recoverable, unlike with other Blockchains. There was also a short tutorial of how to deploy an application to the EOS testnet.

– Using Uber as an example of a disruptable company, EOS Sr. Analyst Joshua Lavin explained how EOS aims to create Decentralized Autonomous Corporations (DACs) that would, for example, connect drivers to riders without a centralized company taking additional profits out of the system. He believes that this structure will incentivize people to use the system, as increased usage will increase the value of the system and the underlying coins.