æternity: Full Review

æternity is a blockchain 3.0 platform, designed to deliver unmatched efficiency, transparent governance and global scalability. One of the core foundations of Æ’s blockchain is smart contracts that provide virtually instant and completely private transactions. It is also infinitely scalable and implements a hybrid consensus mechanism with Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS). æternity also features integrated oracles and a naming system for user-friendly address names.

Smart contracts are at the center of æternity’s platform. These highly secure programs will allow for the automation of numerous services and disintermediate a large number of processes. The unique features of æternity’s smart contracts include speed of execution, cost and privacy. By implementing state channels technology, Æ’s smart -contract state can exist off-chain, without loss of security. This allows for parallel and even partial execution of smart contracts at the fraction of the cost in comparison to their on-chain variations. By leveraging state channels as the default way to run smart contracts, æternity aims to become the most efficient Turing-complete blockchain and enable new forms of commerce via it's low cost transactions.

Moreover, off-chain state channel allows for the participants in a smart contract to modify its state indefinitely while keeping complete privacy. What’s more, thanks to a customized smart contract language –Sophia– the reliability and security is greatly improved. Pre-compiled Ethereum smart-contracts are also supported so any Ethereum application based on this type of contract can be easily ported to æternity.

In order for the full potential of smart-contracts to be realized, they need to have efficient ways of receiving information from the real-world. In other words, they require oracles which can trigger them. Unlike all currently existing blockchains, æternity oracles are integrated in the main chain as first-class objects. That allows for any æternity user to either become an oracle or ask oracle operators questions about the state of the real-world directly, using AE tokens. For example, in Ethereum, oracles are implemented by third parties such as Augur and Gnosis, which require the use of tokens and not ETH. This creates inefficiencies and increases costs.

æternity’s governance system is part of the consensus protocol through the PoS system. Through the PoS system the community of æternity users will be able to vote on modifications of fundamental system parameters and thus adapt the system to changes in the real-world. For example, if needed and if user support is sufficient, the block reward could be modified – increased or decreased – improving or reducing mining profitability.

The PoW system in æternity is based on Cucukoo Cycle, an innovative mining algorithm that prevents mining centralization and the creation of mining pools. It will allow for the system to stay as decentralized as possible and allow individual miners to not lose efficiency vis-à-vis mining pools.

All services provided by the æternity platform – sending transactions, running smart contracts, asking oracles, mining rewards, naming system and all æpps will require the use of the AE token. Upon launch of the Mainnet the AE token will become a coin and will be the fuel of the æternity blockchain ecosystem. We believe that a large variety of trustless æpps will be developed on æternity with ease, unmatched by other platforms.

The æternity team has expanded significantly since the campaign phases in April and June, 2017. It is now composed of some of the most well-known and experienced Erlang developers and blockchain experts. You can find out more about our team members on the official website.

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