The crypto sector endured a much-anticipated correction, with most of the best- performing cryptocurrencies losing between 5 and 35% of their price. Two of them, however, experienced massive price slumps, resulting in a daily loss of nearly a third of their price points.
EOS slumped 30% on January 11, almost wiping out the late December 2020 price pump. However, despite the price hit, EOS may be in a bigger trouble, as Block.one’s chief technology officer, Dan Larimer, announced he is stepping off as a CTO. And with EOS not managing to fortify the price increases like its rivals Cardano and Polkadot, the situation for the EOS holders becomes more and more intense.
Larimer announced his resignation on January 10, after the now-former Block.оne CTO making a Twitter post that he would “abandon the social media”. Larimer added that as of 31.12.2020, he is no longer CTO of Block.one.
The ex-CTO further explained that he is proud of the EOSIO software that he built.
“I will continue on my mission to create a free market, voluntary solutions for securing life, liberty, property, and justice for all. I do not know exactly what is next, but I am leaning toward building more censorship-resistant technologies. I have come to believe that you cannot provide “liberty as a service” and therefore I will focus my attention on creating tools that people can use to secure their own freedom,” Larimer posted.
However, the crypto community fired a backlash of negative comments, essentially bringing centralization concerns one more time. Eric Turner of Messari noted that the Reddit channel of EOS “is not a happy place right now”, as users accused Larimer of fleeing the project, “just like he did with Bitshare and Steem.”
Users started selling their EOS holdings shortly after Larimer’s resignation post, resulting in an even larger correction for the now #16 crypto asset. Crypto monitoring service WhaleAlert, however, noticed some large-scale transactions, some of them containing 1,183,047 EOS tokens, worth 3,444,078 USD as of the time of transaction.
Meanwhile, the altcoin leader – Ethereum, also slumped over 30%, recording its largest daily drop since the COVID-19-related Black Thursday market wipeout of March 12, 2020. As of press time, the price per ETH token is $1,006.27, which may be a sign that the second-largest cryptocurrency is trying to recover from the daily losses.
Most of the crypto analysts are believing that Ethereum’s price correction is nothing more than a trend follow-up, as Bitcoin also endured a steep downhill ride. However, some analysts are suggesting another theory, based on gas fees and transaction times.
President & co-founder of Securitize Jamie Finn noted that as Ethereum’s blockchain is getting more engagement, “you will have many developers search for another chain since it’s getting too expensive to process a transaction.”