EOS: the network is currently overloaded

In the last week, the EOS network has been overloaded with a significant congestion of resources, especially the CPU. As a result of this overload, many users with few resources are unable to carry out transactions.

The EOS blockchain works using 3 different parameters, CPU, RAM and NET: the more EOS is staked by an account, the more resources will be available to carry out all transactions and operations.

By checking the various graphs related to the trend of CPU usage on the EOS blockchain, the overload began at the end of October, when the average CPU had reached considerable peaks that were prolonged in the following days. The CPU parameter is measured in milliseconds.

To obtain an estimate of the use of resources, it is necessary to keep in mind that by staking 1 EOS it is possible to make a thousand transactions (each transaction consumes a little more than 200 microseconds), so usually there are no problems with a couple of staked EOS; in order to interact with more advanced dApps such as EOS Knights, then it is necessary to have at least 15 EOS staked with CPU only. 

As a result, it is normal that an advanced account that interacts with different dApps will have at least twenty EOS staked if not more, which allows it to have enough power to run the various applications.

In these days, many have noticed, especially those who use complex games and dApps, that despite having enough resources staked, these were not enough to do anything: by doing too many operations the bandwidth goes into overload and it takes a couple of days for it to return to normal levels. The levels are controllable with any EOS block explorer and are represented by a percentage of how much the network has been used. In some cases, during these days, 400% of the CPU used has been reached.

Obviously, to get around the CPU problem, it is enough to stake more EOS, but with the CPU overloaded this can’t occur because there is not enough power to complete the operation.

Some have taken advantage of the possibility to borrow resources from REX (Resource Exchange), a system that in exchange for 1 EOS lends about 146 EOS. This has made the rate of the platform jump, all to the advantage of the lenders: in the last week alone more than 5 million EOS have been loaned.

But what caused this overload of the EOS network?

The cause is probably the EIDOS project, whose smart contract made an impact on the whole blockchain.

Unfortunately, even today it is difficult to use some dApps, like for example that of EOS Knights, which is currently alerting users of the problem. 

Although the EOS blockchain allows managing thousands of transactions per second, if someone uses too many resources of the blockchain there will certainly be an overload of the network.

There is no blockchain that can withstand this type of problem. Future updates will solve this annoying problem related to CPU power, since already now the dApps, although not obliged, can provide the cost of the use of resources to run everything.