You left off some definitions of fair: Nobody should get something for nothing
Both Rich and Poor get the same price and are offered the same RATE OF RETURN. So it does give the poor man an opportunity to repeat Bitcoin.
I do not want to create or endorse a world where "being rich" is considered "unfair". It is not whether someone is rich or not, it is how they came to be rich that matters. If someone comes to be rich by virtue of getting something for nothing (stealing other people's money) then that isn't fair.
In this case your definition of social fairness is that some people are entitled to getting something for nothing by virtue of being poor or being human.
Social fairness is equal pay for equal work. Money is proof-of-past work unless it is acquired by fraud or theft.
Dan, you're not talking to a communist. I understand this is a foremost business project.
The average Joe will find it hard to get a hold of enough EOS to become rich in the long turn, with the big guys raising the price, so my question is what is the social side of introducing yet another digital currency - what are the benefits to the crypto community?
From what I understand EOS is not just another digital currency. It is platform that will enable it's users to create apps with industrial grade speed and scalability with zero transaction fees. Not everyone has the know-how or the resources to carry such endevours but that is just the result of social division of labor.
Average Joes such as myself do not get rich by holding any form of digital currency unless if you are lucky to get in at the right time.
The blockchain is just a notary service, proving that something happened. If transaction speed was needed, LiteCoin is already available, and so is Steem. There was no need for a new currency - if EOS solves some problem, which other cryptos can not, then I'd like to read about it. What are the practical benefits of EOS, which other cryptocurrencies do not have?
From my point of view, this is just a marketing trick, which so many developers have entered into, to make a quick buck from the hype surrounding a new currency distribution, without actually bringing any benefit to the digital world.
Thanks for commenting!
Speed and on-chain scalability are important for mass adoption. If the following statement from the whitepaper can be acomplished then any application can be built on the EOS blockchain. You could potentialy build 100 Steem like networks on top of EOS.
LTC, BTC and ETH or any other POW blockchain is incapable of achieving this on-chain.
Here is the link to the post about the EOS whitepaper
As I mentioned before EOS is not just another coin it's a lot more then that (provided that the product can be delivered...which I personally think that it can be done).
Oh, I've skimmed through the White Paper last week and all I see is marketing and promises of great things. What I did not see is a working application, which would produce a product or a service to the community.
As I just replied to another user, people are currently investing time (and soon - money) in their dreams, not in something with proven value.
Let's get a bit technical - answer these questions before investing in EOS:
What is the difference between a typical blockchain and EOS, which claims to be a blockchain operating system?
Why would Steem be fast enough for Steemit ("Steem can handle a larger userbase than Reddit"), but not fast enough for its future clones?
Which brings us to the logical question - What is the practical value of starting 100s of Steemit clones - is Steemit so popular that it outperforms Reddit and Facebook, that we need a second one, let alone a hundred clones of it?
Where is the proof of concept - a variety of applications, serving the needs of different businesses, who use the EOS platform? Are there even examples of what EOS can be used for?
If you didn't answer any of the above questions, consider this - would you buy the promise of a great product (ala Kickstarter, where most projects fail, while being horrendously overinvested in - remember the 300 thousand dollar self filling bottle?) or would you buy (invest in) the completed and working product, which will be useful to you?
No, right? Because if you get in early, you will become a millionaire, right?
Hence my point, that unless you have thousands to invest in EOS and grab a bigger portion, you will not profit much - that is, if this project turns out to be successful and not yet another new cryptocurrency, created with the sole purpose of cashing in on the hype of wanna-be-millionaires.
There's something else to consider - I may be saying that there will be big investors buying EOS, but the truth is, that thousands of people with $10k in their pocket are much more powerful than a couple of rich guys. And rich guys usually don't invest in marketing talk - they want to see working examples of what is promised.
So unless you can see the amount of money being invested by single individuals, during the bid process, I would still consider this a bad investment. Hah, it just occured to me - even if you could see the amount invested, it will be spread out over 341 days - you wouldn't know if a rich person is investing 1/341 of his capital or a poor guy throwing 100% of his cash for some EOS.
Mainly Parallel Performance & Partial Evaluation of Blockchain State
This is just an example ...nothing more.
You are getting ahead of yourself here. Those apps are 1-2 years down the road after the lunch of the blockchain
Any web based service or application currently being run on a centralized server.
Regarding WHEN and IF it's worth to invest on this project. Well that's up to each individual's decision
So this is not an operating system, but a parallelized (multi-threaded) blockchain. A marketing trick for non-techies.
Also, from what I've read in the white paper, this is only implemented on certain levels, where the software logic allows that. So we have a faster blockchain, despite Steem already being fast enough to support a network bigger than Reddit (according to its own developers).
Where it falls short is lack of examples for its use, i.e. it has no purpose, but it was built. Someone mentioned an eBay site, powered by EOS, because there wouldn't be transaction costs. But there will be transaction costs at the exchange, converting fiat or other cryptos to EOS. That is, if you can even convince 99% of ebay's users that this is better than ebay (and there's no reason why it will be, as EOS doesn't create any advantage).
Everyone is investing in the hype, kickstarter style. The winner is EOS's marketing department and the investors.
As I mentioned in another post, I would invest in EOS once I see unique software running on it. Then any EOS I have will slowly increase in value. Until that moment, it's just speculative bidding, favoring only the developers and their initial investors.
Also, as a side note, I have to disagree with your comment, that my "... definition of social fairness is that some people are entitled to getting something for nothing by virtue of being poor or being human."
This is not just my opinion - it is the opinion of many prominent figures around the world, which has made its way into human rights documents, constitutions and, I'm sure you're very much aware of this document, the American Declaration of Independence, containing Thomas Jefferson's popular statement that "All men are created equal".
Thanks to the efforts of such people, today men gain some rights from the very fact they are born human, such as their freedom and also receive the support of the state, should they need it - police protection, medical services, fire services, education and even social wellfare for the poor.
Therefore, if we are creating a decentralized world with no central authority, this should certainly not be a world without fair and equal rights for all (digital) participants.
This is why I ask - what are the long term social benefits of EOS, if the distribution of EOS contains none?