Scalability, scalability, scalability.

The transaction throughput of most blockchains is currently pretty shit.

CryptoKitties totally rekt Ethereum’s chain and that was a joke.  

Anyways...amongst many trying to solve this scalability issue, we have Aion.

Let’s dig in…

Aion (ticker: AION)

Mid-Tier Shitcoin

Wtf is this shit?

Aion plans to release an extremely scalable platform that greatly improves interoperability in the blockchain domain. Interoperability is fancy talk for the ability for software to transfer information. The easier/faster/more secure, the better! ...in super layman’s terms this means “how well can blockchains talk to each other?” The answer is: not very well.

So, they plan to release a platform that is extremely flexible. It can support public, private and custom blockchains, and allows for cross-chain communication.

Aion will provide functionality for smart contracts and transactions to run through many different blockchains allowing for improved speed and scalability.

All of these transactions are done through a trustless consensus system...like every other blockchain lol

Aion tokens are the fuel to create and launch new blockchains, monetizing bridges, and securing the overall network.

Wtf is a bridge?

A bridge is a protocol that allows for chains to communicate with each other. Bridges are comprised of validators that guarantee translation between chains as well as accountability. They view the source blockchain as the chain which emits transactions, and the target blockchain as the chain receiving the transactions.

A bridge has two primary functions:

• “Signing and broadcasting an interchain transaction only if they have been sealed in the source blockchain and an interchain transaction forwarding fee has been paid” (this is from their whitepaper where it is explained very well)
• Notify the target network of the incoming message and relay the updated Merkle tree.

Bridge validators are rewarded from the interchain transaction fees and possibly a portion of block rewards (TBD). Bridges will use their own lightweight consensus protocol amongst themselves (an unspecified BFT type of algo...Byzantine fault tolerance..look it up).

It's also worth noting that their whitepaper mentions functionality that would allow chains to subvent bridges and communicate directly with other chains in the event that a bridge rejects a transaction. This raised an eyebrow or two as the purpose of bridges is to facilitate and secure cross-chain transactions. We're not sure why such functionality would exist.

They will also most likely do proof of stake, for a delegate type of system so that bridge validators can vote, and hold more power depending how many coins they have.

Who tf is capable of forming a bridge with Aion?

Good question...glad you thought of this all by yourself. Not EVERY chain is magically compatible with Aion. From the whitepaper, the following basic criteria must be met:

• Be decentralized in some fashion and support procedures commonly found in blockchains such as atomic broadcast and transactions. The exact implementation is left to the discretion of the bridging protocol and the network itself.
• Be able to recognize interchain transactions as distinct from regular transactions.
• Be aware of the consensus protocol used by the bridge and store a transaction deemed valid.
• Implement locktime or a similar feature that allows tokens to be held by the network for a period of time.

So..there is certainly some manual work to be done for a blockchain to be able to participate with the Aion nework.

Who tf is behind this shit?

Their founder and CEO is Matthew Spoke. It looks like he has been in the blockchain space for the past 2 years and was part of the Nuco team..which spun in to Aion? Not sure, but looks like it..check out his LinkedIn. He is on the board of directors at the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. He is not a 20 year veteran necessarily, but let’s see what he’s got. Like most other projects, nothing too juicy...let’s see how they do. Mainnet launched this past April..so kudos to them!

All in all...Mid-Tier shitcoin...yet another blockchain scalability project. Their whitepaper has a some gaps and things still to be thought out. Probably another shitcoin, but whatever.

Hope you learned some shit. Check out their whitepaper if you want to dive deeper.

Chat soon!

- Mike and Aaron