December 15, 2021

The Helios Team: Chris Barnes

Where it all began.

My introduction into cryptocurrency began with listening to Andreas Antonopolous on the Joe Rogan Podcast in Dec of 2013. I was immediately hooked by a couple of the philosophical arguments as to why Bitcoin was so important to the world. Banking the unbanked, diluting the power of central banks, and creating a free market global solution to storing and trading value.

I was arguably a BTC maximalist for a few years following until I learned about EOS and how it’s increased performance as a smart contract platform could indeed provide an ecosystem where life, liberty, and justice for all could flourish. It was for these philosophical reasons that I joined the EOS community and am a genesis account holder.

Why EOSIO?

Undeniably the best part about EOS is the community. There are some incredibly talented, and passionate individuals in this community. Especially those that have stuck around since the beginning of this project. It’s absolutely undeniable that this has been a long and difficult road to hold EOS through. EOS holders have experienced huge opportunity costs compared to the rest of the crypto market, and we’ve been subject to arguably the biggest bait and switch in all of crypto. Even after all of this there is still a strong community of believers who see the underlying potential of EOSIO technology.

Future EOS development I would like to work towards.

I’m always looking for ways to make our ecosystem more inviting for investors and developers, one aspect in particular that i would like to address is about the aggregation of EOS tokens by exchanges that then participate in governance on behalf of their user’s tokens. The idea for example that exchanges can even be BPs is a questionable one that I would like to see the EOS community take a serious look at and decide if this is the best path forward for the long term success of our ecosystem.

In terms of how I think this issue could be addressed, one way is to create enough incentive for token holders to withdraw their tokens and self-custody. A suggestion that has been presented that I like is to first redirect some EOS inflation to REX increasing the APR for stakers. Then take a small slice of that inflation and direct it only to accounts that are proven to belong to a unique human. This can either be an Eden-tied account, or perhaps using the Port project that was presented during this first season of Pomelo. With Port anyone with a passport (so is limited to those with passports) can scan it and then have that verified unique identifier tied to an EOS account. These unique human accounts can then receive an increased APR compared to the other staked tokens (some of which will also belong to exchange accounts).

My plans for Helios.

EOS has been starved for investment since its inception. EOS VC had great promise yet poor delivery. Helios to me is a community driven VC opportunity to direct capital to projects and individuals who are committed to build primarily on EOS or at least build in such a way that EOS benefits from the investment.

Another big aspiration of Helios is to unite the EOSIO family. The narrative of EOS vs TELOS vs WAX vs Ultra vs SOL vs ADA etc… is a losing one. If being combative is how we intend to treat the crypto world (which I don’t think we should be doing either) we should at least view it as EOSIO vs SOL vs ADA etc… The EOSIO community is stronger together if we can effectively coordinate to identify synergies and opportunities for mutual benefit. Helios aims to help facilitate this type of relationship across all key stakeholders.

My progress with Helios so far.

In 1 month Helios was able to structure a core vision, and assemble a core team to execute that vision. In addition this newly formed team created the Helios brand, website, socials, introduction video, and all of the pieces of copy that have been shared thus far. Helios had also made great strides in support of and was on the verge of announcing a European ETP (exchange traded product) demonstrating the rate at which the Helios team can enable positive financial change within this ecosystem.

Of course with the recent change in anticipated available funding, Helios is now going to demonstrate it’s organizational agility to press forward as a Venture Capital entity looking for founders and investors to partner with. We are looking for founders and investors to engage with so that Helios can deploy capital to enrich our ecosystem, my direction on this has not changed.

‍