New mining versus old mining

When Bitcoin began, a desktop computer could be used to mine. However, the increase in the hash rate for the Bitcoin blockchain soon consumed all the system resources of ordinary computers to keep up.

Blockchains that have reached the hash difficulty of gigahashes are beyond the capacity of your average computer. Even this rate can be prohibitive for many miners. It requires a lot of energy, time, and resources to be profitable. Because of the EOS DPOS algorithm, you can still use a standard computer to earn tokens.

Bitcoin miners discovered that they could adapt the graphical processing unit (GPU) in computer graphics cards to do mining. The GPU often gave miners over 50 times the speed advantage, and the GPU also consumed less electricity, so it was cheaper to run.

In 2011, mining farms started popping up. They used specialized equipment called field-programmable gate array (FPGA) processors. These devices attached to miners’ computers using a USB port and used less power than CPU or GPU mining.

The best mining hardware now utilizes application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC). ASIC machines mine at extreme hashing speeds and, from my personal experience, they can be quite noisy. If you choose to buy one, take your time and read the reviews. Also, make sure it will have a reasonable payback time and be compatible with what you want to mine.

As blockchain software moves beyond proof-of-concept and into the mainstream, the idea of mining will have to change, too. EOS doesn’t mine in the same sense that other blockchains do. It produces blocks, and the nodes that make the blocks are rewarded.

Technically, anyone can sign up, but given that there are only ever 21 elected block producers, it’s difficult to win one of the coveted slots. You may be able to stake some of your EOS tokens with a prominent block producer and be rewarded for doing so. This works similarly to how you stake some tokens on the Waves platform (see Chapter 6).

The 21 block producers

Unlike Bitcoin, in which anyone can verify transactions and produce blocks, a select set of nodes maintains the EOS DPOS blockchain. As a participant and EOS token holder, you can vote on these nodes like a political election.

Elected nodes, called EOS delegates, are the only ones clearing transactions on EOS. There are just 21 delegates at any time and many backup delegates waiting in case one of the elected nodes goes down. The nodes with the most votes win the right to produce blocks. Some of the delegates will share their block rewards with the users who voted for them.

As a token holder, you can change your vote at any time. The theory is that this will discourage block producers from acting against the best interests of the community. Currently, voting or switching your vote isn’t very intuitive. Nor is there yet a clear way for the average person to know if she should change her vote.

Greymass, an EOS block producer, has created a voting tool. This tool was designed by a third party so it isn’t as secure as voting through your command-line interface. But Greymass’s voting system is open source and supported by several competitive block producers.

The EOS system rewards block producers with new tokens. The EOS system creates 5 percent more tokens each year, increasing the overall supply. Of these new tokens, 0.25 percent go to block producers and 0.75 percent go to standby block producers; this is about 100 EOS for a day for qualified standby block producers. Four percent of the new global supply goes back into a pool used for EOS development and research. Worker proposals are presented to the community, and token holders vote on what improvements they want.

Setting up the Greymass voting tool

The Greymass app does a few very cool things. It lets you vote for block producers, transfer EOS to other accounts, and stake EOS tokens for CPU bandwidth. This gives you the right to resource usage on the network as a developer and conveys the weight of your votes.

Follow these steps to vote for a block producer on EOS:

1. Navigate to Greymass’s GitHub at https://github.com/greymass/eos-voter.
2. Download and install Greymass’s voting tool for your operating system.
3. Click Connect to an API Node.

4. Enter your EOS wallet name.

   This is the name of the wallet that you created in the previous section.

5. Enter your EOS private key.

   You can find your private key for your EOS wallet on the document you wrote it down on. Or you can look for it in the EOS Lynx wallet. It will be under Export Private Key and the icon on the left of your account name in the wallet.

6. Enter a secure password.

   Don’t forget to write down the password and keep it in a safe and separately place from your private key.

Voting for a block producer

Now that you have Greymass set up, you can start voting. But before you get going, it’s worth digging deeper into who to vote for to secure your records and applications. This is important on EOS because it doesn’t use a proof-of-work model and instead relies on voting to keep the system honest. The block producers are the backbone of the infrastructure of EOS, and if they fail, then the system is vulnerable.

Inside the Greymass application, under Voting, you can see a list of all the block producer candidates. From this list, you can explore the candidate’s websites and social media accounts. Look for a few key things that will help narrow your choice:

• Do they have a website?
• Do they have a positive track record in the community?
• Do they share block rewards?
• Do they have social media?
• What is their contribution to the community?
• Do they have a road map for development?
• Do they have an email, Telegram.org channel, or another social channel for communication available?
• What is their technical experience?
• Do they have a positive track record in the community?

When you’re ready to vote, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the Greymass application on your computer.

   This is the application that you installed in the previous section.

2. Click Producer Voting.

   On the left side of the screen (Mac) or right side of the screen (PC), you see the list of block producer candidates.

3. Browse through the candidates and take some time to read about them.

4. When you know who you want to vote for, click the icon to the right of the block producer’s name.

   The icon looks like a small box with a negative sign within it. You can select up to 30 block producers at a time, but you don’t have to.

5. Click Submit Votes for Selected Producers.

Congratulations! You’ve voted and participated in the EOS blockchain!

Everipedia: The next-generation encyclopedia

Everipedia is an EOS blockchain version of the popular website Wikipedia. It’s a wiki-based online encyclopedia that is censorship resistant and keeps a history of all edits to its pages. It uses its own native token called IQ to support content generation. Everipedia’s creation predates EOS by a few years — it was founded all the way back in 2014 but migrated to EOS in 2018.

With a goal of creating the most accessible online encyclopedia, Everipedia is much easier to create content with than Wikipedia is. The Everipedia founder also took elements from traditional social media sites and has allowed celebrities to communicate with fans.

You can create pages on any topic. The pages must be cited and neutral because generating new pages is easy and doesn’t have the same oversite as Wikipedia. You can imagine that, with the censorship resistance of blockchain, Everipedia could be abused and some content could be blatantly false. Everipedia offers a service that allows users to tailor pages and monitor them for updates and to prevent vandalism. Keep that in mind as you browse the site.

Follow these steps to create your very own page that is secured with the EOS blockchain:

1. Navigate to Everipedia at https://everipedia.org.
2. Click Menu.

3. Click Log In/Register.

   When you get to the registration page, pick your favorite social media site to log in with. As of this writing, Facebook, Twitter, and Scatter are available.

4. Create a four-digit PIN.

   Write down this PIN and keep it someplace safe.

5. Click the plus sign (+)in the upper-left corner (Mac) or upper-right corner (PC).

6. Enter the name of the page you would like to create

   As a suggestion, I created an author page for my technical editor, Scott Robinson: https://everipedia.org/wiki/lang_en/the-scott-rob/.

7. Enter your content.

   Don’t forget to add an image and cite your work.

8. Click Submit.

Decentralized EOS games

Games stretch blockchain technology to its fullest. They create things like sovereign identities (an identity that the holder of the ID or document controls and proves validity through a blockchain entry). Blockchain games often also use things like self-replicating digital assets (digital goods that when combined in some way during gameplay can create a new asset); the crypto game Cryptokitties is an example of this type of asset. Games also often use tiny payments often called microtransactions. Games open up blockchain technology to the average user and all the potential that that holds.

The EOS blockchain is now powering many new games. EOS is an attractive option because it has built-in functionality that allows for new types of games. Blockchains, by nature, are censorship resistant. Not only can anyone play but it’s difficult to prevent a game from operating globally. Some types of games may not be legal in your region (for example, gambling is often prohibited or heavily regulated).

Blockchains also allow for digital ownership that moves beyond the standards of centralized game corporations. Instead of a corporation owning and controlling your in-game assets like skins for your avatar, the assets are controlled by you. Blockchains also have native money or, rather, a cryptocurrency that makes it easy to facilitate payments and reduce chargebacks from users. This feature is attractive for developers. Also, the fee structure for processing transaction on blockchains can be cheaper than using credit card processors.

EOS has started to become the blockchain of choice for game development because of its high speed and low transaction cost. This means that the smart contracts (also known as chain code) can run faster and cheaper on EOS — a very important consideration for game development.

DappRadar is a great place to check out the latest games on EOS: https://dappradar.com/rankings/protocol/eos/category/games.

Blockchain technology doesn’t have some of the benefits of centralized services. If a game breaks, there is no customer support. If you lose your assets, they’re gone forever. Plus, if another player is behaving unfairly, there isn’t much that can be done. Blockchain technology is still the Wild West, and games bring out the competition, ego, and greed.