Aerum
AERUM is a blockchain project by Aerum Technology tacking issues of bringing real world business cases onto blockchain by providing a new generation FinTech-focused blockchain with free consumer transaction, 5 second execution, 500 tps throughput and scalability capable of achieving 100,000+ tps. Please check https://aerum.com/ for up to date information and news.
MISSON
There have been many challenges and barriers on the road to mainstream adoption for cryptocurrencies. AERUM’s mission is to provide a complete and ready-to-use practical infrastructure for building and using dApps, while having fast and free transactions for end-users, high scalability and throughput, decentralized on-chain governance, built-in atomic swap mechanisms for transferring and exchanging assets with other blockchains (currently Ethereum-later others will be added), a full suite of software tools for end users (feature-rich web and mobile wallets), dApps operators (middleware) and liquidity providers (middleware).
Aerum aims to provide a full-service platform to launch dApps, marketplaces, social networks, games and prediction markets through its unique offering. Aerum plans to become a number one platform based on Ethereum where virtually unlimited scalability can be achieved through building decentralized sidechain networks (petalchains) by its participants, all due to the high performance of Aerum and the very low costs of chain linkage and asset transfer as compared to Ethereum. Aerum’s goal in not competing with Ethereum but supplementing it as a high performance dApp platform with decentralized governance, as opposed to a single-operator Plasma side-chain, while still enjoying the high security provided by Ethereum and its hash rate to secure Aerum’s consensus and staking mechanisms.
LANDSCAPE
We believe that blockchain adoption is changing the way we do things on a global scale. While bitcoin was designed as a purely financial solution, Ethereum became proving grounds for a number of concepts. However, new technologies never come without a challenge. As the number of projects and transaction on the network grows it faces a number of issues typical for any blockchain system arises, namely scalability and accessibility. By scalability we understand the ability of blockchain to maintain fast and reliable transactions with low fees as the network grows larger through adding additional nodes. By accessibility we understand the entry barrier a developer has to get over before entering the space. Entering the crypto space right now requires a certain amount of development expertise and developer time available to get familiar with the architecture of the chains, infrastructure solutions and simply put, code. There’s a lack of complete plug and play solutions that let’s anyone join without investing heavily into research. Currently there are 3 main generations of blockchains in existence: Blockchain 1.0 – providing services for cryptocurrency transfers and very basic computational facility (such as Bitcoin and its descendants) secured by Proof of Work Blockchain 2.0 – providing flexible decentralized computations and data immutability alongside cryptocurrency services (such as Ethereum and its forks) secured by Proof of Work Blockchain 3.0 – aims to improve on generation 2.0 by offering higher transaction speed and throughput. Unfortunately many of, these solutions sacrifice decentralization, leading to the formation of cartels and other forms of possible abuse. These solutions are mostly untested and have yet to prove their viability Ethereum sets the gold standard for a general-purpose, Turing-complete Virtual Machine-based blockchain with the overwhelming majority of developed tools and apps, as well as educated and experienced developers involved in the ecosystem. It offers a whole new universe for a wide variety of applications not only in the financial sphere but also in practically every aspect of life, where transparency, trustless data retention, and cryptographic proofs can help combat traditional gatekeepers, improve equality, and battle corruption both corporations and in government. However it is not without several flaws that critically hinder further blockchain adoption and its’ viability as a platform to build mainstream applications. Ethereum remains the industry leader in terms of solutions deployed. Being live for 3 years it already gathered approximately 250,000 developers working on Ethereum and dApps according to GitHub. There are thousands of dApps being developed with over 10 000 transactions been produced via them every day. ETH network can manage about 12-20 tps and has a flexible approach to dApp deployment. However, gas transaction costs are currently critically high for an enterprise application. There is no feasible way to replace Ethereum without going through at least three years of adoption and spending millions on marketing. In order for a blockchain to provide viable alternatives to existing centralized systems, the following problems must be solved: Long transaction execution time Prohibitive and highly volatile cost of trivial transactions Very low general throughput Wasteful and un-scalable Proof of Work mining Unsatisfactory user experience
EXPECTATIONS To provide a tangible value to participants a blockchain platform should satisfy the following characteristics, similar to those tried and tested by world wide payment card systems:
Transactions free to end-users and inexpensive to business participants 5-10 seconds to complete a transaction High potential throughput and scalability 99.9% network availability and transaction speed guaranty Robust and stable decentralized network management Practical governance model optimal for the business requirement Easy and practical ways to transfer value to and from major cryptocurrencies
AERUM SOLUTION
Aerum aims to solve the above mentioned issues with the following technological breakthroughs: Fully 100% Ethereum/Solidity/dApp compatible platform with free transactions Very high throughput (up to 500 tps) in the initial phase with just one blockchain Mammoth 100,000+ tps with a fully-rolled out network based on PetalChain scaling solution Large powerful blocks capable of working with complex contracts High performance with a very low 2 second block time Real-time transaction execution in under 5 seconds Powerful cross chain atomic swaps allowing easy, intuitive token transfer between Aerum and Ethereum right in the wallet Cross-chain governance using Ethereum mainnet as a beacon chain Unique consensus algorithm ATMOS creates very high levels of decentralization using delegated Proof of Stake system capable of servicing whole network of blockchains Petalchain scaling solution allowing Aerum Delegates to launch purpose-built sidechains served by the same consensus and governance protocol ATMOS powered by Ethereum-based contracts Multi-function, customizable wallet app supporting atomic swaps, tokens, delegate staking, token issuance and many more Middleware dApp – oriented application allowing business participants to perform core transactions and cross chain operations without any blockchain programming Fully-integrated Decentralized Aerum Token Exchange Multi-Token payment engine allowing automatic exchange of assets in order to accept any liquid token by any participating decentralized application or contract. Fully open sourced solution available for free use under MIT license
AERUM ECONOMY
Blockchains and crypto economics are still in early adoption phase. Mostly, it is used by enthusiasts for concept proof. More mature blockchain with bulk of blockchain user base such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are operating at maximum capacity resulting in large delays in transaction execution. Sometimes it requires increase in transaction costs up to 10 times of long-term average or more to get executed in a reasonable time Speed of transactions – many use cases require much more transactions per second barring any near-realtime use cases (example – Visa with 50 000 transactions per second). This all leads to low levels of practical adoption for any blockchain. Aerum will steer a positive momentum in the blockchain world by providing technology, tools and practically available solutions today. With a single network without rolling out horizontal scaling plan, Aerum is capable to deliver about 500 tps, which translates to roughly 16 Billion transactions per year. At intrinsic cost of processing a transfer transaction assumed by a service provider to be 0.05 USD (similarly to a small-ticket payment card transaction) it translates to roughly 750 Million of USD per year in intrinsic transaction fees. That sum amounts to savings in transaction fees that would be paid by customers or services providers should they operate on blockchain at rate of 500 tps throughout the year. It is safe to assume that bar relatively minor costs of hardware and server hosting Aerum blockchain has a potential of generating large amounts of value in magnitudes of hundreds of millions of dollars per annum.
GOVERNANCE AND CONSENSUS Aerum introduces a two-tiered hierarchy model for governance and consensus formation based on principles of liquid delegated democracy: Regular user – an anonymous participant able to execute permissionless transactions on Aerum blockchain, use, create and publish dApps, conduct any business activity, can acquire XRM tokens and stake with any Delegate of his choice to participate in delegated liquid democracy governance model and earn aero coin to pay transaction fees on Aerum
Delegate user – an authenticated and publicly recognized participant, has undergone peer review and identification by other Delegates; should provide a stake in XRM token to list his candidacy which will be voted upon for approval by other Delegates. The Aerum consensus mechanism ATMOS will dynamically select block Delegates Committee(current block miners) from the current list of Delegates.
Other participants such as application and marketplace operators, merchants, power users, developers, liquidity providers and market makers fall within these two general categories. Ecosystem governance is executed through on-chain voting by Delegates reaching for simple majority (50%+1) vote to get a decision passed through the vote. Blocks are created by the Delegates Committee, a group of Delegates selected by the Governance smart contract on Ethereum mainnet and consisting of 10 Delegates, who will be signing blocks on Aerum during the current Epoch – period of 1000 blocks, or about 33 minutes. There are several protection mechanisms built in to avoid multiple attack vectors, network stalls and minimize possible reorgs while reducing transaction finality to just 6 blocks.
AERUM PRODUCT PORTFOLIO
AERUM delivers a complex multifaceted functional prototype solution as its Functional Product which includes: core network capable of delivering outstanding performance multi-function web and mobile wallets cross-chain decentralized atomic swaps instantaneous on-chain atomic swaps human-friendly account name system intuitive in-wallet staking mechanism middleware blockchain integration toolkit blockchain explorer blockchain diagnostic dashboard As of August, 2018, a working prototype solution version 0.5 has been delivered. It is powering Aerum “TestNet 0.5” test network. After commencing planned load and security testing on the testnet, software version “0.5” will be used to launch a first production beta version of the mainnet ecosystem, codename “Troposphere”. Troposphere mainnet v0.5 production self-launch is planned for December 2018. Token holders will be able to start participating in network governance and stake their tokens to participate in native gas cryptocurrency distribution as soon as “Troposphere” network launches. Core components of Aerum product portfolio are developed in following technologies: Aerum Wallet – Angular 5, TypeScript AerBIT – Node.JS/Nest/MongoDB AerumGO – Go 1.10 Aerum Wallet is available as web and mobile application for Android and iOS platforms. AerBIT and AerumGO are cross-platform application and will be provided packaged as docker containers or available on GitHub.
TOKENOMICS Aerum ecosystem is powered by the EIP(ERC) 20 token XRM. Being a utility token operating on Ethereum mainnet it provides indispensable functions, allowing Aerum delegated cross-chain consensus mechanism (ATMOS) to operate: Secures ATMOS consensus on Ethereum mainnet Powers Aerum liquid delegated democracy model Provides holders with voting power proportional to the stake Serves as a security deposit for Delegates in Governance contract Gives right to claim a proportional part of Aerum block reward Each staked 100 XRM tokens gives you enough gas to perform one free value transfer transaction per day Powers token buybacks once a secondary market for gas develops Aerum token has following characteristics: Token standard: EIP/ERC-20 compatible Blockchain: Ethereum-based Symbol: XRM Total supply: 1,000,000,000 Decimals: 18 Mintable: no (no more tokens can be created) Burnable: no (no tokens to be burned) Pausable: yes (transfers are paused until the Token Sale ends)