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Scanning through articles about new and interesting crypto projects, I came across one that billed itself as the greenest blockchain. This caught my eye because I care about the environment. While I might not be out there hugging trees, protesting pipelines, and marching for science, I am concerned about ice caps melting in the Himalayans. This would cause widespread flooding and displace millions upon millions of people, creating the world's largest refugee crisis, and frankly, after Syria, I'm not confident the world is quite ready for that sort of deal.
The cries from the anti-Bitcoin crowd about Bitcoin consuming disgusting amounts of energy and heating the Earth can seem hyperbolic, at times, however, a little research reveals that folks in colder regions use the excess heat from their mining operation to heat their home. Inventive, yes, but also indicative of a larger problem.
In the meantime, projects raced for find ways to consume less energy. The focus shifted from a Proof-of-Work concept to a Proof-of-Stake concept. Ethereum gained popularity and then rivals came along like Cardano. It's said that while Bitcoin and Ethereum are out consuming as much energy as second-world nation-states, Cardano only needs a small town. Earlier this year we saw the sudden rise of Polygon, a sidechain for Ethereum with much faster transactions that cost much less money. One of a handful of solutions to the Ethereum gas problem that continues to plague the network while Ethereum 2.0 continues its path to release. Ethereum 2.0 promises to consume less energy, but, the climate problem is more immediate.
Naturally, when I discovered that the Telos network was making claims that they can move 440% faster than Polygon while consuming less energy than Polygon, I became interested. Then I found out that Telos has found a way to eliminate front-running, a problem plaguing projects across the crypto-verse, costing traders collectively millions of dollars a year in needless fees and upcharges. After becoming acquainted with the Polygon network, I thought I'd give the Telos network a try.
Telos is on a mission to make the user experience especially friendly. It is true that it is difficult to find a group of ten people who have never had a concern transacting on Ethereum. There is a big learning curve and it takes a lot of research. I can recall trying to stake a particular token and trying to locate a public key to which to send the tokens I wanted to stake, nothing was automated. Some of these issues have been addressed in subsequent developments and releases like UniSwap and QuickSwap, and things are trending towards easier. Telos, however, was originally built on EOS so it functions a lot like EOS.
To make things a bit more straight-forward Telos set up an on-ramp directly to the network via MoonPay. While MoonPay does not charge a fee, they do take the spread, but hey, we all have to make money somehow. I found that if I played with the dollar amount, the exchange rate changed, and sometimes, in surprising ways. Many times a $30 minimum buy had a better exchange rate than a $120 buy. The site, https://telos.net/buy/ doesn't have Level 2 access to an Order Book. Okay, fair enough.
The first transactions took roughly 3 hours to deliver tokens to my Anchor wallet due to the KYC verification. Subsequent transactions occur in under 10 minutes, closer to 5. Once the tokens made it to my Anchor wallet, I had to vote for at least 21 Block Producers on the network and up to 30. I submitted my votes and then it was time to purchase some resources for my account. I found that 0.5 TLOS was more than sufficient to purchase enough RAM for an opening position, at least. Excess RAM can be bought and sold and the price of RAM varies. Using TLOS to buy RAM on the network can be an investment in and of itself. Next, I needed to stake 2.0 TLOS on the CPU and 0.2 TLOS on NET. Everything beyond that can be lent to the Telos Resource Exchange (REX or T-REX).
In order to stake I used telos.bloks.io. I have the option to lend my liquid TLOS to REX which involves a 4-day lockup while the loan is processed or to lend my staked TLOS to REX and skip the lockup period. The site indicates a potential APY of 15.06% as of yesterday evening on the East Coast. I noticed that telos.staker.one/ has a similar set up and an even easier graphic user interface (GUI).
Within minutes of receiving the tokens, I had votes cast, resources reserved, and tokens staked to the network to power development. It was simpler than Polygon where the FAQ indicates that staking has to be done on the Ethereum, not the Polygon, network, meaning that staking will incur Ethereum gas fees. That leaves some very nice options for savings and borrowing the token on AAVE or entering LPs on QuickSwap, but it lacks the punch of being able to quickly and easily get your tokens staked.
I also had some TLOS in my METAMASK account and was only too happy to discover there is a bridge via dapp.ptokens.io. As the tokens were bridged I was reminded of the issues with the Ethereum Network. It took 12 minutes to complete the transaction and cost $1.53 after being quoted $4.38 in gas fees. Transactions on Telos have cost in the neighborhood of 0.001 TLOS, a fraction of a penny with current market prices. When I want to sell, I can send the tokens to an exchange wallet, whereas the Ethereum network often demands tokens not go directly to exchange wallets. All in all, a much friendlier experience with your transactions completing as soon as you sign them, there is no wait.
It's difficult to speak highly enough of the user-friendliness of the experience on Telos. This was as close to the experience that I envisioned when I first started in crypto as I have come and I am excited about it. If Telos can develop a front door that can be accessed via a Google account as they've discussed, the future could be pretty wide open. I like the transparency that I found on telos.bloks.io because I can identify how many developers are borrowing and using funds on the REX. There are also REX tokens that can be bought and sold.
Before jumping into any investment at all you should do some research on your own. In my process I found that the circulating supply of TLOS is 270,123,443.84 (CoinMarketCap) and the fully diluted market cap is $54,560,507 with volume today, July 9, being over $200k intraday. The total supply of TLOS is 355,208,371 and the current price is $0.1535 (up roughly 6%). Consider that the MATIC total supply is 10,000,000,000 with 6.33 billion already in circulation. It enjoys a fully diluted cap of $10 billion and a current cap of $6.5 billion. Yet, Telos wants to be compared directly to Polygon and MATIC via their marketing so the comparison needs to be made.
If you find that you want to research the Telos network more deeply, I suggest starting with telos.net. Specifically, they offer a guide to the technology, "a third-generation blockchain platform for building fast, scalable, distributed applications with feeless transactions."
Did I mention gas fees are fixed, not variable, on the Telos network?
