EOS Revisited: Investors Are Taking Another Look at the Longest-Running ICO

Despite the skeptical experts, not to mention the very public derision of talk show host John Oliver, the EOS project has raised more than $2 billion in ether from the sale of EOS tokens, which will power its forthcoming network.

"EOS takes a unique approach to creating a highly scalable platform for smart contracts. EOS prioritizes scalability and end-user experience rather than maximal censorship resistance."

EOS tokens currently exist as tokens on the ethereum blockchain - and investors have been getting those tokens on a rolling basis - but eventually those tokens will need to be converted into something designed more specifically on EOS and its technology.

Pierce aside, project founder and CTO Dan Larimer has also taken his fair share of criticism, with many alleging EOS will end up like former projects such as BitShares and Steem, which haven't quite replicated early successes after he removed his involvement.

As outlined in its work, it believes the community developing around EOS might actually offer an interesting counterpoint to those that gathered around earlier networks, arguing that its community could be more willing to make trade-offs deemed too unorthodox for other platforms.

MultiCoin wrote a follow-up blog post arguing that EOS may be stronger than it seems by sacrificing on decentralization, contrasting it with protocols like bitcoin and ethereum, which have tended to argue censorship-resistance is a key feature, and thus have effectively employed large networks of individuals who run the computers necessary to process transactions.

In contrast, EOS will only use 21 validators with a slew of backup validators ready to take over if one of those validators fails or misbehaves, though the project's creators believe these disadvantages are more than made up for by faster throughput.

Bogart's point isn't that EOS is worse than ethereum, but that in the end comparing it to ethereum is the wrong comparison.

"People are painting it as the competition is between EOS and ethereum, and I have a feeling that's totally the wrong way," Bogart told CoinDesk.

Major exchange Binance, for example, has announced full support for EOS token conversion, marking an early and notable nod of support from that community.