Preface
I will not be giving an exhaustive technical dive into RAM usage within EOS; I cover the basics to start you on your trading journey.
Remember that speculating on anything is a risk, I am not telling you what to do with your money or giving financial advice.
The Experiment
During the long hype and build up of the EOS launch, a lot of discussions where focused around the various ways a token holder could profit from the ecosystem, RAM trading was one of those topics.
I want to experience first hand the process involved in participating in RAM trading and how to collate all the data needed to be successfull. I will be doing the same for all the various options (I am really looking forward to using the Chintai platform when it is deployed), and I will document how it goes here.
As the title states, it is time to delve into the RAM trading market.
Why Is There A RAM Market
RAM on the EOS chain is a finite resource (per chain) that dApp developers will need to store their smart contracts for execution and processing, and of course ‘standard’ users to store account details.
The EOSIO software has built in intelligence to monitor RAM supply and demand using the BANCOR protocol. This protocol will also be used to determine the price of RAM at any given time, and will adjust the price automatically accordingly to conditions.
So, there is a finite resource that will be in demand as network usage increases.
Finite availability + Demand = Opportunity.
Side note, if RAM availability gets to a critical level, a side chain will be formed offering a fresh batch of RAM for users and dAdpp deveoplers. Side chains or horizontal scaling is how EOS will continue to grow.
Forecasting this, Block One designed resource allocation for RAM differently than CPU and Memory. Every account is allocated an amount of RAM sufficent enough to use their account and perhaps a small dApp. If you want more RAM, you most turn to the RAM market and ‘spend’ EOS tokens in exchange. This is very different from CPU and Memory where you stake your EOS and can unstake at any time to have them returned to a liquid state (after the 3 day grace period).
If you want to get your EOS tokens back from RAM you purchased, you will need to sell it on the trading market and hope the price is greater than the price you sold it for. Chances are, if you get in early enough you will make a profit or if you purchase some when a sideman chain forms.
How To Buy RAM
So I have taken the plunge and purchased a chunk of RAM at the price of 0.01943963 EOS per kb. Once purchased, you can verify the allocation is correct by going to https://eostoolkit.io/search a entering the account name your sent the RAM too.
I used the online tool from @genereos that uses Scatter to sign and verify transactions.
The link to buy RAM using EOS as the purchase value
https://eostoolkit.io/account/buyram.
The link to buy RAM using total bytes required as the purchase value
https://eostoolkit.io/account/buyram.
- There is a 1% fee attached to each buy and sell that you will need to ad into your calculations
@generes also have a great walkthrough on how to setup Scatter correctly that can be found here, it also includes walkthroughs on using the various tools they offer. I will mention that when I used Scatter, I had to link my 'active' key and not my 'owner' key. This may be a bug, but either key should work and it is not a major problem.
How To Sell RAM
I have not used this process as of yet, but I am assuming (hoping) it is just as simple as buying. Once again @genereos to the rescue, the URL to sell is here. This tie you will only be given the topic to sell a number of Bytes
Monitor The Price
We have a few options for price monitoring. A Reddit user designed this site (I have forgotten his name so cannot give credit).
https://www.feexplorer.io/EOS_RAM_price Will give almost live pricing with historical data for trend analysis. The interactive chart Ian also pretty sweet
Then we have the site from @eosnewyork that looks great and gives us all the data we could need.
Happy trading all