Aergo and Hybrid Blockchain

BACKGROUND OVERVIEW OF BLOCKCHAIN TECHNOLOGY

The blockchain is a form of technology that introduces for the first time, a cryptographic secure digital database of transactions that does not possess the points of failure and security issues of traditional databases. Its unique characteristics provide the potential for blockchain based products and services to disrupt many business models in many industries.

The benefits of blockchain technology have not gone unnoticed, resulting in many blockchain implementations existing today. Most of these use and operate on computer networks that are easy to join and participate in. These permissionless implementations are often known as “public blockchain protocols” (such as Bitcoin and Ethereum). However, the use of an existing blockchain comes with many problems for existing businesses, mainly due to the lack of control over its features and development. Desired functionalities include throughput performance and the ability for systems to scale. While private/permissioned blockchains aim to fulfil the promise of becoming “fit-for-purpose”, they entail immense costs in terms of infrastructure and forfeit the ability to evolve at the speed of open source.

The vast majority of both public and private implementations are in the early stages of their development (and currently use 3rd generation technologies). Projects typically focus on one type of blockchain versus the other. As such, most are only used for simple proof-of-concept (“PoC”) test-cases. Despite many such projects, the evolution of the blockchain stack is still stagnating, due to difficulties with enterprise IT integration and a lack of developer-friendly and easy-to-use software tools. Many implementations also lack the enterprise grade capabilities that are critical to run real business applications in both private and public deployments. The technology behind blockchain needs to mature and become more accessible for it to become a widely used and deployed architecture. Additional services and capabilities are also needed for it to be a commonly used business platform. It also needs to be much easier to program and use for it to be adopted across many sectors.

WHAT IS AERGO?
AERGO is an open platform built with the state of the arts technology to enable businesses to build innovative decentralized applications and services by sharing data on a trustless and distributed IT ecosystem. To achieve that vision, Aergo has developed a smart contract tool known as AERGO SQL. This system is disruptive and totally different from others, owing to the fact that it's very fast, convenient and easy to utilize by developers and enterprises globally.
The AERGO Project is a serious disrupter. It is also very different. It proposes to be a 4th generation “enterprise ready” blockchain protocol combined with an IT platform that uses new and more advanced technologies. It proposes to include a comprehensive ecosystem of complementary decentralized application (“dApp”), technologies and service providers that leverage secure cloud delivery models. Underlying technologies in AERGO are proposed to be made open source as it is truly an open and decentralized system.

THE SOLUTION?
Other existing smart contracts have failed woefully as regards to solving major challenges in the industry. Aergo is here with innovative ideas to solve myriad of problems ranging from scalability, governance and confidentiality without tampering the security and immutability of the system as a whole. They also intend to empower organizations with the ability to tailor their blockchain deployments to their precise needs. This is the first of it's kind, enterprises now have the ability to make informed decisions on how to run their businesses smoothly; build and deploy smart dApps to meet the market needs.

WHAT MAKES AERGO UNIQUE?
Each blockchain project has some level of uniqueness although not without similarities. Aergo as a hybrid blockchain cannot be ignored completely in that regard. The following are the five (5) major unique factors of Aergo:

1. FAST AND SCALABLE: use BFT-dPOS for consensus of which block creation interval is one second, currently reaching 8k+ TPS on mainnet.

2. HYBRID BLOCKCHAIN: An application or service can be hosted on an independent permissioned blockchain while leveraging a public blockchain for security and settlement.

3. FULLY OPEN SOURCE: Not just open source licensing, but open design, open development and open community like Linux and Redhat for enterprise

4. DEVELOPER FRIENDLY: Developers can use programming languages like: Lua, SQL and SQLite. It supports smart contracts made for Ethereum Virtual Machine and WASM VM.

5. ONCHAIN GOVERNANCE (DAO): Token holders on the Aergo main network will have the option to stake their tokens and vote on proposals put forth by the block producers and also be able to earn reward in return for their contributions. Isn’t that great?

WHAT ARE THE INTENDED FUNCTIONS / BENEFITS OF AERGO FOR ENTERPRISE?
AERGO is proposed to be a next generation enterprise blockchain platform for utility computing. It aims to help enterprises adopt and utilize blockchain technology for real world applications. AERGO seeks to provide an easy-to-use blockchain configuration for enterprise and SQL-like smart contract language for applications that will serve to automate business processes. It is intended that enterprises and IT providers should also be able to participate within the AERGO network as a node or service provider and receive financial rewards in return for their resources and contributions. These activities are intended to create a feedback loop, to help the AERGO ecosystem flourish.

WHAT ARE THE PROPOSED FUNCTIONS / BENEFITS OF AERGO FOR DEVELOPERS?
The intended main smart contract virtual machine of the AERGO platform is SQLVM. New technologies such as blockchain often introduce new programming frameworks and languages. Some of these are complex to understand. AERGO aims to recognize these challenges and recognizes that millions of developers are familiar with SQL and DBMS. AERGO believes that a developer’s familiarity with a programming language will result in much greater performance. We strongly believe that AERGO's approach - based on traditional, well understood, and easy to use SQL technology - will enable the mass market of developers and business users to benefit from blockchain.
In addition, AERGO Hub intends to grant developers the ability to seamlessly build and control their own private or public blockchain. Many features such as deployment, version control, rolling upgrade, are freely provided to developers to help support and streamline development.

THE PLATFORM
AERGO seeks to leverage and extend both public and private blockchain, supported by modern cloud architectures. According to the whitepaper, they hope to create a technology and operational framework that supports an ecosystem of (dApp) developers, curated cloud delivery partners, and enterprise companies. In summary, the project aims to create a platform that allows each party to create innovative and trusted business services.

AERGO intends to be a distributed modern ecosystem built around a high-performance, secure and easy to use public blockchain (that we call AERGO Chain).

Some of the key features of AERGO are as follows.

1. AERGO SQL:
   • Code the smart contract as easy as possible
   • New smart contract engine with SQL language
   • Boost the productivity around new technology (blockchain)

2. SIDECHAIN TECHNOLOGY:
   • Create side-chains with little operating cost
   • Free from transaction fee fluctuation
   • Have your own mainnet for your services

3. DETERMINISTIC DPOS:
   • Enhanced performance with deterministic DPOS
   • Maximized the network stability and service quality
   • Reputational and stake based DPOS brings mutual trust
   AERGO intends to facilitate the creation of hybrid blockchain based products and business models.

AERGO proposes to use state-of-the-art technology that is implemented and manifested as a simple to use practical blockchain protocol. This protocol is intended to be designed so that it can be used in any combination of (i) a public, (ii) a private or (iii) a combined public plus private blockchain architecture configuration.

AERGO aims to become the de facto enterprise blockchain. One that bridges the gap between both public and private networks. A platform that uses core blockchain technology and deployment blueprints that have already been proven in real-life in-production systems across the world by Blocko.

AERGO also aims to provide and support a developer friendly, feature-rich, multi-paradigm and consistent plugin-based smart contract infrastructure for programming each business implementation. AERGO intends to combine the practicality and innovation of public blockchain, with the
performance and security provided by private blockchain to achieve more better result effectively in the most economic manner. Just as with cloud computing, the team hopes to develop the technology to enable companies to develop and run their (dApp) applications on a secure public infrastructure. When needed, these companies will be able to easily and seamlessly migrate some (or even all) of these applications to a more high-performance private blockchain. All of this and without losing any of the benefits of their previous public blockchain model implementation.

However, to make all these possible, AERGO has developed three (3) core elements for its optimal functionality. Here are they:

i. AERGO CHAIN: A PUBLIC INTERNET OF BLOCKCHAINS
This is a proposed new protocol consisting of global public decentralized network of enterprise blockchains run by node providers. It can simply be considered to be an open source blockchain operating system. It intends to contain AERGOSQL, a new smart contract engine to easily create advanced but friendly smart contracts to enable innovative business products and services.

ii. AERGO HUB: THE PUBLIC INTERFACE INTO THE UNDERLYING AERGO CHAIN
AERGO Hub aims to work with and connects secure dApps with AERGO Chain. The dApps that are created are intended to be stored in one of two repositories:
• AERGO Public Repository, is a shared, open and decentralized underlying infrastructure for dApps (similar to GIT public repositories that is used to host open source projects, or automated build servers for public cloud computing)
• AERGO Private Repository, is a controlled, secure and private infrastructure for dApps. This aims to achieve access control, application security and performance, data compliance, as well as quality of service (“QoS ”) that are required for enterprises.

iii. AERGO MARKETPLACE: A PROPOSED ONE STOP SHOP FOR SOFTWARE APPLICATIONS, COMPUTING RESOURCES AND OTHER SERVICES OPTIMIZED FOR AERGO CHAIN.
• AERGO Marketplace software, computing and other services are intended to run on or work with AERGO Chain as part of the ecosystem that supports the AERGO Platform
• These partner services are accessed via the AERGO Hub public interface
• These services are intended to be managed via AERGO Horde.

In summary, Aergo is a hybrid blockchain architecture that enables both businesses to run, interact and exchange information seamlessly in a trustless atmosphere. Phil Zamani – the founder of Aergo and his team of industry veterans are working tirelessly to ensure the successful implementation of the project and to actualize global adoption.

More Information:

Website: https://www.aergo.io
Blog: https://medium.com/aergo
Telegram: https://t.me/aergoofficial
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AERGO_IO

Thanks for reading. More exciting articles soon.

Izuchukwu Malize
Blockchain Researcher
Twitter: @malizechristian