"That was the easiest money I ever made."

Written by: Huang Shiliang

EOS changed its name to A, the A of abcd, and in the exchange, it will be ranked first alphabetically as eos.

I have always had a good impression of EOS because during the first three months of its 350-day long ICO fundraising process, I participated in the primary market of EOS's ICO and arbitraged in the secondary market on exchanges, 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 $4 billion in ETH, issuing 900 million EOS tokens. It was an incredible fundraising effort, unprecedented and unlikely to be replicated.

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 in a one-time distribution during the first five days of the ICO (from June 26 to June 30, 2017);

Then it entered the second phase, which was a daily issuance mechanism. Every day (approximately every 23 hours), the EOS smart contract accepted users' ETH contributions and distributed 2 million EOS tokens proportionally based on the ETH contributions of all participants at the end of that round.

This daily issuance phase lasted a total of 350 days, during which 700 million EOS were issued. Combined with the 200 million from the first five days, the total reached 900 million, with an additional 100 million EOS reserved for the project team Block.one, resulting in a total issuance of 1 billion tokens.

EOS's ICO sold 900 million EOS-erc20 tokens, receiving $4.2 billion, totaling 7.2 million ETH.

At that time, very few people in the industry studied how to operate Ethereum contracts, how to fund the contracts, and how to claim the purchased tokens.

The tools back then were quite rudimentary, unlike today's contracts and wallets, which have very well-designed UI interfaces.

In 2017, the main wallet for Ethereum was MyEtherWallet, which I had a good impression of. The private key file was still a JSON file, and to operate the EOS ICO contract, various parameters had to be configured manually, which was somewhat better than command-line (DoS) operations.

Now, wallets like Metamask and imToken have integrated various contracts, perfectly visualizing all operational commands in a UI, allowing users to complete all contract interactions with just a click of a button.

At that time, using MyEtherWallet to participate in the EOS ICO required importing the private key JSON file each time, selecting the contract, choosing contract parameters and commands, and filling in the amount of ETH to inject into the contract, including gas fees, which were all user-defined.

Then, when it came time to claim (claim eos-erc20), several parameters had to be filled in again.

These operations were not commonly done at that time.

I was initially curious about EOS because I had previously played with various BitShares (the first project of EOS developer BM) around 2015. So I studied the EOS ICO on ETH seriously.

During the 350-day long ICO period, EOS could also be traded directly on exchanges. This meant that during the ICO period, both the primary and secondary markets were open simultaneously. However, the prices in the primary and secondary markets did not synchronize.

This created potential arbitrage opportunities.

At that time, I would recharge ETH into the ICO contract daily, and when the time came, I would claim eos-erc20 and then directly deposit it into the exchange to sell.

This simple arbitrage had no hedging, no j8 strategies, just a straightforward bet that the primary market price was cheaper than the secondary market, and I was able to make money consistently.

This money-making lasted a very long time; in the first three months, I hardly lost any money, but in the following months, I started to incur occasional losses, and after six months, I stopped.

Why did I initially dare to judge that the primary market price of eos would be cheaper? It was simply because there weren't many people buying coins in the ICO contract.

At first, when checking the on-chain interaction addresses, there were fewer than 100 each day. For most of the first three months, there were about 148 addresses, which I distinctly remember. Later, the number of addresses began to increase, and then the profits disappeared.

In this arbitrage game of betting on price differences between the primary and secondary markets, I also observed the behavior of hackers attacking the chain for profit.

Because of the mechanism that ended each round every 23 hours, it was often possible to calculate the price in the primary market during the last few minutes of a round, as the amount of ETH in the contract was transparent, allowing for a comparison with the secondary market price to determine if there was an arbitrage opportunity.

So often, in the last few minutes, there would suddenly be a large amount of ETH recharged, potentially causing the primary price to be higher.

Then, in the final minutes, hackers would construct terrifying transactions that consumed ETH gas, blocking the entire ETH chain and preventing others from injecting ETH into the eos ICO contract.

After one failed recharge, I learned my lesson. Every time I rushed for a share in the primary market at the last moment, I would max out the gas, which was a waste of money. After losing gas fees a few times, I stopped this game and let them compete; I had done my best.

That continuous six-month arbitrage battle did earn me some small money, but with fortune comes disaster, and many things left behind turned out to be disastrous upon reflection in the following years.

Because the EOS ICO had a 23-hour round mechanism, the claiming time changed daily in a one-hour gradient, so the time for rushing the primary market and claiming tokens was constantly shifting, meaning that one-third of the time occurred when I should have been sleeping.

But for the sake of making money, who cared about sleep? I would get up at midnight or 3 AM to work.

Staying up late once or twice was fine, but doing it continuously for a week became troublesome. And this wasn't just simple staying up late; there was huge financial profit involved, making each time either particularly exciting or extremely frustrating…

Of course, it wasn't just my health that suffered; I later realized there were even worse impacts.

At that time, I was leading a small team on a project. But seeing me in such a state every day, the brothers felt that the boss wasn't motivated, and it was even less likely for others to work hard.

Looking back, there was still a chance to succeed with this project, but I messed it up, harming my brothers. Later, in 2018, several brothers left voluntarily.

Thinking about it, I realized I was quite fragile, and it left me without the courage to lead a team again.

This year, when Musk made a high-profile entry into politics, I thought that his companies, including Tesla, X.com, and SpaceX, might suffer, which would be a loss for the whole world. When the boss doesn't take the lead, the company is unlikely to do well.

This experience also had another byproduct.

In 2017, during the peak of the BTC scaling controversy, I was a staunch supporter of scaling and loved to write articles expressing my support.

Perhaps because I made money from EOS arbitrage, I became inflated, and coupled with my poor sleep, I might have been too arrogant in expressing my views in articles and groups, offending quite a few people.

Later, I was subjected to online harassment. Having experienced online harassment made me very timid on the internet.

To this day, I still feel quite cowardly online and no longer dare to curse at people.

There were two experiences at that time that left a deep impression on me.

One was when the RSK (a Bitcoin sidechain project) team came to China for a roadshow. Because I had written many articles on sidechains in earlier years, their team invited me to speak with them. I criticized them quite harshly over the phone for not being firm on scaling. Ah, I was really overstepping, so foolish.

The night before the call, at 3 AM, I was still working on the EOS ICO, too excited to sleep, and when I answered the phone, I had no energy to speak properly.

Another time, a reporter from a certain newspaper called to interview me about scaling. I blurted out, "Do you dare to publish my exact words?" because I said many things unfavorable to small block supporters. Ah, actually, if I had just talked about the technology, it might have been better.

I was too inflated at that time; I have always been a very humble person.

Time flies, and the EOS ICO has been eight years past. The money I earned has been lost, leaving only some memories.

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