Little-known to the average investor, data markets hold tremendous value for both developers and traders. The EOS RAM market \u2013 selling memory space to developers \u2013 is seeing a spike in price per megabyte due to centralized ownership.<\/p>\n
In order to distribute RAM across the EOS network, the EOSIO Dawn 4.0 mainnet uses an updated market-based allocation approach allowing token holders to buy and sell database space at prevailing market prices.<\/p>\n
Decentralized applications require a significant amount of memory space to store temporary data for their\u00a0programs, which developers can purchase with EOS on the EOS RAM market.<\/p>\n
Although an innovative solution to RAM distribution, the market-based approach leaves the allocation of RAM susceptible to shortages and price inflation.<\/p>\n
In the blog post announcing EOSIO\u00a0Dawn 4.0, CTO Daniel Larimer wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n “Under the Dawn 3.0 system contract, you could only sell RAM for the price you paid. The goal was to disincentivize hoarding and speculation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As stated, the previous version of the RAM market used a fixed price mechanism to prevent hoarding and speculation in the marketplace. Alternatively, the updated RAM market lets trades fluctuate the value of RAM on the network.<\/p>\n “Under Dawn 4.0 the system contract now buys and sells RAM allocations at prevailing market prices. This may result in traders buying RAM today in anticipation of potential shortages tomorrow.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n It's becoming evident the new market-based approach enables speculators to profit from hoarding RAM \u2013 removing the incentive to leave database space available for developer use and causing the price per MB to rise rapidly.<\/p>\n An EOS community member, @ferdousbhai, took to Twitter\u00a0to share the increasing scarcity of RAM on the EOS network:<\/p>\n When buying RAM, you are trading against Bancor algo. The algo is fed $EOS<\/a> from all people that bought RAM before you. <\/p>\n The algo doesn\u2019t care how high the price is and will pay literally anything until people start giving back the RAM.<\/p>\n At 99% utilization, 1KB RAM costs 147 EOS. pic.twitter.com\/atv2mdGyDj<\/a><\/p>\n — Ferdous \u0e3fhai (@ferdousbhai) July 3, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nWhales Corner the Market<\/h2>\n
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