A brief history
The EOSIO protocol was founded in 2017 by Dan Larimer and Brenden Blumer, under the Block. One company. Larimer acts as the lead architect and CTO behind the EOSIO software and is also known for having created the delegated proof-of-stake (DPoS) consensus mechanism used in the operation of the EOSIO blockchain. One of the main goals of EOSIO is to prioritize and optimize dapp performance. Because of this, EOSIO has made design choices meant to confirm more transactions per second while eliminating fees charged to users making transactions. EOSIO is also novel in that EOSIO programmers can develop Dapps using WebAssembly languages like C++, Java and Python, as opposed to a new project-specific programming language.

EOS in practice
The main function of the EOS token is to power dapps and facilitate governance on the EOSIO blockchain. First, there are three types of resources that power the EOSIO blockchain: Bandwidth (Disk), Computation (CPU), and State Storage (RAM). EOS is needed to purchase all three of these resources on EOSIO, meaning developers must buy EOS to run dapps they launch. As mentioned previously, EOSIO runs a delegated proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. DPoS uses a real-time voting and reputation system to decide who can create the next block on its blockchain, meaning that anyone who owns EOS can operate the network. However, the more tokens a user owns, the more likely they are to be chosen by the software. Each EOS token can be staked to represent one vote that can be used to support the development of the platform, and users who choose to stake their EOS are rewarded when they create new blocks on the platform. Lastly, owning EOS gives a user the ability to vote on decisions, while block producers are responsible for carrying out decisions that are approved.