Blockchain Protocol Antelope Takes “Leap of Freedom” As It Splits Off EOSIO; EOS jump

by Arthur · August 17, 2022

The Blockchain Protocol Antelope has taken what it describes as a “leap of freedom” and rejected the protocol of the development company Block.one‘s EOSIO platform and instead embraced the rival EOS Network Foundation.

According to an announcement from Antelope, the project has already launched a new website and shared a public release on the Antelope Github repository. Going forward, Antelope will be run by a coalition led by the EOS Network Foundation, with the participation of community members from EOS and the blockchain networks Telos, Waxand UX Network.

The EOS Network Foundation is an organization formed in opposition to Block.one after the latter was accused of not adding value to the blockchain. Among other things, EOS was said to have missed out on the decentralized finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) boom, and has seen an exodus of developers under Block.one’s watch.

As reported back in December, the foundation, made up of the disgruntled members of the EOS community who claim that Block.one is no longer acting in the best interests of the network, rebelled against the company in an attempt to obtain the EOS network’s intellectual property rights.

To move Antelope forward under the EOS Network Foundation, all coalition members will share the project’s underlying blockchain codebase, while a development fund will be available to participants “to continually improve the core protocol,” Wednesday’s announcement said.

It added that it now falls to Antelope to “fly the flag to iterate the code base and rejuvenate the community.” Furthermore, the announcement noted that new innovations, including Application Programming Interface (API) improvements, history pruning, and enhanced cryptographic capabilities, will now be delivered to Antelope.

“At the EOS Network Foundation, we are committed to exemplifying the best Antelope has to offer by making EOS the most powerful and usable platform for building next-generation web3 products and services,” commented Yves La Rose, CEO and Managing Director director of the EOS Network Foundation.

Meanwhile, Douglas Horn, chief architect of Telos’ blockchain, said he expects Antelope to excel as a user-friendly way to design new blockchains. “Antelope is a protocol built by the users, for the users,” he said.

EOS is a smart contract platform that gained popularity after its debut in 2018, when it raised $4.1 billion in an initial coin offering (ICO). The project was considered an “Ethereum killer” due to its capacity to offer a higher rate of transactions per second (TPS).

Meanwhile, EOS jumped today. At 13:15 UTC, the 45th coin by market cap was trading at $1.53, up 19% in a day and 30% in a week. It is also up 55% in a month and down 72% in a year.