Dan Larimer, CTO of EOSIO blockchain has proposed steps to bring down EOS account opening costs. On July 12, 2018, he stated three simple steps which could significantly reduce EOS account opening charges. This comes after a sudden sharp increase in RAM prices in the last week of June. Increase in EOS RAM prices has made it more expensive for developers to acquire storage for their dapps and it also significantly harms the growth of the blockchain. It costs more than $10 to open an account after the sharp increase in RAM prices.
Three Step Solution
The first step in his plan is to increase the RAM supply by utilizing a feature in the EOSIO system contract which allows block producers to specify a rate of increase for RAM. He said increasing the RAM supply at a rate of 64GB per year could solve the problem. At the new supply rate, EOS blockchain will make more than 23 million EOS every year.
The default RAM usage for every account is 3KB. Out of the 3KB, 1.5KB is reserved for future expansion. Thus there has been an overestimation in the amount of RAM that will be required for every account. He said, “Block.one will provide an update to the system contract that will create 1.5 KB of RAM per account and retroactively offset the overly conservative usage estimate. The end result will be to reduce the minimum account creation RAM requirements by almost 50%.”
The controversy with EOS RAM prices
Block.one, the parent company behind the development of EOS is building a free hardware wallet for iOS platform using Apple’s Secure Enclave. The company can offer a free EOS account to every user of iOS wallet. Dan Larimer stated that he remains committed to ensure that EOS remains the fastest, lowest latency, most scalable and easiest to use blockchain platform on the market.
RAM prices had peaked in the last week of June. Investors began hoarding RAM hoping for a rise in prices. Block producers have been discussing ways to normalize prices.
Image provided by eos.io.
