Written by: Huang Shiliang
EOS changed its name, surprisingly calling it A, the A of abcd, so it would be ranked first alphabetically in exchanges in the future.
I have always had a good impression of EOS because during the first three months of its 350-day super-long ICO fundraising, I continuously participated in arbitrage between the primary and secondary markets of EOS, making a small profit.
That was the easiest money I ever made.
EOS started its ICO on June 26, 2017, and ended on June 1, 2018, raising over 40 billion USD in ETH and issuing 900 million EOS tokens, which was an incredibly impressive fundraising, unprecedented and likely unmatched.
The ICO mechanism of EOS was quite novel at the time.
EOS initially conducted its ICO through a smart contract deployed on Ethereum, issuing tokens in two phases: the first phase allocated 200 million EOS tokens during the first five days of the ICO (June 26-30, 2017);
The second phase then began with a daily issuance mechanism. Every day (approximately every 23 hours), the EOS smart contract would accept ETH from users and distribute 2 million EOS tokens proportionally based on each participant's ETH contribution.
This daily issuance phase continued for 350 days, issuing a total of 700 million EOS. Adding the initial 200 million from the first five days, the total reached 900 million, with an additional 100 million EOS reserved for Block.one, forming a total issuance of 1 billion tokens.
EOS sold 900 million EOS-ERC20 tokens during its ICO, receiving 4.2 billion USD, which was equivalent to 7.2 million ETH.
At that time, few people in the industry understood how to operate Ethereum contracts, how to deposit into contracts, or how to claim purchased tokens.
The tools back then were quite primitive, unlike today's contracts and wallets with very well-designed UI interfaces.
The primary Ethereum wallet in 2017 was MyEtherWallet, which I was quite fond of. The private key was a JSON file, and operating the EOS ICO contract required manually configuring various parameters, which was slightly better than command-line operations.
Now, wallets like MetaMask and imToken have integrated various contracts, thoroughly visualizing operational commands in the UI, allowing users to complete all contract interactions with just a button click.
At that time, investing in the EOS ICO through MyEtherWallet required importing the private key JSON file each time, selecting the contract, choosing contract parameters and commands, and specifying the amount of ETH to inject, including manually setting gas.
Then, when claiming (EOS-ERC20), several parameters needed to be filled out.
Very few people performed these operations back then.
I was initially curious, very interested in EOS, because I had previously played with various Bitshares (BM's first project) around 2015. So I carefully studied EOS's ICO on ETH.
During the 350-day super-long ICO period, EOS was also directly tradable on exchanges. This meant that the primary and secondary markets were simultaneously open. However, the prices of these markets were not synchronized.
This created potential arbitrage opportunities.
At the time, I would deposit ETH into the ETH ICO contract daily, claim EOS-ERC20 when the time came, and then immediately deposit it into an exchange to sell.
This simple arbitrage, without any hedging or sophisticated strategy, simply betting that the primary market price would be cheaper than the secondary market, somehow consistently made money.
This profitable period lasted quite long. In the first three months, I almost never lost money, but in the following months, I occasionally started losing, and after half a year, I stopped.
Why did I initially dare to assume the EOS primary market price would be cheaper? Because few people were buying tokens in the ICO contract.
Initially, checking the interactive addresses on-chain, there were fewer than 100 daily, with most of the first three months around 148 addresses, which I distinctly remember. Later, the addresses increased, and the profits disappeared.
In this primary-secondary market price difference arbitrage game, I even observed hacker attack behaviors on the chain, all for making money.
Due to the mechanism of ending a period every 23 hours, the last few minutes of each period often allowed calculating the primary market price, as the ETH in the contract was transparent. Comparing this with the secondary market price revealed arbitrage opportunities.
Often in the final minutes, a large amount of ETH would suddenly be deposited, potentially causing the primary market price to become more expensive.
Then, in the final minutes, hackers would construct transactions consuming massive ETH gas, effectively blocking the entire ETH chain and preventing others from depositing ETH into the EOS ICO contract.
After a failed deposit, I learned to always max out gas when competing for primary market shares, which was truly wasteful. After losing gas several times, I stopped the game, letting others compete.
That half-year of continuous arbitrage indeed earned some money, but fortune and misfortune are intertwined, and reflecting on those years revealed some disasters.
Because the EOS ICO had a 23-hour per-period mechanism, the claim time would shift by an hour gradient daily, so grabbing primary market shares and claiming tokens meant constantly changing daily times, with 1/3 of periods occurring during my sleep time.
But to make money, who cared about sleep? Whether it was midnight or 3 AM, I would get up and work.
Staying up late once or twice is fine, but continuing for a week becomes problematic. Moreover, this wasn't simple sleep deprivation - due to significant monetary profits, I would be either extremely excited or furiously frustrated.
Of course, it wasn't just physical health that suffered; I later realized even more severe consequences.
I was leading a small team on a project. Seeing my daily state, if the boss wasn't motivated, the others certainly wouldn't be either.
Looking back, we had a chance to complete the project, but my reckless actions harmed my teammates. In 2018, several teammates voluntarily left.
I realize I'm quite fragile - this experience meant I never again had the courage to lead a team.
This year, when Musk entered politics, I thought companies like Tesla, X.com, and SpaceX might suffer - a loss for the world. If the boss doesn't personally lead, the company will likely fail.
This experience had another side effect.
In 2017, during the most heated BTC scaling debate, I was a hardcore scaling supporter, loving to write articles expressing support.
Perhaps because of EOS arbitrage profits, I became inflated, and due to constant poor sleep, my article writing and group discussions became too aggressive, offending many.
Later, I was cyberbullied. Having experienced cyberbullying made me less brave online.
Even now, I feel quite timid online, no longer daring to argue.
Two experiences were particularly memorable.
One was when the RSK (Bitcoin sidechain project) team was coming to China for speeches. Having written many sidechain articles earlier, they invited me to accompany their presentations. I rudely criticized their lack of commitment to scaling during a phone call. Oh, I was truly overconfident, so stupid.
The night before that phone call, I was working on the EOS ICO at 3 AM, too excited to sleep, and had no energy to speak properly when taking the call.
Another time, a reporter from a certain newspaper called to interview me about scaling. I spoke rapidly, challenging them to publish my exact words, as I had said many things unfavorable to small block supporters. Actually, focusing on technical aspects would have been better.
I was too inflated then, though I've always been a humble person.
Time flies, and eight years have passed since the EOS ICO. The money earned has been lost, leaving only memories.
