Community reacts as Dan Larimer exits EOS even after $4 billion ICO
The EOS founder left after three years of working on the high-speed blockchain project. But critics aren’t impressed.
Bye, EOS
Daniel Larimer, CTO at EOS code maintainer and operator Block.one, has permanently departed the project, as per a post by the firm on Sunday.
https://t.co/LgcclYjBIb today announced that Daniel Larimer, CTO at https://t.co/LgcclYjBIb, has departed to pursue new personal projects. We wish him an exciting new chapter. https://t.co/DvqiqDVutI
— block.one (@block_one_) January 10, 2021
Larimer founded Block.one with Blumer in 2017. Its tokens became one of the biggest success stories of that year, finding their way to the top-20 crypto projects by market cap and worth tens of billions of dollars at their peak.
The firm is a software publisher specializing in high-performance blockchain technologies. Its first project, EOSIO, an open-source blockchain protocol designed to enable secure data transfer and high-performance decentralized applications.
“Block.one today announced that Daniel Larimer, CTO at Block.one, has departed to pursue new personal projects,” the firm said in the post. Co-founder Brandan Blumer said in the regard, “I co-founded Block.one with Dan in 2017, and since then we’ve seen both the industry and the company grow to unprecedented heights,” adding:
“I’m not alone in being grateful for the contributions Dan has made to date, and I look forward to seeing what he will do next.”
Upon the news of the departure, responses from the EOS community on Reddit and Twitter were mixed. One such post read, “Dan quits EOS just like everyone that we used to think hated on EOS said he would. Pretty disgusting to see.”
“Dan peaces out with millions from his 3rd flop/scam. How many times [are] people going to buy this guy’s shitcoins?” read another.
A tainted past
Before Block.one, Larimer founded BitShares with Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson in 2013, before leaving that company and later founding Steemit (another ICO) in 2017. He has been criticized by the crypto community for the departures—with the monetary benefits, in particular, and the swift departures forming a subject of contention.
The Cayman Islands-based firm, however, met with criticism in early-2018 after it was found that it earned over $4 billion through the illegal, unlicensed sale of its ERC20-based EOS tokens. US regulators even went after the business, before reaching a settlement in the form of a $24 million penalty in 2019.
Meanwhile, Block.one’s doing just fine. Blumer said in a post on Sunday, “B1 is building products designed to leverage our #Bitcoin as more than just a store of value, and we have accumulated well beyond our previously announced 140,000 #BTC position.”
B1 is building products designed to leverage our #Bitcoin as more than just a store of value, and we have accumulated well beyond our previously announced 140,000 #BTC position. We are in internal testing and alpha stages. #EOS #EOSIO
— Brendan Blumer (@BrendanBlumer) December 17, 2020
Moving forwards, Block.one said that it continues to stay focused on advancing its current and future products and looks forward to sharing its planned developments with the world in 2021.