As one of the last free markets we have left on this earth, the crypto space continues with its relentless experimentation and progress. The pure competition enabled by this unregulated market has been attracting the brightest minds and producing the world's best software. As an investor, you need to identify those projects which are constantly innovating and pushing the boundaries of blockchain tech. Telos has demonstrated that it is likely one of those gems.

Telos launched its mainnet back in 2018, with the key objective of being a more democratic smart contract platform. It's based on EOSIO, the same technology behind the EOS blockchain. Telos tokens were airdropped to those who participated in the EOS initial coin offering on Ethereum, however the total number of tokens distributed to each account was capped at 40,000 to prevent EOS whales from wielding too power over the chain.

Telos is faster, cheaper, and more scalable than other leading smart contract platforms such as Ethereum. It is a dPOS (delegated proof of stake) blockchain, which allows for feeless transactions and greater scalability than the current version of Ethereum. 

Telos has 21 block producers (BPs) scattered around the world, validating transactions in a decentralized manner. Each BP is voted in by the token holders and rewarded in Telos tokens for validating transactions on the network. There are over a dozen backup validators ready to jump into the top 21 in the event that one of the main producers were to go offline or get voted out by the community.

Some argue that fewer nodes make it more centralized than Ethereum, and could result in the censorship of transactions. And while there may be fewer total nodes validating transactions on Telos, there are no mining pools. Whereas they do exist on Ethereum, and could theoretically be compromised to censor transactions. 

One key feature that sets Telos apart from other blockchains is its innovative governance mechanisms. Using Telos Decide, any proposed changes to the blockchain's core code must be voted on by the community before being implemented. There also exists a community fund, inspired by Dash's DAO, where anyone can propose projects that would improve the Telos ecosystem, and token holders vote on whether or not to approve funding for them.

Back in January, Telos was also the first project to introduce the concept of T-bonds, where people could buy denominations of Telos tokens at a discount that would mature at a future date. This allowed investors to purchase large sums of Telos tokens without having a significant impact on the market. 

Another noteworthy aspect of Telos is its passionate community. The founder, Douglas Horn, is constantly active on Twitter and is consistently participating in the Telegram conversations regarding on-chain improvements, project proposals, and community initiatives. I believe he founded Telos to add value to the space and wants to see the project succeed long-term. 

Along with other EOSIO chains, Telos is relatively user-friendly. The transactions are feeless, and can be executed easily with an EOSIO desktop wallet such as Anchor. The ability to execute a transaction without worrying about gas fees is liberating, especially if you're just voting for BPs or a community proposal.

If you choose to purchase Telos tokens, you can stake them in the Resource Exchange (REX) pool and earn interest on them. Meanwhile, projects that require resources such as CPU can borrow Telos tokens at a very reasonable rate from the pool. 

Telos is very much still under-the-radar at this point, as it does not get much attention from the "mainstream" crypto media. Regardless, the team has been dedicated and constantly working to build this project for over three years. I suspect the value of the Telos token will soon reflect the consistent effort put in over the last few years.

You can buy Telos tokens on the decentralized exchanges Uniswap and Pancakeswap, or the centralized exchange KuCoin.

As a disclaimer, I have allocated a portion of my crypto portfolio to Telos.

With thousands of crypto projects in the blockchain space, trying to locate the gems can be an exhausting process. I'm here to narrow them down and tell you about the most promising ones. I use a variety of centralized and decentralized social media to keep up to date on what's happening with hundreds of projects in the space.