Ethereum successfully transformed the crypto landscape. From a simple “value transfer from wallet A to wallet B” to be the perfect smart contract world where people can trade tokens and even borrow and lend stablecoins. It’s been more than five years since the inception of Ethereum, and it’s still going strong. However, Ethereum’s rise to fame was also exposed to one big problem. Everybody knows that it’s very slow, and its transaction fees are too expensive.
People are desperate for alternatives, especially in the era of DeFi. Many blockchain projects try as best as they can to become the next Ethereum with little success. Tron, EOS, NEO, you name it. And then, among all these other smart contract platforms, there’s IOST – which also aims to be the next DApp platform. So, is it worth it to invest our money in the IOST token? Well, we are here to analyze that.
Find out everything you need to know about Decentralized Applications (DApps).
How Does IOST Work?
Before we get into IOST, we need to know about the blockchain called IOS. IOS stands for Internet Of Service, while IOST is the native crypto token of this IOS. Just like I mentioned above, IOS is trying to compete toe-to-toe against Ethereum and other smart contracts in the blockchain ecosystems.
So how does IOS differ from the rest of smart contract projects?
First, it doesn’t use the typical Delegated Proof-of-Stake. While EOS, Tron, Cardano, and others use DPoS or slight variations of it, IOS uses a different mechanism of consensus mechanism. They call it Proof of Believability (PoB).
So, what is PoB? Well, it’s a score that you get by having good reviews in the network, by having previous transactions inside the node, and by having Servi tokens. Servi tokens themselves act as token rewards for the good actors. The more you aid other users in the IOS ecosystem, the more Servi tokens you get.
The concept of PoB actually gave plenty of benefits for the uniqueness of IOST. When it was first launched and went to mainnet, IOST was able to gain a lot of attention. It also had some decent DApps that successfully made IOST shoot up to the top 4 positions in terms of “smart contract platforms with the most DApps”.
IOS also introduced the theory of Efficient Distributed Sharing, TransEpoch, and Atomix. The community were pretty excited with IOS advancements and the role of its native token, IOST. The Popularity Didn’t Last Long
The Popularity Didn’t Last Long
IOST used to be in the top 40-50 crypto rankings, but now it has fallen to outside the top 100. You might be wondering “what actually happened?” Well, it’s just the classic crypto move. In the crypto space, everything moves very rapidly. One cannot stay stagnant for years, especially if you are trying to play the catchup game and not the market leader.
In 2020 particularly, everybody has been crazy about yield farming. Everybody has been doing the same thing. They love DeFi tokens that grant them governance right just by providing liquidity. This kind of trend might last for a while. Even if it does not, there is a reason to believe that a new trend might come in the future.
Find outeverything you need to know about Decentralized Finance (DeFi).
The problem with IOST is that it hasn’t adapted to the trend. Most projects build their DeFi protocols on ETH, and some others build on Polkadot, Cosmos, Tron, or NEO. But almost nobody has ever heard of DeFi protocols on IOST, at least the successful ones.
For this reason, the trend for IOST didn’t last long. It just made it to the top 50 crypto rankings briefly and it came back to planet earth again.
What Next For IOST
If IOST wants to become relevant again in the eyes of crypto traders, it has to be able to reinvent itself. At the end of the day, it is a blockchain platform designed for all DApps. So far, the DeFi protocols on IOST haven’t been doing well and IOS should market itself more as your next platform of choice for DeFi. After all, Ethereum has been suffering a lot of gas problems. It’s a good chance to introduce yourself as a much more efficient smart contract ecosystem.
