There has been a significant uptick of investor and user interest in  the Graphene blockchain ecosystem since Dan Larimer's recent unveiling of EOS at Consensus. The Graphene ecosystem, which powers several major blockchain companies including Bitshares (BTS), Steemit (STEEM), OpenLedger (OBITS) and PeerPlays (PPY), was created by father-son team Stan and Dan Larimer, the latter of whom is now the founder of EOS which is the most anticipated ICO since the emergence of Ethereum.

The technological (Graphene) and familial (Larimer family) connections between EOS and Bitshares has lead to significant investor speculation in the market for BTS tokens,  partially attributing to a meteoric rise in BTS over the past months -- far more than the overall crypto or altcoin markets. Other factors for a rise in Bitshares include strong positioning in the Chinese crypto and ICO market, and significant transaction volume growth in their DEX.  Despite these other factors, many traders attribute the speculation about collaboration between EOS and BTS to be an important driver in the recent rise of BTS.

Dan Larimer's announcement that the EOS ICO would be held on the Ethereum blockchain, due to it's status as the most liquid ICO market, certainly ruffled some feathers in the Bitshares community as many had expected the ICO to be held on the Graphene-powered Bitshares DEX.  Despite that initial disappointment, rumors have been swirling amongst larger traders of other forms of collaboration between EOS / BTS being inevitable, and this has resulted in a strong continued bid for BTS on the cryptocurrency exchanges.

Bitshares founder Stan Larimer hinted at a collaboration in the BitsharesDEX Telegram chat yesterday, in response to a question by user Danis on "how will EOS affect [sic] BTS and Steemit."  Take a look at Stan's response below.

![stanlarimer.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmURQhCQzaVVrqprNrMEjpXeToGKmh5dSne8wCqnEB6Uzy/stanlarimer.png)

Stan is referring to Xeroc, a lead developer at Bitshares , and Dan, the founder of EOS.  

A number of options have been discussed in trading circles regarding the possible collaboration beyond Bitshares converting to EOS (which is already known), including:

1) Some form of deep integration with Bitshares DEX into EOS to enable easy and liquid asset tokenization on EOS, similar to how Bancor has a DEX integrated directly into their smart contracts platform to enable liquid trading tokens out of the gate.

2) Bitshares and the Graphene ecosystem companies being the first to migrate to EOS, becoming the de facto early dApps for DEX, social, gaming, etc.  

3)  Bitshares DEX being the de facto ICO platform for EOS. The world's first EOS dApp just launched on the Bitshares DEX (OCT), prior to the launch of EOS itself, indicating the possibility that the EOS team is directing early dApps to ICO on Bitshares.

If anybody has any other thoughts on the collaboration opportunities between Bitshares and EOS, would love to hear them!