EOS is a blockchain technology platform that revolves around the use of project tokens. These platform tokens were launched in the summer of 2017 after a successful ICO (end June 2018)
The project is similar to Ethereum. Like Ethereum, EOS is a smart contract hosting platform designed for open source projects and consumer-facing decentralized applications (DApps). The platform's goal at launch was to take market share from Ethereum, promising a more scalable blockchain with better usability for large scale enterprises.
In short, EOS is a new approach to the Ethereum virtual machine. Unlike the Ethereum virtual machine, which acts as a distributed global supercomputer, the platform is built around an operating system in which developers can build applications.
EOS is a platform on which developers can build decentralized applications. Holders of project tokens can stake their coins to fund application development on the platform network. In the meantime, users can participate in the applications of the project for "free" without having to buy platform tokens.
Rather than charging users a fee to take action on the project's network, the platform's proof of system quotation ensures that bandwidth, compute, and storage capacity are allocated in proportion to the amount of EOS installed in the application.
Delegated Proof of Collision Algorithm (DPOS) is a key part of the platform. This is intended to meet the performance requirements of decentralized applications on the blockchain - including handling millions of users.
The platform blockchain produces blocks every 3 seconds. Exactly one manufacturer is entitled to produce a block at any given time. If the block is not created at the scheduled time, the block is skipped. Blocks are produced in 21 rounds. At the start of each round, 21 unique block producers are selected. In each round, the top 20 candidates are automatically selected, and the last manufacturer is selected in proportion to the number of votes compared to other manufacturers. The selected producers are shuffled using a random number (pseudo-randomness derived from block time). This shuffling ensures that all manufacturers maintain a balanced relationship with all other manufacturers.
One of the unique advantages of the platform blockchain is that it doesn't experience any forks. This is because block producers collaborate to create blocks, not compete. In case of a fork, the consensus automatically switches to the longest chain.