Author: Marco González

Editor: Randall Roland

2022 will be known as the year of the EOS Network Foundation and the rebirth of EOS. In 2021, the ENF was only a couple of months old. The foundation was just figuring out how to organize itself. Entities of the previous administration still captured attention. For those wondering how events unfolded up until this point, check out the timeline by Alfredo de Candia, author of "Mastering EOS" & "Mastering NFT"

The following content focuses on organizations and projects whose advancements regularly appear in community news feeds.

The EOS Network Foundation celebrated its first anniversary at the end of August. A few weeks later on September 21, the ENF declared EOS independence with the release of AntelopeIO.

WG+. ENF-sponsored working groups (WG+) are even younger than the foundation. Each performs a critical function in delivering ENF plans. The first WG+ blue papers were released between January 31 and March 25. Among them were:

Other working groups soon followed:

FINANCIAL AND LEGAL. The ENF formed several partnerships over this past year. OCI (ref. 1, ref. 2) helps implement transaction lifecycle features. The emergence of a VC partnership with the city of Busan, South Korea was deemed the biggest news after the release of Antelope Leap. One must wonder if the Busan partnership aided in Binance’s decision to list USDT on EOS.

Other financial highlights include EOS Network Ventures’ $100M funding solely for EOS development, an ENF grant framework (ref. 1, ref. 2, ref. 3), and of course, the decision to sue Block.One was made back in February.

ANTELOPE(IO). Mandel 3.1 Release Candidate #1 is the first deployed (on EOS) iteration of AntelopeIO. It arrived the same week as the 4th anniversary of EOS’ first produced blocks (better known as EOS’ birthday). Mandel had always been a placeholder and would be replaced by Antelope (core code) and Leap (EOS Network iteration). To aid node operator efforts, the ENF published the Leap Upgrade Guide, and Leap upgrade meetings transitioned to Node Operator Roundtables. By October, an optional Leap v3.2.0 had been released.

INFRASTRUCTURE (BEYOND ANTELOPE LEAP). Attracting new talent remains a critical aspect of the ENF’s plans. So is making development easier; an effort thought greatly improved by CDT (ref. 1, ref. 2), DUNE, and a Learning Portal. Also, note the ENF’s developer spotlights and project support like the attention given to WordProof.

The ENF, as the developer of Leap (for EOS) and AntelopeIO (for the greater ecosystem) already made substantial progress towards Inter-blockchain communication (IBC), an EOS EVM, and faster finality. IBC has been a hot topic and was discussed by Dan Larimer back in 2020. All three ecosystem infrastructure innovations expect to impact the community by early 2023.

In terms of transparency, the ENF continues to publish quarterly statements as well as a Program & Operations Health Report. Additionally, the foundation recently overhauled its developer documents (ref. 1, ref. 2).

PUBLIC RELATIONS. The foundation didn’t just set out to rebuild EOS. It also planned to repair (or as the ENF’s CEO, Yves La Rose, might put it, “resuscitate”) a severely damaged public perception. By June, ENF core team members engulfed themselves in a world tour that often saw team Zaisan by their side. Here's a quick breakdown of the tour:

Beyond on-demand blog posts, other ways that the ENF reaches out to the public include the return of Everything EOS and adding a Coalition+ Discord channel. Non-development-related topics that Yves himself tackled throughout the year include several weeks of rants preceding the world tour and GameFi. Lastly, the ENF sponsored a Holiday Gift Giveaway.

Not much to say on this topic ever since Block.One rebranded and all but left the ecosystem. At the beginning of the year, B1’s Bullish exchange was still discussed by some community members with a bit of hope. There’s a lot of controversy (especially following the ENF’s lawsuit) surrounding B1’s new relationship with the EOS Network. However, B1 did upgrade its Voice NFT platform to Leap 3.1 in the Fall and announced (back in April) that Voice NFTs can be wrapped on EOS.

EOS Nation and Hot Sauce are among the few EOS news sources providing original content and keeping the community informed each week. Beyond the funding provided by the ENF, other sources include Pomelo, EOS Support, and Helios. Pomelo is making quite a splash with its quadratic funding model.

The Pomelo platform enables independent public goods projects to leverage quadratic funding. Pomelo employs a careful approach in selecting projects beginning with implementing KYC for grant owners (January). At the time of this writing, four rounds were completed. Season 1 raised over $100,000 with a matching pool of $500,000+. Season 2 saw more than $1M committed to the matching pool. Each season Pomelo breaks records, whether it’s financially or total participating projects. Analysis of season 4 is currently underway. Pomelo held its first anniversary in November.

EOS Nation does a lot for the EOS community and ecosystem. For example, its recent status as a Telos BP or reporting on the WAX blockchain.

Greymass continued to publish regular updates as it has throughout EOS’ history. For 2022 that includes:

Greymass is another (unofficial) core EOS team member.

EOS Support was active throughout the year starting with identifying things like best wallets, Topics like self-custody, progress updates, a list of EOS-based apps, and emerging scams all help keep the community on its toes. However, the service that initially made EOS Support stand out is the offering of live user support.

As the concierge of the EOS Network, EOS Support runs sort of emergency operations, among other things. That means reporting on scams as they arise and helping project creators with their immediate needs. A natural extension of EOS Support is the accountability provided by EOS Respect. Monthly elections for EOS Respect began in August. Soon after, its treasury received a generous donation. View an early NovaCrypto interview with the Director of EOS Support, Randall Roland.

When it comes to private entities invested in the EOS Network, Helios is the one to look to now that B1 has distanced itself. Helios introduced its first Incubator Light Program this year with great success. Just following the Super Bowl, Helios CEO, Brock Pierce went on FOX News and discussed EOS. That same week, Helios showed support for Dan Larimer’s Fractally whitepaper.

Later in the year, Helios registered as a BP. The big impact endeavor by the Helios team was in partnering with the ENF to host a major hackathon, EVMxIdeathon (ref. 1, ref. 2, ref. 3, ref. 4). Helios has also hinted about the ability to earn EOS by using Twitter.

It all started with Dan Larimer’s idea for streamlining blockchain through DPoS. By 2022, Dan had shifted his focus in the face of a changing, more turbulent environment. Legal considerations and governance issues made a wiser strategy more prudent. Enter:

When Dan is active, he comes in full force, like his presentation of what needs to happen to integrate the Fractally whitepaper with the EOS Network. When most attention was given to the ENF and fractal governance saw a very unfavorable legal forecast, Dan, alongside a group of independent developers, decided to give their full attention to the in-development Psibase code. Dan continues to monitor events on EOS.

In terms of what happened to EdenOS software, the genesis community, Eden on EOS, still holds quarterly elections #2, #3, and #4. Bylaws were approved during the second term on May 5. Second-term CDs declared independence on June 8. The Eden fractal was among other groups to independently experiment with EdenOS software. It, the Alien Worlds, Hispania, and Turkish fractals, remain active today. EdenCN (a second EdenOS implementation) held a trial election on June 12. In October, Eden Korea held an internal mainnet test. By October, the Fractally team dismissed its pursuit of a token citing legal concerns.

A single list doesn’t begin to serve justice for all the contributions made by developers (like EOS Bees, Defibox, etc.) and individuals around the EOS Network. However, after sifting through the year-long coverage of the Briefings newsletter, several documented, valuable contributions were found. Here’s a quick fly-by:

EOS and its new image saw mainstream attention as early as January. Beyond Brock Pierce’s shoutout on FOX News, EOS again grabbed a bit of the spotlight in February and again in April on VentureBeat. In May, Forbes re-found EOS. Then EOS GameFi began making waves. That was all before the ENF’s world tour.

Probably the most significant recognition received by the EOS Network, even beyond the Busan partnership and EOS Network Ventures, was Binance integrating USDT on EOS. To close out the year, Analytics Insight published an article that likened EOS to a “sleeping giant”.

Antelope functionality makes for the best option for the multiverse, multi-chain dapps, and high-performance (e.g. gaming) Web3 environments in general. This year:

That’s but a tiny glimpse into extended development. For those who want an overview of the ecosystem, view the EOS ecosystem map NFT available through dotGems. For different perspectives on events over the past year, check out publications by De Cafe and EOS Go.

In 2022, the EOS Network provided proof-of-concept for AntelopeIO, grabbed mainstream attention, and began forging a powerful network to grow the ecosystem. What’s planned for 2023 builds upon the culmination of 2022. It expects to do so quickly with the official launch of Trust EVM, IBC, and several other products. The ENF leads EOS into a new era where integration with other blockchains and innovations for Web3 take flight. Additionally, community projects found both the support needed and the inspiration to independently soar.