UPDATED 21:01 EDT / MAY 29 2018

EMERGING TECH

Block.one initial coin offering approaches record $4B in token sales

After setting a record initial coin offering of $185 million in July 2017, decentralized blockchain platform startup Block.one has done it again with a new ICO that’s now approaching $4 billion in token sales.

Based in Hong Kong, Block.One is building a blockchain platform called EOS.IO that aims to “decentralize everything.” Described by the company as an operating system, the platform allows scalable “decentralized autonomous communities” to be built, launched and governed through the support of asynchronous smart contract communication.

“Block.one intends for the EOS.IO software to support distributed applications that have the same look and feel as existing web-based applications, but with all of the benefits of the blockchain – namely transparency, security, process integrity, speed and lower transaction costs,” the company previously explained.

The platform is being pitched at high-volume enterprise users with the promise that it can support hundreds of thousands of transactions a second without charging users any fee — that is, more cheaply and quickly than services provided by traditional financial payment providers.

Unlike a traditional company seeking to sell tokens over a set, usually small time frame, Block.one’s ICO appears to have also set a record for the longest ICO ever. The Wall Street Journal reported that it is now set to close June 1 after having opened June 26 last year. The same report pegs the figure likely to be raised once the ICO closes at $4.2 billion, surpassing the previous record holder Telegram, which announced May 2 that it had raised $1.7 billion in ICO presales.

The ICO news is a positive, but Block.one is not without problems. Chinese security researchers recently identified issues with the EOS codebase.

Described by Qihoo 360 as “a series of high-risk security vulnerabilities,” the issues include the ability for arbitrary code to be executed remotely on EOS nodes. That could allow an attacker to take control over all nodes running on EOS, according to Cryptovest.

The Journal report also raised some questions about the ICO and Block.one’s business plan. It said the company has not explained how the funds would be allocated and that it doesn’t appear to have a clear plan on how to develop the project.

Image: Block.one

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