### What Is EOS? EOSIO blockchain is a decentralized system that is powered by its native cryptocurrency, EOS, and supports decentralized applications (DApps) on its platform. Its native EOS tokens are often used for business purposes and can be used as a "stake" for funding DApps in the EOS ecosystem. Introduced in May 2017 by block.one, EOS does not stand for anything specific, because its creators have never formally defined it. Dan Larimer, who foundedBitshares and Steem, is the CTO of block.one. EOS initially held a year-long initial coin offering (ICO) in 2017, with a total of 200 million (20% of the tokens) distributed during a five-day period, 700 million more (70%) distributed over the rest of the year and 100 million (10%) held in escrow for block.one. The EOS protocol acts like Google's Play Store and Apple's App store, emulating most of the attributes of a real computer, including hardware (CPU(s) & GPU(s) for processing, local/RAM memory and hard-disk storage) with the computing resources distributed equally among EOS cryptocurrency holders. EOS also supports a web-toolkit used for interface development. In essence, EOSIO operates as a smart contract platform and decentralized operating system intended for the deployment of industrial-scale DApps through a decentralized autonomous corporation model. The smart contract platform claims to eliminate transaction fees and also conduct millions of transactions per second. EOS (EOS) is software that introduces a blockchain architecture designed to enable vertical and horizontal scaling of decentralized applications. The EOS software provides accounts, authentication, databases, asynchronous communication and the scheduling of applications across multiple CPU cores and/or clusters. ### How Do You Mine EOS? EOS cannot be mined like proof-of-work cryptocurrencies because it uses a delegated proof-of-stake system; instead, block producers create the blocks and are rewarded for each block by the creation of new EOS tokens. Block producers are disincentivized from giving themselves higher rewards by a limiting mechanism that prevents total annual token supply from increasing more than 5%. EOS token holders also have the power to vote out block producers that they feel are not adhering to the ideals of EOS. ### How Do You Buy EOS? You can buy EOS on any cryptocurrency exchange that supports the token. For the latest list of exchanges and trading pairs for this cryptocurrency, click on our [market pairs tab](https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/eos/markets).