What Is Vaulta?

Vaulta, known as EOS until its 2025 rebrand, is a blockchain platform designed for building and deploying high-performance decentralized applications. Originally developed by Block.one, a Cayman Islands-based company, and created by Dan Larimer (who also created BitShares and Steem), EOS launched in June 2018 after a year-long token sale that raised approximately $4 billion, making it one of the largest initial coin offerings in cryptocurrency history. The network is now guided by the EOS Network Foundation (ENF), an independent community-led organization that took over stewardship after the community grew dissatisfied with Block.one's level of involvement.

In 2025, EOS rebranded to Vaulta and repositioned itself around "Web3 banking," a strategy focused on consumer financial services such as payments, wealth management, investment, and insurance built on the network. As part of the rebrand, the EOS token was replaced by a new native token called A at a 1:1 ratio, with the token swap opening on May 14, 2025. The underlying blockchain, its transaction history, total supply, and core Antelope technology stayed the same; only the name, ticker, and strategic focus changed. This article uses "EOS" for the network's history and "Vaulta" for its current identity.

Overview - Table of Contents
What Is Vaulta?
Getting Started With Vaulta
How To Get A Vaulta Wallet?
Vaulta Resources
How To Buy Vaulta?
Latest Vaulta News

Delegated Proof of Stake

EOS uses Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS), a consensus mechanism where EOS token holders vote for 21 block producers who validate transactions and produce blocks in rotating rounds. Block producers are elected continuously; their position is not fixed, and they can be voted out at any time if the community is dissatisfied with their performance. This design enables high throughput and fast block times of 0.5 seconds without the energy consumption of Proof of Work mining. The relatively small number of block producers has been a persistent point of debate: critics argue it creates centralization risks, while supporters maintain that the accountability of continuous elections and the performance benefits justify the trade-off. Voter turnout and the potential for vote-buying among block producers have been ongoing challenges for the governance model.

The Resource Model: Fee-less Transactions

A distinctive feature of EOS is its resource model, which works fundamentally differently from the gas fee systems used by Ethereum and most other smart contract platforms. Instead of paying per-transaction fees, EOS users stake tokens to reserve network resources: CPU (computation time), NET (bandwidth), and RAM (on-chain storage). Once resources are staked, transactions are effectively free for end users. This model was designed to enable consumer-facing applications where users do not need to hold cryptocurrency or understand blockchain mechanics to interact with an application. EOS has been described as a "decentralized operating system." Developers who hold EOS tokens can deploy applications on the network in much the same way that owning server capacity lets them deploy traditional web applications.

Smart Contracts and Developer Tools

EOS smart contracts are written in C++ and compiled to WebAssembly (WASM), offering high execution speed compared to the interpreted virtual machines used by some competing platforms. The platform supports human-readable account names (up to 12 characters) instead of long hexadecimal addresses, making user interaction more intuitive. EOS also provides built-in account-based permissions, allowing fine-grained access control (for example, separate keys for transferring funds versus updating a smart contract). Multi-signature transactions and account recovery features are built into the protocol, and applications can share frameworks and libraries to accelerate development.

The ICO and Block.one History

The EOS token distribution ran for 341 days beginning June 26, 2017, structured in phases: 200 million tokens (20%) were distributed during the first five-day period, 700 million tokens (70%) were split across 350 consecutive 23-hour periods, and 100 million tokens (10%) were reserved for Block.one. The extended distribution was designed to give participants time to evaluate the project and to promote wide token distribution. However, the uncapped fundraise drew criticism: with billions of dollars raised and no hard cap, questions arose about how the excess funds would be managed. Block.one ultimately settled with the SEC for $24 million over conducting an unregistered securities offering.

Dan Larimer departed Block.one in early 2021, continuing a pattern of moving on from projects he founded (having previously left both BitShares and Steem). Block.one's diminishing engagement with the EOS ecosystem led the community to establish the EOS Network Foundation as an independent entity to fund development, coordinate upgrades, and rebuild the ecosystem.

EOS EVM and the Antelope Coalition

Under the ENF's leadership, EOS has undergone significant revitalization. The EOS EVM was launched as a compatibility layer that allows Ethereum smart contracts (written in Solidity) to run on the EOS network, bridging the two ecosystems and giving EOS access to Ethereum's developer tooling and DApp ecosystem. The core protocol is developed as part of the Antelope coalition alongside other DPoS chains including Telos and WAX, sharing a common open-source codebase. Tokenomics changes were implemented to reduce inflation and improve the sustainability of the network's economic model.

The Rebrand to Vaulta

In March 2025, the EOS Network Foundation announced that it would rebrand the project to Vaulta, and CEO Yves La Rose presented the new identity publicly at the Bitcoin 2025 conference that May. The foundation itself became the Vaulta Foundation. The change reframed the project from a general-purpose smart contract platform into what Vaulta describes as a "Web3 banking" network, aimed at consumer financial services including wealth management, payments, investment, and insurance. The blockchain and its technology were unchanged; the rebrand was a change of name, ticker, and focus rather than a migration to a new chain.

The EOS token was renamed and re-ticked as A. Holders swap EOS for A at a fixed 1:1 ratio with no fees, using the Vaulta Swap Portal (hosted on the Unicove wallet) for self-custodied tokens, while many exchanges converted customer balances on their behalf. The swap opened on May 14, 2025 and ran in both directions for the first four months, after which it became one-way, allowing only EOS-to-A conversions. There is no hard deadline to swap, though Vaulta recommends doing it early. Total supply, allocation, and vesting schedules carried over unchanged from EOS.

Getting Started With Vaulta

Getting started with Vaulta (the network's token now trades as A):

Step 1: Create an EOS account. Unlike most blockchains, EOS uses human-readable account names (up to 12 characters).
Step 2: Purchase the token (now traded as A, formerly EOS) from a major cryptocurrency exchange.
Step 3: Transfer EOS to your account. Note that EOS transfers to exchanges require a memo field.
Step 4: Stake EOS for network resources, vote for block producers, or explore DeFi and EOS EVM applications.

How to Get a Vaulta Wallet?

Anchor Wallet

Anchor is the most popular EOS wallet, developed by Greymass. It is available as a desktop application for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Anchor supports all EOS features including resource management, block producer voting, and DApp interactions through its built-in browser.

Wombat Wallet

Wombat is a mobile and browser extension wallet for EOS that simplifies account creation and provides a user-friendly interface for managing EOS tokens, staking, and voting.

Hardware Wallets

Ledger hardware wallets support EOS and can be used with compatible wallet software like Anchor for secure offline key storage.

Vaulta Resources

How to Buy Vaulta?

Vaulta, now trading as A (formerly the EOS token), is available on many major exchanges:

Centralized Exchanges

Following the rebrand, the token trades under the ticker A (Vaulta) rather than EOS. Major exchanges including Kraken and Binance supported the 1:1 swap, with many converting customer EOS balances to A automatically; some, such as Coinbase, chose not to perform the swap for customers and left holders to do it themselves. Some platforms may still display the older EOS name during the transition. Note that transfers on the native network require a memo field when sending to exchange deposit addresses; omitting the memo can result in lost funds.

Decentralized Exchanges

On the EOS network, Defibox is a popular DEX for native EOS token swaps. EOS is also available through the EOS EVM ecosystem's decentralized exchanges, which support Ethereum-compatible tokens and trading pairs.

Latest Vaulta News

The defining recent development for the network is its 2025 rebrand from EOS to Vaulta, which replaced the EOS token with the A token at a 1:1 ratio and repositioned the project around Web3 banking. The token swap opened on May 14, 2025 and remains available with no hard deadline.

Building on that direction, the Vaulta Foundation has outlined a suite of financial products. Omnitrove, a treasury management platform announced for an early 2026 launch, is designed to connect more than 25 blockchain networks, major exchanges, and traditional bank accounts in a single interface. The wider ecosystem also includes exSat, a project that aims to extend Bitcoin with additional data and smart contract capabilities. The underlying network continues to be developed through the Antelope coalition alongside other DPoS chains, and the EOS EVM remains available for Ethereum-compatible applications.