DAN LARIMER: Visionary Programmer of BitShares, Steem and EOS
I am not an expert on Dan Larimer, however, I have a bit of insight into this enigmatic programmer who is the visionary architect and engineer behind BitShares, Steem and EOS.
I met Dan last year when I visited Steemit HQ but most of what I’ve learned about Dan is from observation and reading personal musings from his GitHub diary: Bytemaster’s Blog. If you want to learn how to launch your own cryptocurrency, read his article, How to Launch a Crypto Currency Legally while Raising Funds.
Dan is one of those rare super gifted nerds (I use the term, ‘nerd’ affectionately in this case) who is so busy working out the details of his next invention that I’m pretty sure he doesn’t make time for things like going out with friends or relaxing with a beer or two. In fact, Dan told me that he has never even touched a drop of alcohol in his life.
Dan is a programmer, but I think of him more as a visionary inventor of systems. Dan’s stated mission in life is
“to find free market solutions to secure life, liberty, and property for all.”
It’s easy to get sucked into the Dan Larimer rabbit hole once you start studying his projects and lucky for you and me, we can experience his inventions first-hand by participating in the social media sites, Steemit and Busy, which run on top of the Steem blockchain.
If the phrase, “run on top of the Steem blockchain” sounds foreign to you, think of it this way: instead of data being stored in a company’s central server, it’s distributed all over, in a peer-to-peer, decentralized system that is transparent. This is the driving force behind the exponential growth of cryptocurrencies in recent times. Why? Because centralized systems are vulnerable to fraud, hacking, abuse of trust and opaqueness. Decentralized systems are not perfect, but they are much better than their centralized counterparts in these and other areas.
Dan’s Background
Daniel Larimer received a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Computer Science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 2003. He is currently focused in the areas of blockchain technology, cryptocurrency, decentralized exchanges, economic systems and freedom.
In 2009 he was attempting to engineer a digital currency when he discovered Bitcoin. He immediately got involved with Bitcoin and began communicating with Bitcoin creator, Satoshi Nakamoto in a Bitcoin forum. At this time he was alarmed by the amount of centralized exchanges being arbitrarily shut down. He came to the conclusion that decentralized exchanges would become necessary. It was at this time he created BitShares and invented BitUSD which is the first trustless cryptocurrency pegged to the dollar. For over two years he innovated and fine-tuned blockchain technology to support a decentralized exchange. The resulting technology is called Graphene and is what powers BitShares and Steem.
Dan Larimer is the co-founder of Steemit, Inc and its CTO until march 2017. He is the main architect of the Steem blockchain and Steem cryptocurrency. He’s also the CEO of Cryptonomex, Inc. which is a blockchain technology consulting company that was founded with his father, Stan Larimer. He founded the decentralized exchange BitShares and Invictus Innocations. He originated the idea of the “decentralized autonomous company” or DAC.
-Steemcenter, co-written by myself and the Steemit community
If you’re asking yourself right now, “What is BitShares?” Dan answers this question in his blog. To summarize, BitShares is a network, bank, ledger, company, exchange, software, community, currency and Dan asserts that it’s even a country. It’s not an easy concept for most people to grasp. It’s probably an invention 10 years ahead of its time, but judging from Coinmarketcap today, people are beginning to catch on now. BitShares is based upon many of the same principles as Ethereum’s The DAO.
If you really want to dive into the Dan Larimer rabbit hole, watch this video where he asks Vitalik Buterin some tough questions about Ethereum in 2014:
If your head is spinning from all this information, keep in mind, I’ve only just scratched the surface of his inventions. After Dan successfully built the Steem blockchain, he moved onto his next project, EOS.
If you thought BitShares was hard to grasp, EOS, is perhaps even more ambitious and difficult to understand for the average person. It took me several weeks just get a basic understanding of it, but thankfully, the EOS White Paper has just been released.
EOS is easier to understand when you recognize what problems it’s trying to solve.
Right now, blockchains have several problems that need solving: they are hard to scale up (look no further than the Bitcoin scaling war), they are costly (Ethereum charges a gas fee to use its network), they lack interoperability and they are difficult for legacy companies to navigate. Blockchain technology is redefining the entire internet, but for most company owners, there’s no easy way to adopt this brand-new revolutionary technology. I believe EOS is trying to make blockchain technology easy to adopt, by creating a blockchain operating system for companies.
Here’s an abstract from the EOS White Paper:
“The EOS.IO software introduces a new blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. This is achieved by creating an operating system-like construct upon which applications can be built. The software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across hundreds of CPU cores or clusters. The resulting technology is a blockchain architecture that scales to millions of transactions per second, eliminates user fees, and allows for quick and easy deployment of decentralized applications.”
-EOS White Paper
The EOS token sale will be launched on the Ethereum network, the EOS blog announced recently. The token sale will be ongoing for a year to ensure maximum and wide distribution. Many people were confused by this move, but I think it’s a wise move for financial reasons. Ethereum has been gaining some serious traction both with its price and popularity. It has the feeling of being a goliath already.
No one really understands how all of this will shakeout in the future, but here’s a reaction from a Steemit user named @zooropa that echoes some of the EOS excitement:
There's also a fair amount of criticism concerning EOS' decision to launch its token on the Ethereum network.
Do you have any insight as to what will happen after one year with EOS? Post your comments below.
If any of the above information is incorrect, please let me know as I have submitted this article to Hackernoon as well.
Thanks.
Hey @stellabelle
This story made it to the ღ #steempearls of @blackwidow7 . Check it out at https://steemit.com/steempearls/@blackwidow7/steempearls-10
Thank you for this introduction. I appreciated it to read more about one of the heads behind steemit and new EOS :)
you're welcome, glad to find your stuff too!
What a Legend. I see EOS as the future of blockchain. It has a lot of potential. The hype is not without a reason. Only thing that worries me is the possible crypto bubble while EOS going for 1 year ICO which might slow down it's process of establishing on the blockchain. Thanks for this article and thanks to Dan for being such a visionary and amazing dev.
It's weird how little information is out there about him. He remains sort of hidden and mysterious.
Well, atleast we know he's not Satoshi Nakamoto (or maybe he is?). :)
I dont belive in a big bubble, until the crypto markect is 50% of all fiat market cap, up and downs for sure, even Bitcoin can go down this summer. Eos is a very expected solution for the market.
That was really insightfull, I never really knew that much about Dan before I read this post. Apart from the obvious co-founding Steemit and being the brain behind Bitshares. Very informative post indeed thanks for sharing :) Have a great Sunday!
Wow, very thorough. I watched one of Dan's presentations on EOS and had a feeling this guy was a genius. Your post just solidified that for me. I also have a new crypto investing strategy. Invest in Dan. Hearing his questions to Vitalik, along with his track record, it really seems like his #1 priority is to make the technology that the world needs. Other cryptocurrencies will have their limelight, but in the end i'm betting on the person who really knows how to solve the issues, and makes that his priority (over branding and profit). I believe in the end, after other cryptocurrencies start hitting more and more scaling obstacles, a Dan Larimer project will rise to the very top.
good analysis. The fact that this blockchain was up and running in a matter of months is something people don't quite grasp. Also, people don't know that Dan was trying to create his own digital money even before he found Bitcoin. Many people before Satoshi also tried to create digital money.....it was Satoshi's invention which combined cryptography and the double-spend issue that made it solid. I read through Dan's conversations with Satoshi, and back then Dan was already working on figuring out solutions to the scaling problems. He's thinking waaaaay ahead, and it is possible that his solutions are designed to resolve things that Ethereum is not equipped to handle. The main issue with all of this is the fact the information is kind of hidden, and no one understands what exactly Graphene is. I have been attempting to grasp this, in order to comprehend why Graphene is superior to Ethereum, but I don't totally get it. I think it has to do with the fact that Graphene tech is Delegated Proof of Stake, and Ethereum is a hybrid of POW + POS. It gets murky, because one almost needs a computer programming degree to fully grasp what it all means, and how it will shake out in the future. I am still looking for an easy to grasp understanding of Graphene...I noticed that 'Graphene' is missing from the Steem Wiki....
Someone's been doing their homework!
I've been doing this homework for a year. Steemit is 100,000 more valuable than my college degree.
what else have you been researching on? would be good to know :)
Very impressive what he's done to date, people are going to reference this post in the future to write books on Dan Larimer!
Thank-you for the research you have done @steelabella. I'm sure one day you could write a good book on @dantheman!
at one point, I wanted to write a book about him. Perhaps I will...........
Sounds good @stellabella! I really like how you looking into these things, and wish @Satoshi would come back.
well, don't we all.....there are very few mysteries left...Satoshi is one of the biggest ones.
Thank you for posting this @stellabelle. I've been here on Steemit since last July and I've pretty much kept my head down and posted art stuff. Lately, though, I've become fascinated with how brilliant @dantheman is, and the depth of his contributions. Steemit has changed my life. Full stop. My career is becoming shaped by it's impact every day [...for the better]. I recently met up with some OG Steemit nerds in Minneapolis like @lovejoy, @fox, @mada and @robrigo, and they gave me a crash course on the Dan Larimer timeline. This post is a great companion to that conversation. I've always been a tech geek, but seeing the disruption blockchain technology is having worldwide is causing me to thirst for as much information as I can get.
when i found dan's blog on github, it was like i was hooked from that point on. Part of the thing about humans is that we expect geniuses to act a certain way and when they don't we get upset. Dan didn't explain why he was leaving Steemit, but I believe he follows the inventor's way, more than the businessman's way. Inventors get stimulated by creating NEW things, not fine-tuning their existing inventions. When we understand this basic nature of Dan, it's easier to accept him as a human being. He doesn't explain this himself, so I have come to this conclusion (based on seeing his work, but not being directly in communication with him).
I am just guessing, so therefore, none of this is fact-based. It's based on assumptions. But most business-minded people would have stayed with their product, like BitShares, instead of moving on to create Steem and then EOS. I think that Dan must create new things constantly in order to satisfy his restless and idiosyncratic mind that very few people can even remotely comprehend. And I think those who do, are similarly not really into communcation........at least not simplification of complex ideas. I have a very strong urge to understand everything that crosses my path, and Dan is one that continues to elude me. Elusive targets are the most desirable, at least to me, and if I am destined to be trapped inside a life of social isolation, then the least I can do is try to understand things that elude most of humanity.
It is too technical for me to actually answer your query in the fullest. But possibly Dan feels that ETH now has done something innovative that might make it overcome the scalability problems. An alternate thought is possibly he went for the better technology out there that will help out his new project. Hope I am not completely of the mark in terms of understanding your question :)
that's kind of what I was thinking as well. And, EOS is a team, so there are many people involved in the decision-making process, I would think......I don't know who made the decision to launch on Ethereum, but......someone does.
Great post and I agree Dan is way ahead of his time :)
i am pretty sure Dan is from the future.
Would not surprise me one bit. :)
@stellabelle You killed it. But why would I need to tell you. 😎👍
oh because i need to hear praise, just like everyone else. Last year I was planning on writing a book about Dan......
haha I can totally see that and in fact, I might read it if you do
I'm not sure how to put this, but last year, I was a little obsessed with Dan.
my obsessions tend to motivate me to learn something in-depth, as i have figured out how to harness curious energy. It took me so long to figure this out...
I have a similar thing going, focus-obsession wise. Still working on it.