Technological innovations
Technically, Aergo is different from the majority of blockchain projects for a couple of reasons. In my opinion, the main reason is the simplicity of writing smart-contracts. To do so, Aergo decided to allow developers of dApps to write smart-contracts on SQL - one of the most common languages in the world, instead of Solidity.
The second reason why I consider Aergo as a new-level-project is the ability to create own blockchains connected to the main blockchain. This is more complicated topic I’m going to write more about.
The main Aergo chain called Aergo chain is blockchain with DPOS consensus, means it is governed by delegated nodes. For easier interaction with the main chain, Aergo team developed Aergo Hub. Hub is like an interface which allows dApps developers to use Microservice, Smart Oracles, and Repositories (GitHub-like feature). When the project is developed in a repository, it can be either private or public. Public applications operate on the main chain while private need own chain and operate via side chain. According to the information published on the official website of Aergo, side chains can operate with throughput up to 1 million tps.
To operate own chain, developers need significant computational resources which can be purchased on Aergo Marketplace. Besides computational power called CPU, it’s possible to buy storage and different Algos.
Managing and Development
According to the information published on site, Aergo project has 3 managers: Phil Zamani, Hun Young Park, and Roderick van der Graaf.
Phil Zamani and Hun Young Park both have more than 30 years of experience in managing and development technological projects combined. Phil was managing Cloud technologies and open-source projects, while Hun Young was developing relational DBMS and distributed databases.
The third person on the Board - Roderik van der Graaf has 13 years experience in derivative trading on banks and 7 years experience in private equity/venture capital at Caldera Pacific and KCP Capital.
There’re two teams developing Aergo: Blocko’s developing team and Aergo’s own team. Blocko’s team have 25+ developers. Aergo’s development department consists of 6 developers:
Won Kim - the head of the Development Committee (my guess). Has 9 years of experience in Relational DBMS and 6 years experience In research & development of distributed systems.
Kyung Tae Lee - an expert in Graph database with 12 years of experience in Relational DBMS and Query engine development
Sung Jae Woo - has an expertise in Computational Physics and 9 years of experience in Relational DBMS.
Yun Woo Park - principal software researcher in database R&D with 10 years of expertise in Relational DBMS and Distributed Management System
Bernardino Ramos - the creator of Binn, LiteReplica and LiteSync projects, has 19 years of experience in software development
Pierre-Alain Ourvard - off-chains calling and plasma researcher with knowledge of Python and Solidity.
Besides Advisory Board and Tech Team, Aergo has business team and advisors.
Main competitors
It’s wide-spread opinion that blockchains sphere is the most competitive among all other crypto sectors. And this is an absolute truth. There’re dozens of “Ethereum killers”, a lot of new “the fastest blockchains”, but there’s no project which has the same business orientation as Aergo, so this project has a good chance to become a “first-mover”. Because of the reasons described above, it’s hard to compare Aergo with any other project existing in the whole sphere. In my point of view, it’s unique and incomparable.
Roadmap
Here’s the roadmap of Aergo. There’re not a lot of dates and events on the screenshot, but all are meaningful:
2018 Q2 - SQL-like scripting language was successfully developed
2018 Q3 (now we’re here) - developed distributed version control that offers advanced backup & restore
2018 Q4 - test network will be released to the public to try out.
2019 Q1 - deterministic and autonomous operation of dApps, branching and merging available
2019 Q3 - final version of the project; public repository hub, the marketplace for business will be delivered to the end users.
According to the roadmap, the project will be in its final development phase in one year. Comparing to other blockchains with 2-3 years roadmaps it’s a short period of time. Considering the fact that Aergo developing blockchain, not in a narrow sense, but the whole blockchain ecosystem, such short development plan is the absolute breakthrough.
Social media links and communities
For now, more than 31,500 people have joined official telegram community. With the start of Token Distribution Event, the number of active conversations in Telegram increased at least five folds. Twitter has about 8k subscribers, it’s okay. Youtube channel is relatively new and because it’s closed, the information about subscribers isn’t available now. Also, the project has Linkedin and WeChat, Kakao and Weibo for the Asian community. All the links are below:
Telegram community group: https://t.me/aergoofficial
Telegram announcement channel: https://t.me/aergoannouncements
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AERGO_IO?lang=en
LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/2JLmPmB
Medium: https://medium.com/aergo
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC89mrQJfwt_5nxeERHTlCEg
Kakao: https://bit.ly/2NPxvWJ
WeChat (CN only): https://bit.ly/2MAGl5X
Weibo: https://bit.ly/2NLY3rY