I was away from the internet for a while and I missed the announcement about EOS doing an Ethereum ICO. I also have not received an e-mail about it, eventhough I did register myself on the mailinglist.
First impression I have of that are not good. If they are only doing an ICO on ethereum and not any other blockchain than it is a strange move and I think it is a slap in the face of bitshares. At the very least as a show of thanks for the people who helped make bitshares grow to what it is today, and that is one of the key value propositions of EOS, as in multithreaded bitshares-tech, and in remembrance of the social contract, 10% of the ICO could be done in a bitshares ICO. Now it feels like instead of sticking by bitshares despite all the bashing, and I've seen ethereum core-members and devs doing it, I've should have done the opposite. I understand wanting to attract people over from ethereum, but why not reward people who actually supported Dan Larimer creating the tech for EOS?
I wouldn't mind them diversifying to prevent the same loss in funds as happened with the btc-fundraiser with ags. But this does not sound like diversifying at all.
Also if they have to hold the tokens till the end of the ICO (which I've seen mentioned is planned to last 360 days or something like that), holding ethereum is not any less risky than bitcoin. Despite their massively active hype army, ethereum has just about all the same problems bitcoin has, although somehow that dirty laundry is not being flaunted about in the same public manner as with bitcoin. Worse yet I've seen people apparently in blind denial bashing bitcoin publicly, about all the things ethereum hasn't solved either. Just of the top of my head eth has massive scaling issues, right now, their blockchain is now larger than bitcoin and growing more rapidly (and no reward for people running full-nodes either), they have no decentralized governance to speak of, no voting mechanism at all apparently and need at the very least one or more hardfork(s) in the coming year. Also do not forget that any slow downs or problems with ethereum will have waay more catastrophic effects on the smartcontracts than with bitcoin.
@xeroc: I don't agree with your argument. There are ways to hold ICOs and value on bitshares without the need to crash the marketprice especially over a time period of a year. At the very least they should not hold the ICO solely on ethereum, because as mentioned that does show a lack of confidence. Hell, they could do an announcement saying that they'll immediately sell 10% of the gathered eth for bitshares and send those bitshares to a burn address or bts-dev-fund or whatever.
Also I was hoping this would not turn into a money grab up front. I understand the need for money to fund development, but EOS should be able to pay for itself instead of upfront. This whole hyped up ICO craze going on does have a scammy feel to it and I'd rather not help support it.
So much for my first impressions, I probably need to think more on this. Public discussion does help me shaping my opinion, how else would I ever change my mind on something.