What is AERGO?
AERGO is an open blockchain platform and IT resource ecosystem that aims to support businesses and organizations to develop enterprise-grade applications on the blockchain without the challenges hindering the full adoption of blockchain technology by businesses.
With AERGO, firms and organizations can utilize the distributed resource sharing nature of blockchain technology to conceptualize, design, build, and deploy business applications onto a private or public blockchain in the cloud. AERGO will provide a complete blockchain development platform featuring IT and software programming tools such as SQL and data security infrastructure. By enabling businesses to transfer data in a trustless manner, develop and deploy in-house business software on the blockchain, and share computing resources efficiently, AERGO aims to power the mass adoption of blockchain technology by businesses.
The need for a complete blockchain development infrastructure for businesses arise because of the gross shortings of blockchain technology in addressing the unique needs of enterprises. The general cahllenges facing blockchain technology are well-documented. Ranging from scalability to interoperability issues, blockchain technology though promising has struggled to provide the sort of unique solutions that various businesses crave for. This have kept businesses so far away from blockchain systems than close to it. You may want to examine some of those problems that must be quickly addressed before businesses can seamlessly implement blockchain technology.
Challenges Limiting businesses from adopting blockchain Technology
While blockchain development has been hailed as the next big evolution in the technology sector, obvious technical and functional bottlenecks have made it nearly impossible for enterprises to adopt and full implement blockchain networks. Here are just a few of them:
1. Reliability Issues: Blockchains are subject to constant change or upgrade in its technology. This is necessary to accommodate more users or improve its performance. Thess frequent upgrades - usually called hard forks - render the platform unstable during the period of the upgrade and afterwards. Hence, any Dapps hosted on the platform are affected as they may experience limited or no functionality during the period of upgrade. Such irregularities will adversely affect the daily operations of the businesses which is why many organizations stick to their old platforms since they are sure of some stability.
2. Scalability: The most general challenge of blockchains, scalability has to do with the number of transactions that can be processed by a blockchain platform in record time. Currently, Bitcoin can handle not more than 7 transactions per second while Ethereum can do a maximum of 15. These numbers pale in significance when compared with traditional systems such as Visa which can handle more than 24,000 transactions per second. Organizations that handle large volume of transactions cannot simply implement them on a blockchain that is inherently slow. Scalabilty is a single most powerful challenge of blockchains that discourages enterprise mass adoption of the technology.
3. Privacy concerns: With more platforms being hacked and user data compromised, almost everyone is now wary of the risk involved in giving out personal information. The blockchain is designed as an open ledger where almost all transactions and user data is available for anyone to see.. Enterprises require a higher level of protection of sensitive data more than blockchain cryptography can provide. Classified data such as intellectual property, financial records and forms of sensitive data will lack the high level of privacy protection that enterprises demand if they are hosted on a blockchain platform.
4. Interoperability concerns: While blockchain technology seems to provide the distributed platform that will power the next IT revolution, cross-chain communication among the several blockchains seems to be an insurmountable hurdle. With so many private and public blockchains currently in existence, there is the difficulty to develop tools and dApps that will function efficiently across the blockchains. This inability of blockchain networks to interact, integrate and communicate with each other makes it hard for enterprises to take advantage of tools and functionalities across networks. It leads to subscribing to, maintaining and deploying several tools across several public and private blockchains and the ability to harmonize their functions may require expensive technical resources that most business may not sustain.
5. Platform Integration challenge: Enterprises understand the technical difficulty and risks involved in migrating from one platform to another. Blockchain technology presents a significant upgrade to traditional systems, but implementing it requires expert technical skills, computer hardware and other resources which makes the integration difficult. Businesses are aware that if anything goes wrong, it may be difficult to revert to the previous platform and this could disrupt day to day operations and lead to financial loss. Because of how complex blockchain integration can be, enterprises prefer to continue using their tried and trusted platform instead of taking risks with implementing a blockchain system.
6. Software Development challenge: Blockchain technology is a whole new area in technology. It is unlike conventional software development where programmers are familiar with the programming languages and development environment. Developing blockchain dApps presents its special challenges and a new frontier previously unknown in programming. For example, buildind dApps involves designing smart contracts that are binding on any transaction agreements. Conventional software developers are not know to design or develop smart contracts. Hence, businesses find it hard to contract independent software developers for blockchain projects because the lack the expertise needed to complete the job. This becomes another challenge in implementing blockchain systems for a business.
The above are some of the hurdles that must be overcome to clear the way for businesses to adopt blockchain technology in mass. Consider how AERGO hopes to overcome these challenges and create an enterprise blockchain ecosystem where businesses can harness the potentials of public and private blockchains.
The Solution - AERGO
As explained in the introduction, AERGO wants to help enterprises launch open hybrid blockchains - private or public - with complete suite of tools for software development, hardware management and easy integration of computing resources on the platform. Being fully aware of the growing profile of distributed systems, AERGO, will create a level playing ground for enterprises, programmers and all IT related personnel to collaborate and advance enterprise operations on the blockchain.
Interestingly, AERGO is not new in the enterprise blockchain business. Here is a concise insight into AERGO's profile in this sector.
AERGO- powered by Blocko Inc.
AERGO is a project developed and supported by Blocko Inc.. Blocko Inc. is a world leader in providing blockchain infrastructure for enterprises, helping some of the largest corporations to design and deploy integrated IT services on blockchain networks. Since 2014,Blocko Inc. has empowered with top companies such as IBM, CISCO, Microsoft Azure, Lotte Card, Samsung SDS, LG CNS, etc to design, deploy or utilize IT services on distributed systems. Some of its main services includes infrastructure for public blockchain systems, enterprise API suites and comprehensive tools for dApps development on blockchain networks. Blocko Inc. has offices in the UK, South Korea and Hong Kong and serves over 25 million users globally utilizing Coinstack, its pioneer permissioned blockchain solution for the design and deployment of dApps.
Building on the above experience and expertise, AERGO will leverage Blocko’s Coinstack to provide private or public blockchain infrastructure to help enterprises deploy dApps and other IT services on a distributed network. AERGO will support enterprises across all sectors to implement unique IT projects and services on the blockchain. For example, it will support open source developers to run projects on the public blockchain. Businesses that offer services can adopt blockchain technology and provide such services to their clients from the platform. AERGO will also provide technical support and maintenance services to enterprises, helping businesses to implement blockchains easily without the attendant hurdles that scares them away.
To fully provide all these blockchain infrastructure services and solve current blockchain implementation challenges, AERGO designed its architecture with 3 major components. Find out.
AERGO Architecture
As shown in the image above, AERGO has 3 major components that are designed to handle each aspect of its services - Aergo CHAIN, HUB, and MARKETPLACE. This section will explain the function of its component and how it forms part of the complete AERGO system.
AERGO CHAIN is a distributed network of public enterprise blockchains. It is thought of as a warehouse containing enterprisse-grade open blockchains for different organizations. The AERGO chain is designed with 4 sub components that will eliminate current issues of public blockchains. The 4 sub-components includes the following:
AERGOSQL: This sub-component is the brain box for the designing and implementation of smart contracts for enterprises and businesses on the blockchain. It has the design of SQL, a programming language that developers of relational databases are aware of. Designing the smart contracts using SQL-like programming syntax will make it easier for non-blockchain developers to easily design smart contracts without learning a new programming language. Hence, integrating an existing system into a blockchain will no longer be extremely difficult as it is today since developers will use the language they already know to design smart contracts. Looking at mass adoption, using SQL technology for smart contracts will appeal to a global market of developers who already understand and use the language
Delegated Proof of Stake (DPoS) There are several models of concensus algorithms used by different blockchains. Each has its strengths and weakness which over time becomes a basis for further work. A concensus algorithm defines how blocks are validated and added to the blockchain. Two of the most popular algorithms are Proof of Work(PoW) and Proof of Stake (PoS) algorithms. However, AERGO have chosen to run DPoS algorithm which is superior to other models in more ways than one.
DPoS is the leader of true decentralization of all the consensus models. It does not use or rely on a few miners to validate blocks. Rather, it employs several network users who are in different locations to do the work. This makes the system more distributed. It also saves network energy costs which is why many top blockchains use the model. DPoS utilizes network users to curate and reward good behaviour and punish bad users, making it more of a democratic system. Clearly this consensus model provides lots of economic benefits as well as technological advantages which is why it has been chosen as the default consensus model for AERGO. However, each enterprise has the freedom to choose whatever model fits their overall business objective. Any enterprise can choose PoW, PoS or DPoS consensus models.Governance: Like it has been explained above, the DPoS model is the best model that mirrors the true nature of a democratic system. Using several miners who are users of the network to run the nodes makes the system truly decentralized. Also, using network members to determine good or bad behaviour puts power into the hand of the public. in addition to DPoS, AERGO will also implement a reputation based system to bolster reliability and ensure a high quality of Service. The more enterprise network users perform well and deliver results, their reputation score will continue to increase. This will serve as an indicator for clients to know how dependable or credible any enterprise on the blockchain is. Overall, it will become an incentive for high quality delivery and good business practises.
- Scalability: One of the biggest challenges of blockchains is scalability. AERGO hopes to handle in excess of 1 million transactions per second using innovative scaling techniques. Using distributed version control (DVC) feature, AERGO will be able to seamlessly fork and merge its data through sevral branches. AERGO will make wise use of its numerous repositories to divide the distributed ledger physically andd logically. This is called domain-based partitioning. But it is not enough to handle large volumes of data at the same time. AERGO will employ two additional scalability techniques. The scale out technique will utilize storage functions of AERGOFS to store each nodes blocks. Ofcourse, the second technique which is scale up will favor using only single nodes. Utilizing today's fast storage and less expensive memory, single node optimization will support day to day transactions on the blockchain. As such, realtime data processing and storage will be achieved, without the delays we see today on blockchain transactions.
AERGO Hub is the frontend of the platform through which developers and enterprises interact with the chain. This public interface enables businesses, developers and other users to design, develop, test and deploy independent blockchains implemented on AERGO. The hub is a blockchain hosting framework that provides feature-rich tools, services and functionality for dApps creation and management on the AERGO protocol.
As shown in the image above, some of the services of AERGO Hub includes a content delivery network, serverless database, interfaces for smart oracles and technical support for dApps on the chain. With this user interface, enterprises can connect with independent resources on the blockchain.
Inaddition to the hub, there is a provision strictly for that management of dApps on the blockchain. It is called AERGO Horde. This is an infrastructure to handle everything software or dApps on the platform. It will be a significant tool for third party dApp or software providers to connect to the AERGO hub and participate in offering enterprise grade dApps for businesses. The Horde, which is directly connected to AERGO hub, will feature user interfaces for users to interact with dApps and manage them.
The AERGO marketplace is a peer-to-peer software and dApp trade house. On the marketplace, enterprises can shop for AERGO-compatible softwares, dApps and computing resources such as storage, computing power, algorithms and other assets. Enterprises can connect to the market place through AERGO hub and trade any computing assets they need.
Interestingly, AERGO market will not be a closed market. Independent third party services providers would be given a platform to showcase their services on the marketplace, making it easy for new service providers to participate in economic activities on the market. The overall aim is to power mass adoption of blockchain technology by enterprises. Designed for all kinds of blockchains - private, public and hybrid - the marketplace will feature diverse dApps and tools to support every blockchain project no matter how unique they will be.
The Token
AERGO Token is the utility token that will fuel ll economic activity on the AERGO blockchain. The token will grant holders privileged access to services on the blockchain such as running the smart contract (AERGOSQL), DPOS consensus algorithm, etc. The token can be traded on the platform for any products or services. Its dApps marketplace will create an easy entry point to allow third party developers offer their dApps to businesses on the platform, creating a decentralized trade zone where demand for IT products and services meet supply.
Token Distribution
500,000,000 AERGO Tokens in all will be issued and utilized as illustrated on the table below:
Below is how proceeds from the token sale will be utilized:
Conclusion
AERGO will change how businesses implement blockchains and drive a mass adoption of the technology. Utilizing the proprietary Coinstack blockchain protocol from Blocko Inc., AERGO will let enterprises launch open hybrid blockchains private or public to deliver IT services and products in a distributed network. AERGO will create a platform for enterprises and developers to easily design, build and deploy decentralized applications (dApps) within the cloud with faster transaction speeds and lower operational costs.
Roadmap
The team
AERGO BOARD
COMMITTEE HEADS
ADVISORS
TECH TEAM
BUSINESS TEAM
Useful Links
AERGO Whitepaper
Telegram
Telegram ANN
Medium
Kakako talk
Github
Wonderful review,you will prepare some of these for soon.
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Amazing overview of Aergo! Summarizing all the interesting key points of the project. Aergo looks a like a top-tier project from looks of it. Not that many enterprise-focused Blockchain projects that have a strategic partnerships the way Aergo does
Really awesome project, thanks for sharing this in depth review @focusnow
Glad you came around. Thanks.
Very good article! Aergo is a really interesting project. Ill be watching how involved they get with the South Korean Government.
Def a project to watch.
Its really an amazing project. What they bring to the table will really give enterprises something to think about blockchaim implementation.
Aergo, is definitely, one the most interesting projects in the space right, now! Great project review @focusnow, definitely interesting to learn more about details about Aergo's unique Architecture
Happy to have reviewed this project. Aergo is unique in many ways. The Blocko Inc. backbone will give the project extra strenght to push through and power enterprise mass adoption of blockchain technology.