The proposed Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will explore the physical regime of the most fundamental particles, quarks and gluons, and their interactions, which create 95% of the mass of the visible matter in the universe. To analyze these collisions a sophisticated particle ID system must be built. A detector based on Detection of Internally Reflected Chereknov light (DIRC) technology is an attractive and radially compact solution for charged particle identification ($e/\pi$, $\pi/K$, $K/p$) at an EIC in the barrel region not accessible by traditional RICH detectors. This article will describe the status of the design and R&D effort for a high performance DIRC envisioned for an EIC detector. The current design of the DIRC at EIC will use a new, innovative compound lens to reach remarkable resolution sufficient to extend the momentum coverage well beyond state-of-the-art, up to 6 GeV/c. Performance of a prototype of the compound lens on both test bench studies as well as in a CERN test beam will also be discussed.