In August 2018, in a hotel conference hall in Beijing, Li Xiaolai made a promise to a full audience: "Let's revisit EOS in seven years." At that time, EOS was at its peak—raising $4.1 billion in ICO funding, setting an industry record, and being dubbed the "Ethereum killer." Although the price had fallen from its high, it still remained above $5.
On August 10, 2025, the price of EOS was fixed at $0.5357, a staggering 89.7% drop from that year. Ironically, this project, which once carried the dream of disrupting blockchain, has lost its name "EOS" and now struggles to be reborn under the name "Vaulta" amidst the wreckage of cryptocurrency.
Li Xiaolai's collaboration with EOS founder Dan Larimer (BM) began in 2013. When BM rushed to Beijing with a brand new blockchain project, the first person he sought out was Li Xiaolai. "I am an investor in EOS, a small shareholder with 5%," Li Xiaolai defined his role in a 2017 interview. Behind this low-key statement was Li Xiaolai's actual control over EOS's fate in the Chinese market.
In 2017, Li Xiaolai cleverly bound his planned Pressone project with EOS. The crowdfunding results of Pressone were astonishing: $470 million raised in 4 hours, and $200 million completed in less than three days. Since Pressone accepted EOS tokens for crowdfunding, the surge in demand directly boosted EOS's market value.
"After the third wave of EOS, the value will look at 500 RMB," and "EOS itself has no risk; the biggest risk is that you think there is risk"—these quotes from Li Xiaolai spread wildly in the crypto circle, elevating EOS to a pedestal.
However, when the 2018 supernode election raised doubts about "Li Xiaolai controlling 8 nodes," the EOS official quickly distanced itself. BM publicly declared: "Li Xiaolai is an investor, not a member of the BlockOne team, and has never participated in management." The once-prominent supporter suddenly became a burden they were eager to shed, revealing the role shift in this capital game.
From 2017 to 2018, EOS created the largest ICO myth in cryptocurrency history: raising $4.1 billion over a year, far exceeding the IPO scale of most tech companies at the time. Its technical promises were dazzling: millions of TPS, zero fees, and a developer-friendly environment, presenting itself as a "Blockchain 3.0."
Reality, however, quickly shattered the illusion. When investors opened EOS's technical "black box," they found three fatal flaws:
Performance disillusionment: The advertised million TPS never exceeded 4,000 in actual tests, and transaction delays could reach several minutes during network congestion.
Governance disaster: The 21 supernodes were monopolized by exchanges and capital, and the ECAF arbitration body could freeze accounts at will, rendering the promise of decentralization a joke.
Ecosystem collapse: After the SEC fined Block.one $24 million in 2019, development resources sharply dwindled, with 95% of on-chain transactions deemed "zero-value operations" by a study from Imperial College.
Meanwhile, new public chains like Solana and Avalanche seized the market with higher efficiency and lower costs. EOS's market value shrank from a peak of $18 billion to less than $800 million, and the token price plummeted from a high of $20 in 2018 to $0.4 at the beginning of 2025, a drop of over 98%. The once "Ethereum killer" was completely marginalized.
On March 18, 2025, the beleaguered EOS team made a last-ditch effort: rebranding as Vaulta and fully pivoting to Web3 banking. This was not just a brand overhaul but a complete business reconstruction:
The new token Vaulta replaced EOS through a 1:1 swap, retaining the foundation of multi-chain interoperability but integrating the exSat platform to achieve Bitcoin ecosystem compatibility, claiming to transform BTC from "digital gold" into a "cash cow"—despite Bitcoin's PoW mechanism not supporting staking, raising suspicions of conceptual fraud. Focusing on three major scenarios: crypto asset custody, payment settlement, and compliance tools, they formed a banking advisory group to connect with traditional finance. The brand name Vaulta (derived from "Vault," meaning safe) directly addresses the core demand for asset security.
They reserved 250 million tokens for staking rewards, paired with a 17% APY to attract holders. However, critics pointed out that this was merely "Ponzi fuel," and the two-way exchange mechanism could trigger a sell-off.
The market's reaction to this gamble was divided. After the announcement, EOS's price surged 30% in a single day, indicating some investors' optimistic expectations. However, professional analysis firm TokenView reported that the transformation failed to reverse the long-term decline, and the price quickly fell back to around $0.43.
Vaulta's transformation narrative faced three paradoxes: first, the contradiction of technical feasibility. Vaulta claimed to "use EOS's RAM to store Bitcoin transaction data," which technical experts mocked as "running ChatGPT on a Nokia 3310." The "theoretical value" of EOS's 1-second block time often stalled due to network congestion in actual operation, making it difficult to support high-frequency financial transactions.
Second, there was a regulatory compliance black hole. Partners Ceffu and Spirit Blockchain lacked banking licenses. When Vaulta claimed to provide KYC/AML compliance tools, its parent company Block.one was still shamed by the 2019 SEC fine incident. Lastly, there was a red ocean of market competition. The Web3 banking space had already seen projects like Celo and Algorand. The actual liquidity of the Vaulta ecosystem was less than 0.1% of Bitcoin's, and the so-called "200+ trading pairs" were confirmed by on-chain data analysis to be mostly wash trading bots.
A deeper hidden danger lay in the team's trust crisis. After cashing out 160,000 BTC, Block.one had shifted resources to the NFT platform Voice and the exchange Bullish, criticized by industry observers as a "textbook case of cashing out." With the founding team's energy and resources already dispersed, was Vaulta a strategic rebirth or a last-ditch rescue?
Li Xiaolai, who stood on the podium seven years ago, could not have imagined that the project he had high hopes for could not even retain its name. In May 2025, as exchanges like OKX and Binance completed the token swap from EOS to Vaulta, the most expensive experiment in blockchain history officially changed its name and ownership.
And that evangelist who once claimed that holding EOS "had no risk" has not publicly discussed the project since 2022. When reporters recently inquired about his views on Vaulta, Li Xiaolai's team only replied: "In the crypto circle, the only thing more deceptive than a white paper is the plane ticket of a founder who runs away overnight."
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