Block.one has been struck by a talent vacuum following the resignation of four personnel in its highly sophisticated technical team. This was followed by the exit of two more software developers, who have all left to set up a new blockchain project nearing completion, called StrongBlock.
Founding Employees
David Moss, Thomas Cox, Brian Abramson, Correy J. Lederer were the second, third, fourth and fifth employees respectively to be hired by Block.one. Block.one is a blockchain company and the corporate parent responsible for the creation of the decentralized operating system and application environment EOS.
EOS is a well-known competing protocol which many saw as an alternative to ethereum and bitcoin blockchains at inception. EOS supplies crypto-tokens of the same name and boasts of a market capitalization worth over $5 billion today.
Read: Guide to EOS
Before their resignation, the four employees held technically sensitive roles at Block.one. Moss was the senior vice president of technology operations while Cox was the vice president of product. Abramson worked as the vice president of infrastructure and Lederer; the senior director of technology products.
Their resignation comes as a surprise considering the time they assumed office at Block.one. Moss and Cox who are among the executives joined in August last year while Lederer resumed in September. Their LinkedIn profiles, however, revealed the exit of four among the quintet during summer. Moss left earlier in May, a month prior to the launch of the EOS main network was published by Block.one.
Two test networks were launched in September and December 2017 by EOS, and two others in January and May this year. The month of June witnessed the launch of the primary network which then led to its release as an open-source software platform.
Commenting on the reason for their exit, one of the employees who resigned pointed out the need to address specific areas which Block.one was not heeding to.
“We left because we saw a need in the blockchain marketplace that Block.one was not going to address.”
There were, however, no comments on the new strategy StrongBlock has in its kitty to enhance the efficiency of the EOS blockchain.
Going by excerpts from tweets from the Global Media Blockchain Summit, Los Angeles in August, the CEO of StrongBlock, Moss hinted “EOS will be a 787 and StrongBlock will be a custom 787 factory,” lending credence to the amount of detail these former Block.one employees are putting into their new venture.
Lending the expertise of an EOS governance specialist, Branded Espinoza, the former Block.one associate formed StrongBlock in July 2018. The company is nevertheless still bidding its time with no indication of releasing its product anytime soon.
The exodus of these personnel has created a gap in the company’s professional team and can take a negative toll in operations going by the enormous amount of money raised from investors coupled with the early phases of a core product roll-out recently initiated.
Billionaire Investors
Block.one recorded the largest crowdfunding event from the sale of a new crypto-token after it completed a 12-month $4 billion initial coin offering in August 2017.
As at April, one EOS went for $20, and this was spurred by market demand. A quarter of the amount raised was reserved for rendering assistance in the development and financing of the EOS blockchain.
A league of billionaires took big bets on Block.one. including hedge fund managers Louis Bacon and Alan Howard, Venture Capitalist Peter Thiel and Cryptocurrency mining heavyweight, Bitmain, who invested in the final round of funding that was concluded at the ICO close.
