This idea in the paper is awesome. But is too difficult to accomplish. And he is not even close to the goal.
Do you really think he is the only person with that idea and the only group working on that idea. Heck Mark Zimmer of Apple Computer (a programmer/founder/CTO I used to work with/for, who was personally recruited by Steve Jobs) gave me that idea on his blog several months ago, of automating the things for companies that are being stolen such as customer logins and identity (do you want the link?). Come on. I remember when I pointed out to Dan in a Steemit comment in 2016 that SSL certificates could be made more secure on the blockchain and he thought that was a really cool idea. So maybe I am the one who started his thought process down the direction it is now. Who knows.
Execution is what matters. And decentralization.
If they were sure of their own execution, they would not need to cash out1 before they even produce it.
Ideas are like assholes, everybody has them.
Do you have any idea how many people are working on ideas in this world? Expect the number of token projects to multiply by another factor of 10 by next year. Execution is what matters. There will be an oversupply of ideas.
There is a lot more to making an investment than just an idea. Do you support their ethics? Is the token sale transparent and above board (did you not see upthread that the token sale is being gamed algorithmically)?
Do you want to invest in centralized ledgers? Is centralized governance via voting the direction you think our future will go? Did we get into crypto because we wanted to replicate the horrific political-economics of governments?
Etc, etc, etc.
Only you can decide what is important to you.
Personally I got interested in decentralized ledgers (decentralized coordination) because I wanted to try to see if we could change the structure of the world, not right back to same ole shit. Wallstreet, money, governments, and corruption. EOS appears to be knee deep in that shit.
If you just want monetary gains from speculating that others will speculate. Then by all means grab some of the FOMO train and ride on.
1 Even if they’re collecting the funds to form an investment fund in app developers, that is still not a valid reason they need to take it upfront. They could have instead executed first, then sold tokens into the market to raise funds after they proved their execution. But they apparently think they have avoided securities laws by structuring it the way they have, but I do not think so. I think the securities law avoidance is just an obfuscation of their desire to cash out because they’re not sure if they can really execute. Execution is more than just producing a functional blockchain. It is about also proving they can get any market uptake and interest from real adoption in the corporate market they’re targeting. Perhaps they think they can with $2 billion in funds essentially bribe/incentivize interest to adopt, but markets can not be created artificially. There actually must exist use cases. If the funds can be employed to develop for actual use cases the markets have, then it works. But they have not proven that they have these marketing and development chops (a combined skillset). So far I do not see any accomplished software product marketers on their team listed on their website. They have enough funds to hire some. For example, I could refer them to Steve Guttman who I worked with when I worked with Mark Zimmer. Steve was a VP of Marketing at Adobe and made Photoshop the king of commercial graphic editors. He was VP for us at Fractal Design and he went on to be a VP of Marketing at Microsoft. If I see them hire someone of that caliber, then maybe I will think they’re serious about execution. So far all I see is mostly these ii5 people from Hong Kong who are roughly in their 20s and have no experience.
Btw, EOS apparently did no KYC and thus backlash is coming:
And EOS will add another $2 billion.
AML law typically says that if selling a convertible virtual currency, then must do KYC. I have no idea what quality of attorneys are advising EOS. Are they ignorant of AML laws
Possibly Dan et al are going to have bigger problems to worry about than coding and execution.
Disclaimer: I am only expressing personal opinions. IANAL nor an advisor of any sort.