We just experienced a small pump in the crypto market last week, but now it seems bearish again. Bitcoin (BTC) fell to $21,000, and further concerns about the hiking global inflation are spreading. Despite this, the smart contracts cryptocurrency EOS rebranded and managed to increase by over 50% in the last seven days.
That’s a tale in development since the last year, though. As you may know, EOS hasn’t been exactly competing at the same speed as other similar chains, such as Ethereum (ETH) or Binance Smart Chain (BSC). Its last All-Time-High (ATH) was at $22 per token in April 2018 —and it was never to be seen again.
Now, the currency sits at $1.84 per token, but it’s touched lows of even $0.93 in 2022. The harsh decrease translates to over -95% from the ATH. A lack of usability is also there if we compare it with other platforms. For instance, according to DappRadar, BSC and ETH have over 3,400 Dapps running on their chains. Meanwhile, EOS barely has over 500 Dapps.
The EOSIO community noticed this lack of progress and decided to literally fire the development’s parent company, BlockOne. To do this, EOS validators stopped the issuance of tokens destined to the company and its partners (over $250 million). Yves La Rose, a member of the community, created the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) intending to rescue and further develop this blockchain.
ENF and BlockOne are now fighting over the EOS copyright. Besides, the ENF is planning to take legal actions against the company. Since the EOS Initial Coin Offering (ICO) raised $4 billion, the ENF is aiming to recover at least a part of it. In the meantime, EOS rebranded to “Antelope”, also including the popular projects Telos, Wax, and UX Network.
Good: EOS rebranded. Bad: a “gloomy” outlook
More than its rebranding, the ENF is planning to make a hardfork on the blockchain to fully transfer the ownership away from BlockOne. This will happen around September 21, 2022. As La Rose said, “This marks the end of a turbulent journey from a codebase controlled by a toxic entity to a truly decentralized and open source project,” so, it’s a new beginning for this chain and has caused hype in the community.
EOS is increasing again, and it could keep doing it in the next months if it’s further developed by its new leaders. But not everything is good at this point, especially for the whole crypto market. Bitcoin decreased by over 12% in the last week, and the total crypto market cap lost 10% as well during the same period [CMC].
The last economic outlook by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) describes the global situation as “gloomy” and “uncertain”. The report reads:
“Several shocks have hit a world economy already weakened by the pandemic: higher-than-expected inflation worldwide––especially in the United States and major European economies––triggering tighter financial conditions; a worse-than-anticipated slowdown in China, reflecting COVID- 19 outbreaks and lockdowns; and further negative spillovers from the war in Ukraine.”
All these factors, of course, are affecting the crypto market as well. In uncertain moments, investors use to prefer safer assets, like bonds and gold. Cryptocurrencies are in a high-risk category, so, more dips may be ahead. However, as in the last decade, those dips also may come and go in the same way.
