Antelope Makes a Giant Leap for Interoperability as EOS Goes Multi-Chain

EOS, the frozen giant of the layer-1 world, is coming in from the cold. For most of its existence, it has existed as a siloed ecosystem, cut off from the DeFi universe that coalesced around Ethereum, the GameFi that developed on Polygon, and the NFTs that flourished on Solana. A lack of cross-chain bridges and a lack of reasons to bridge consigned EOS to exist in parallel with the EVM-driven blockchain landscape.

Now, EOS is preparing to embrace the EVM environment it once shunned, ushering in an era of deeper liquidity, new DeFi primitives, and blue chip projects porting over to the network founded by Dan Larimer many moons ago. Since severing ties with lead developer Block.one, EOS has been a blockchain reborn. In addition to finalizing its EVM implementation, EOS has nailed its interoperability credentials to the mast with the introduction of Antelope, an IBM solution for horizontal scaling.

But let’s start by considering an old foe reborn as a new friend: the EVM.

EOS Boards the EVM Train

The Ethereum Virtual Machine is ubiquitous in DeFi. As the runtime environment for smart contracts on the Ethereum blockchain – and subsequently many other chains – it supports the creation of decentralized applications. The EVM is responsible for executing the bytecode of a smart contract – that is, the compiled version of the contract's source code.

It’s not the best blockchain virtual machine, but it’s by far the most popular, and for this reason, protocol designers have strong incentives to bake in EVM support. By doing so, they make it easier for popular DeFi platforms, including blue chips such as Aave and Balancer, to deploy on new networks.

It may be late to the party, but EOS’ entrance into the EVM game could yet prove timely as the market is heating up once more and DeFi is being tipped to reassume center stage in crypto’s constantly evolving narrative.

On January 18, Yves La Rose, CEO of the EOS Network Foundation, shared details of what the EOS EVM will offer and the answer is a helluva lot – specifically, performance benchmarks that put every other EVM in the shade. La Rose claims that with the capacity to handle 800 tx per second, the EOS EVM will be four times faster than Solana. He also confirmed that EOS will serve as the EVM’s native token.

Pending final testnets and fine-tuning, the EOS EVM should be hitting its mainnet around March. Perfect timing for capturing a slice of the impending DeFi summer that many in crypto are predicting. But there’s more innovative work emanating from EOS than merely EVM deployment, novel as its implementation is. Antelope is a more radical scaling solution that represents a giant leap for interoperability into the bargain.

EOS Flaunts Its IBC Credentials

Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) is the protocol that allows different blockchain networks to communicate and transfer assets between them. This enables interoperability between different blockchain systems, allowing for the transfer of assets such as digital currencies and tokens between different networks. It’s most frequently discussed in the context of Cosmos, but IBC isn’t limited to any one blockchain ecosystem.

Antelope is EOS’ take on IBC but with significantly faster transaction finality. This means that assets can be locked on one network and unlocked on another in seconds rather than minutes as is generally the case. While at present it takes around three minutes for Antelope to complete this process, the introduction of Instant Finality will pare this time down to a matter of seconds. Significantly, this is achieved with deterministic finality, meaning that the transaction cannot be reversed.

While it’s easy to think of IBC as being useful solely in the context of moving assets from network A to network B, it’s actually capable of being utilized for much more. For instance, GameFi transactions could be conducted on a cheaper sidechain and then the final state broadcast to the parent network, or governance votes cast on multiple chains could be collated and recorded with the aid of IBC.

If the EOS EVM opens the door to Ethereum, Antelope will open the door to a multi-chain universe in which value can flow anywhere on demand and almost instantly. It is this breakthrough that will end EOS’ isolation from the blockchain landscape at large, ushering in a new wave of interoperable protocols capable of delivering liquidity on tap. After slumbering for so long, EOS is finally awakening.

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