One of the most promising projects that was part of the recently concluded world blockchain summit held in Nairobi’s Laico Regency Hotel was Aeternity. Aeternity is propelling the decentralization discourse even further with new and cutting edge features that promise to address the current challenges of blockchains and enabling mass adoption. Aeternity is simply a blockchain protocol. the team is building an underlying layer that enables applications to be built on top of it; like the back-end for decentralized applications. The closest comparison in terms of basic model is Ethereum. Whats makes Aeternity different from other similar projects such as Ethereum is that it improves many areas of blockchain technology.
Scalable and high speed transactions
First, aeternity blockchain platform is scalable and enables processing of high speed transactions. As explained in their whitepaper , this achieved through oracles and avoiding layering consensus mechanisms on top of another. Aeternity team also explained to us that it wants to make it faster to send and receive coins through a unique naming system. This would enable users to have an easy readable human name than existing long and unreadable account address. This will go a long way in ultimately improve user experience.
Interfacing with real world data
One of the main challenges of existing blockchains the closed nature of blockchains Oracles are able to solve this problem. They enable users to collect data from the real world and use that data on the blockchain to do various activities. For example, collecting real time weather, traffic, price levels or certain specific behavior that would be useful to someone else and helping execute some business transaction. This enables interfacing smart contracts with real world data hence making them more meaningful and useful.
Other features include: a novel proof of work consensus mechanism, a governance system that allows stakeholders to propose and make changes and high-level security mechanisms. Furthermore, aeternity state channels provide possibility of executing smart contracts off-chain and on chain executions are done only in-case of disagreements.
‘Undertaking off chain transactions means to keep most transactions out of the blockchain and using blockchain only as a settlement layer. This is important because it serves as a self-executing crypto-court while at the same time ensuring privacy of transactions. Also, it enables low cost transactions, higher speed and scalability.’
With the above features, aeternity enables numerous use cases such as distributed app ecosystem, crowdfunding projects, trustless exchange, micro and nano exchanges, instant video game rewards, prediction markets, decentralized fintech among others.
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bridging the gap between technology and society
Aeternity is in the process of establishing a curriculum in order to educate people on building decentralized applications. The aim is to ensure better user experience, reduce friction in the adoption of decentralized applications and to create an empowering environment in which app designers and developers feel they have the right tools to turn their ideas into reality. The two main entry points are aepps and dev.aepps you can read more on Medium. Locally, the company wants to undertake more sensitization programs especially in universities and local developer community. To this effect, aeternity is in the process of setting up a local satellite facility in Kenya to oversee the above developments.
Emin Marht (COO) and Nikola Stojanow (CBDO) were in Nairobi representing the aeternity team. They were at the world blockchain summit where they held various interviews with enthusiastic blockchain crowd at the event. After the summit, they explored the innovation hub that is Nairobi and held the first aeternity meetup in Nairobi at the famous technology hub, Metta Nairobi. At the meetup they explained the vision behind aternity and interacted freely with eager audience at the event. Several blockchain enthusiasts turned up at these events including, coinweez. There was general enthusiasm about aeterninty and high expectations especially in setting up a satellite centre in Nairobi. Coinweez team expressed willingness to partner in ensuring adoption across the country and the region. If you are interested, keep it here, we will be sharing more information related to that. You can also check out their website for all information related to the project.
