EOS history and roadmap: from the $4 billion ICO to Vaulta

6 min read

EOS history in numbers

Before the timeline, a few figures that frame the story. They explain why EOS still gets so much attention despite its small market cap today.

2017–2018: the record ICO and the launch

EOS began at Block.one, a company co-founded by Brendan Blumer (CEO) and Dan Larimer (CTO). The EOS.IO technical whitepaper appeared in 2017, describing a blockchain that would feel like a web platform: fast, with no fees for users, and with human-readable accounts.

Then came the token sale. Instead of a single event, Block.one ran a year-long ICO from June 2017 to June 2018, selling 900 million tokens. It raised a figure widely reported as about $4.1 billion. Block.one kept 100 million tokens for itself, vesting over ten years.

The market went with it. Legacy EOS hit its all-time high of about $22.9 at the end of April 2018 (CoinMarketCap; CoinGecko lists $22.71). The mainnet followed: the genesis block is dated 8 June 2018. Launch had slipped from 2 June after security researchers at Qihoo 360 reported a vulnerability, and within days the new chain froze for several hours. It was a rocky start, but the network has been running ever since.

1. 2017EOS.IO whitepaper published

   Block.one outlines a high-throughput smart contract platform with no user fees.

2. June 2017Year-long ICO begins

   900 million tokens to be sold over 12 months, priced in ETH.

3. April 2018All-time high

   EOS peaks at about $22.9 (CoinMarketCap) near the end of the month.

4. June 2018Mainnet launch

   Genesis block on 8 June; the chain activates after the 15% stake threshold is met and briefly freezes days later.

2019–2020: the SEC settlement and the quiet years

On 30 September 2019, the US Securities and Exchange Commission announced that Block.one would pay a $24 million civil penalty for conducting an unregistered securities offering. Block.one neither admitted nor denied the findings. For a company that raised billions, many in the community saw the fine as a slap on the wrist.

Block.one’s attention was increasingly elsewhere. It launched Voice, a blockchain-based social network that later shut down. The community grew frustrated that the company was not spending its war chest on the EOS ecosystem. On our Is EOS safe? page we look at what that criticism means for holders today.

2021: the community takes over

2021 was the turning point. Three things happened in quick succession:

• PowerUp replaced the old staking-for-resources model. The transition started in February and was fully in effect on 8 April 2021, making it far cheaper to rent CPU and NET for a day.
• Dan Larimer left Block.one, effective 31 December 2020 and announced on 10 January 2021. EOS dropped around 20–30% on the news.
• In August 2021, Yves La Rose founded the EOS Network Foundation (ENF), funded through block-producer consensus, to coordinate development and grants.

In December 2021, block producers executed a multisig that stopped token vesting to Block.one. It was the clearest sign that the community, not the original company, now controlled the chain. Block.one, meanwhile, had launched the Bullish exchange.

2022–2023: Antelope, EVM and the legal fight

Block.one had stopped developing the EOSIO software. In early 2022, EOS joined Telos, WAX and UX Network in a coalition to maintain the code themselves. Their fork, first code-named Mandel, was renamed Antelope in August 2022, and its node software Leap 3.1 was activated on EOS through a hard fork on 21 September 2022. That ended EOS’s technical dependence on Block.one. Our Antelope and EOSIO page covers the technical side.

The legal fight escalated too. In February 2022 the ENF said it was exploring legal action seeking $4.1 billion from Block.one. In July 2023 it announced a lawsuit over Block.one’s unfulfilled $1 billion ecosystem investment pledge. Separately, Block.one agreed to settle a US class action from token buyers for $22 million, and in August 2023 the ENF urged holders to opt out.

On the tech side, Leap 4.0 arrived in April 2023 with multi-threading improvements, and EOS EVM launched on 14 April 2023 as an Ethereum-compatible layer running inside EOS.

1. March 2022Antelope coalition forms

   EOS and Telos join first, followed by WAX and UX Network.

2. September 2022Leap 3.1 hard fork

   EOS switches to the community-maintained Antelope code base.

3. April 2023EOS EVM and Leap 4.0

   An EVM layer opens for Solidity developers; node performance improves.

4. July 2023ENF sues Block.one

   The suit targets the unfulfilled $1 billion ecosystem pledge.

2024: new tokenomics, staking and one-second finality

2024 was the busiest technical year in EOS history.

• exSat, a Bitcoin “docking layer” incubated in the EOS ecosystem, was announced in April and launched late in the year.
• Around 31 May 2024, producers approved a 2.1 billion maximum supply, retiring about 80% of planned future emissions and introducing a four-year halving. Full details are on our EOS tokenomics page.
• On 8 July 2024, REX 2.0 went live with a 250 million token Staking Rewards Reserve and a 21-day unstaking period. Early yields were reported at over 60% while few tokens were staked.
• On 25 September 2024, the network hard-forked to Spring 1.0 and activated Savanna consensus, cutting finality from about 3 minutes to about 1 second.

2025: Vaulta, the A token and a new direction

On 18 March 2025, the EOS Network announced it would rebrand as Vaulta, repositioning the chain as an “operating system for Web3 banking”. The token jumped about 30% on the news. The chain itself didn’t change: same chain ID, same accounts, same contracts.

The 1:1 swap from EOS to A went live on 14 May 2025. Swaps ran in both directions for the first four months, then became one-way (EOS to A), with no deadline. Binance, Kraken, KuCoin, OKX and others swapped balances for users; Coinbase did not, and later delisted EOS. The rest of the year brought mixed news:

1. April 2025Upland leaves EOS

   The biggest consumer dApp stops on EOS on 28 April and moves to its own appchain.

2. May 2025Token swap goes live

   EOS converts 1:1 into A via the core.vaulta contract.

3. July 2025World Liberty Financial partnership

   Announced on 23 July; WLFI had bought about $6 million of EOS/A in May.

4. October 2025EOS EVM shut down

   Support ends on 8 October; users are pointed to XSAT EVM. Omnitrove, an institutional treasury platform, is announced.

5. November 2025Leadership change and Coinbase exit

   Yves La Rose announces his resignation as Vaulta Foundation CEO; Coinbase delists EOS on 26 November.

2026 so far

We found few major primary-source announcements in 2026. Market data recorded a new all-time low of about $0.058 in early June 2026. Bitfinex reportedly delisted A in July (we could not read the primary notice), and the Exodus wallet planned to end EOS support on 1 August 2026. Meanwhile, the chain kept running: Spring 2.0 development builds have been published on GitHub since mid-2025, and about 940 million EOS had been swapped into A when we checked.

Track the market side on our EOS price page.

EOS roadmap: what comes next

Vaulta’s published plans rest on four pillars:

The one roadmap item written into the chain itself is the emission halving on 1 June 2028, when the continuous rate drops from about 3.6% to about 1.8%. Everything else depends on execution and adoption. We have not found a verified 2026 roadmap or a confirmed name for the new Vaulta Foundation CEO, so treat any claims about either with caution.

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