EOS ecosystem future under scrutiny, is Voice, developed for half a year, still worth anticipating?

Over the past two years, EOS has been facing challenges of user attrition and slowing growth. Can the launch of the Voice testnet help EOS regain its competitiveness in the public chain sector?

Original Title: "Can half a year of development not match BM's words? Is Voice worth looking forward to?"
Author: Xin Nan

In the short term, we may not see a boost in the price of EOS due to Voice, as the Voice team has stated that industry transformation will not happen overnight, especially not in a vacuum.

A seemingly endless stream of comments has further eroded the confidence of already somewhat anxious investors. Within 2 hours of BM's remarks fermenting, EOS plummeted nearly 12 points, leading to liquidation of hundreds of millions of RMB across the network.

Looking back at the mainstream coin market over the past year, EOS has often been criticized as the weakest performer, always taking a dive ahead of a market crash. This time, just one week away from breaking a new high in nearly half a year, EOS has once again become the "hot potato" in the minds of investors, seemingly on the brink of breaking free only to be pushed back to square one overnight.

With DApp development hitting a bottleneck and BM's reputation in the community repeatedly questioned, EOS, lacking "fundamentals," urgently needs a benchmark product to restore market confidence. The heavily funded Voice developed by Block.one is seen as EOS's last lifeline.

However, the test results of this project, which has shut out Chinese users, seem to be slower than expected. Not only is there little excitement in the price of the coin, but also minimal attention from outside the community.

People are beginning to wonder if Voice, touted as a "disruptive social media platform," can really find a new path for EOS through social media, a track that seems to have repeatedly proven to have no relation to blockchain success.

Voice starts off quietly, but "Voice it" feature is quite interesting

Voice was born with a silver spoon.

As early as the summer of 2019, Block.one spent 3.3 million EOS to buy half of the RAM on the market (about 32 GB), indirectly driving the RAM price to surge by 260%.

This sudden move ignited the EOS community, and shortly after, Block.one announced the social project named Voice built on EOSIO, where all RAM and CPU costs on Voice are covered by the B1 account, making all Voice accounts free to lower the user entry barrier.

Moreover, in January 2020, Block.One also appointed Forbes' Global Chief Digital Officer Salah Zalatimo as the CEO of the Voice project.

Block.one's substantial investment and effort into Voice have attracted much attention before its official launch.

According to the official website, Voice is a transparent, reward-based social network primarily used for creating, distributing, and discovering content. It aims to cultivate a new, trustworthy experience through infrastructure such as identity verification and transparent databases.

In reality, Voice's gameplay is similar to Steemit and BiHu, focusing on returning the value of social media platforms to users' own stories.

Voice is touted as a blockchain-powered social network with no opaque one-sided data trading, no hidden algorithms, and circulates value back to users through Voice tokens.

According to Voice's concept, every piece of content or post published by users is their "Voice." When others like your post, you will receive Voice token rewards, and the more popular the post, the more tokens you earn.

Despite the lack of participation from Chinese users after the official testing phase opened, the discussion around Voice seems a bit cold, but American users have already showcased the true face of Voice.

Based on the screen recordings shared by American users, the current Voice beta version is a web-based app with a simple page design. Each new user's account is credited with 3000 Voice tokens for interaction on the platform.

The homepage is the Voice feed, where all feeds are sorted based on post likes, comments, "Voice it" count, activity, and publication time, with new posts having more weight.

Users can further filter the five feed sorting schemes through the dropdown menu—most popular, newest, most commented, most liked, and most "Voice it" count.

"Voice it" is actually one of the most interesting features of Voice.

As mentioned in the official introduction, "Voice It" is one way to increase the exposure and dissemination of posts on the Voice platform.

If you see a post on Voice that you like and want more people to see it, you can choose to "Voice It" for that post.

Each Voice post has a "Voice it" button at the top, followed by the number of Voice tokens required for the "Voice it" action.

As shown in the image, the cost of "Voice it" for BM's Voice post is 3.3 Voice tokens.

At first glance, spending your tokens to "Voice" other people's posts may seem thankless, but in reality, everyone has the opportunity to earn Voice tokens by "Voicing" other users' posts.

The "Voice it" gameplay carries a bit of a "FOMO" style.

After you "Voice" a post, others can outbid your "Top Voice" status with a higher price within 24 hours. If no one offers a higher bid than yours within 24 hours, you will become the last "Top Voice" of that post, not only reclaiming all the Voice tokens you bid but also receiving an additional 33% bonus from the new bid.

The initial price for "Voice it" is 1 Voice token, with a 30% cost increase for each subsequent "Voice it." The author of each post receives the Voice tokens bid for the first "Voice it." When the next user takes over, the Voice tokens bid by the previous user are fully refunded.

Tips:

• 33% of the "Voice it" growth cost will be distributed to the post author;
• 33% of the revenue will go to the previous "Top Voice";
• The Voice tokens already earned by users will not be included in the next circulation.

For example, if user A just posted a new Voice post and you spent 1 Voice token to become the first "Voice" for that post (i.e., Top Voice), user A will receive 1 Voice token.

Within 24 hours, user B appears and spends 1.3 Voice tokens to replace you as the new Top Voice. In this case, you can not only recover your initial 1 token cost but also receive 33% of the 0.3 tokens user B paid (0.3 33%≈0.1). Similarly, author user A will also receive 33% of the 0.3 tokens user B paid (0.3 33%≈0.1), with the 0.1 distributed to the previous "Top Voice" and the author not included in the next circulation.

Of course, "Voice it" is not the only way to earn Voice tokens. In addition to registration rewards, users can earn rewards through daily active rewards (receive Voice tokens daily if the account is active and in good standing) and like rewards (posts that receive 10 or more likes or comments within 24 hours have a chance to earn like rewards in Voice tokens, with more popular content receiving more tokens).

Stringent KYC requirements are also an important compliance move

Voice may have the most stringent KYC identity verification among many social products.

On February 11, Voice officially announced that the beta version would be open in the United States, then gradually transition to English-speaking regions, and finally globally. Although most EOS users are concentrated in China and the entire Chinese community is eagerly anticipating, the founder chose to start in the United States, restricting a larger number of Chinese users due to stringent KYC conditions.

Why such emphasis on KYC? Voice claims that it aims to create a platform without fake accounts and zombie programs. Thus, Voice verifies user identities through a third-party supplier, Hooyu, requiring users to provide verification documents such as address, driver's license, passport or ID number, selfies, etc., to participate in platform interactions.

In addition to advocating for real human interaction and combating system zombies, this move is more about addressing the issue of click farms.

In fact, Steemit, BM's previous project, was exploited by click farms.

Unlike Voice, Steemit did not adopt a one-person-one-vote system, which led to a large number of click farms entering the platform. Users registered fake accounts to like and comment on their own posts, burying truly valuable content and accelerating the demise of the platform.

Currently, most content on Voice is published with real identities, but Voice also indicated that privacy options will be provided later, although it still requires ensuring unique users and accountability for content.

Despite many blockchain elements, Voice is a real social product. In the official statement, Voice's vision is also grand.

"We live in a 'post-truth' era, where many media platforms have lost their direction... It's time to use technology to find better ways." said Salah Zalatimo, CEO of Voice.

Voice's goal is not just to be a U.S. version of Steemit, not just another coin on EOS, but to disrupt traditional social networks like Facebook and Twitter with a new social solution. All these actions indicate that Block.one has the intention to reshape social media platforms.

According to Hellopool's calculation, B1 previously purchased 32GB of RAM, creating an account consumes about 3K, and 32GB of RAM can create about 10 million accounts. In other words, Block.one has prepared for millions of users.

To become the next social media giant, compliance is essential. The strict KYC conditions, even somewhat harsh, are actually the first step towards compliance.

Prior to the official launch of the beta version, the Voice team laid a lot of groundwork for compliance, with over 100 legal professionals in the team. They are currently working to obtain independent licenses from most states in the United States.

In a previous article, Voice stated that it is working hard to ensure that Voice tokens comply with U.S. securities laws, collaborating with the SEC and establishing policies and systems compliant with OFAC and AML requirements.

Of course, the application channels for Voice tokens are still relatively limited at the moment. However, Voice also plans to add more features and introduce more applications related to Voice tokens after the beta testing.

Regarding the revenue model, Voice mentioned that it will rely more on advertising. With an audience, there are advertisers, and Voice plans to supply 10% of the tokens annually for sale to advertisers looking to advertise on Voice.

Voice, whether successful or not, it will succeed

In the six months since the announcement, the Block.one team has invested countless efforts and resources into Voice. People have closely tied the future of EOS to Voice, even calling Voice the "life-saving straw" for EOS, which is not an exaggeration.

Many are disappointed with EOS: "EOS feels basically debunked, it's been years, and nothing substantial has been achieved."

EOS's peak moments were as fleeting as fireworks. Now, after two years, EOS is facing the crisis of user attrition and slowing growth. Before commercial use, these public chains, touted as Blockchain 3.0, have fallen into a predicament.

According to data compiled by DappRaddar, EOS's daily active users data shows a 61% decrease in January 2020 compared to January 2019. While Ethereum and TRON saw an increase in user base, EOS's user base has been steadily declining.

Upon reviewing the data, Odaily Chain News found that within the last 30 days, the number of active users on the EOS chain is far behind Ethereum and TRON.

Regarding DApp numbers, EOS experienced a burst of new DApps between mid-2018 and the end of 2018. However, starting from January 2019, the rate of new DApp additions started to slow down, with very few new DApps appearing in the middle of 2019.

In contrast, Ethereum and TRON's DApp ecosystems have been relatively stable.

Only when the DApp ecosystem based on EOS is prosperous, with the continuous emergence of DApps with large user bases and high-frequency user behavior, the value of the EOS public chain will be more solid.

For EOS, Voice is not just another new coin from Block.one.

"At this stage, Voice is the ultimate growth driver for EOS." according to Guo Dafeng, founder of EOS Asia.

"Voice's biggest advantage is re-attracting global big V users and regaining traffic advantages." HelloEos founder Zicen analyzed that the launch of Voice is not just about increasing mainnet activity and CPU RAM consumption. In his view, Voice will not only recall traffic but also rebuild a positive image for EOS.

"No one can be sure whether Voice will ultimately drive the true rise of EOS, but Voice is definitely the barometer of the EOS ecosystem. For Block.one, Voice will either succeed or succeed." Zicen believes that Voice's significance to EOS is akin to DeFi's significance to ETH; regardless of success, this path must be taken.

Can Voice really boost the future of EOS?

"With the help of Voice, the total number of EOS accounts can easily reach 5 to 10 times the current scale." People believe that Voice users are inherently EOS users, and Voice's growth will also be the growth of the EOS platform.

Currently, there are 1.73 million users with EOS accounts, who have an educational foundation and have long adapted to the various token earning methods in the blockchain world, undoubtedly making them seed users for Voice.

But the social race is not as rosy as everyone thinks. Everyone wants to dismantle the Facebook empire, but more players are hitting a rock with an egg. Without discussing the existing user base, is it possible for Voice to enter ordinary people's lives, moving from niche to mass appeal?

"Voice may enter ordinary people's lives, but it will take longer than expected," interpreted by Hahn, founder of the Korean backup node NodeONE. "Voice is initially only launched in the U.S., seemingly in the right place at the right time. The U.S. elections have just begun, and social platforms play a crucial role in American politics. But I don't think this means Voice could achieve success overnight; what's important is the long term."

"Voice has the potential to be popular with the public. But I also want to say that whether Voice can achieve great success depends on how to establish an effective traffic mechanism." Guo Dafeng, founder of Eos Asia, also believes this.

From DApp games to gambling and then to ponzi schemes, the blockchain world has yet to see a killer DApp with millions of users. The predicament facing EOS may also be occurring on public chains like ETH, Tron, etc.

"Block.one needs to shape a template for EOSIO, and even for the blockchain world, to prove that blockchain technology can truly expand to the broadest ordinary users. This template is Voice." Voice is not just setting a benchmark on EOS but also helping other so-called commercial public chains find the product form of the blockchain world.

Perhaps for those immersed in gambling, there is no need for any idealism, just a pump. We may not see Voice boosting the EOS coin price in the short term, but as the Voice team says, industry change doesn't happen overnight, especially not in a vacuum.

If no one participates in this process, supervises, and provides feedback, Voice may never become what it aspires to be.

This article is authorized by Chain News for reprinting. Article source: ChainNews (ID: chainnewscom)

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