AERGO is making waves as a disruptive, open-source blockchain protocol. Businesses and developers are clearly excited by its promise of helping to design, create, and deploy apps onto blockchain within the Cloud ecosystem, with the added option of using either private or public chains. As an "enterprise ready" protocol, AERGO proposes to help resolve common issues relating to privacy and scalability which have severely limited widespread adoption of blockchain in the business community.
According to the developers, the main goal of AERGO is to build a new platform for developers to easily create and deploy their dApps within the Cloud environment at lower operational costs and faster transaction speeds. The project is ably supported by Blocko, another wave-making blockchain initiative with operations in Hong Kong, UK, and South Korea. AERGO seeks to utilize Coinstack, developed by Blocko and used by 25 million people around the world, as a permissioned blockchain suite of solutions which allows users to exchange data with third parties in a very secure and efficient manner.
In this piece, I intend to take a deep dive into the AERGO project and examine how it proposes to overcome these duo of blockchain challenges.
AERGO's Innovative Architecture
The way I see it, AERGO is just like a big circle comprising of three sectoral components of AERGO Chain, AERGO Hub, and the unique AERGO Marketplace.
AERGO Chain- This is a decentralized, public internet of blockchains that features an SQL-enabled smart contracts layer which is run by node providers and uses sidechain technology to scale over 1 million transactions per second (TPS).
AERGO adopts a deterministic DPoS consensus algorithm to maximize network stability and enhance performance. It also incorporates the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to achieve optimal interoperability.
AERGO Hub- This is the public interface of the AERGO Chain that will allow developers to, build as well as test, deploy and manage individual blockchains built on AERGO Chain.
The Hub is basically a web-based hosting service using blockchain technology (similar to the existing public Cloud web services) which connects secure dApps on AERGO Chain. It provides supporting services and tools to underpin the growth of the platform, such as content delivery network, server-less Database, and smart Oracle.
AERGO Marketplace- This is the last component of the 3-part major constituents of AERGO. The Marketplace is essentially a P2P center for trading in computing assets, such as algorithms, contents, storage, and computing power. The Place can be assessed through AERGO Hub public interface. In it, third-party service providers and Cloud infrastructure vendors can market their wares and services to users directly. The AERGO Token will be the native token to be used in the Market as the medium of exchange and store of value for all transactions.
How AERGO intends to resolve common issues with Privacy and Scalability on Blockchains
Privacy- Concerns about Data Privacy are major reasons why the global business community has been so reluctant in embracing blockchain wholeheartedly. Unlike in existing public blockchains, businesses require stronger security measures to protect sensitive personal data for legal reasons. In fact, for businesses, the need for data privacy far outweighs the immutability of data provided. As it can be seen, this goes against the grain of the open access, open-source principle upon which the blockchain revolution rests. Multiple encryptions on public blockchains have proved unhelpful in this regard. This is because enterprise blockchain applications rather deal with more sensitive information that require greater security safeguards against breaches.
AERGO, however, proposes to solve this problem by directly implementing security measures as integral parts of the platform design. The method takes two forms:
1# Data Isolation
AERGO will use git-like private file repositories (as seen on the Whitepaper) to restrict access to ledger data to only permissioned users. This will be achieved by isolating data blocks in private branches accessible to only those with required passes.
2# Data Sharing
AERGO also aims to maintain data security by simple synchronization of specific branches (in the architecture) with isolated data repositories for exchanging data. This way, the privacy of the remote data stores is further guaranteed.
Scalability- Scalability is an old blockchain issue that has become a major concern as the technology becomes mainstream. The problem is that initial iterations of blockchain were not really meant for widespread adaptation and use. For example, Bitcoin (1st Iteration) scales just 7 TPS, while Ethereum (2nd Iteration) does only 20 TPS. As more businesses embrace blockchain for building solutions, such platforms become easily overwhelmed and transactions are unnecessarily delayed. This poses a serious challenge for blockchain adoption in business operations that require prompt confirmation of transactions,csuch as in the stock exchange trading at a particular time on a particular day.
In contrast, Paypal and VISA manages 193 and 1667 TPS respectively. Facebook, Google and other behemoths have unbounded scales capable of handling millions of TPS in real time.
On AERGO, 3 different approaches are employed to reach the level of Facebook and Google in scalability.
#1 Domain Partitioning Technique
AERGO uses domain-based partitioning method as its fundamental scalability strategy. This is done by adopting a Distributed Version Control (DVC) feature which allows forking and merging of data through branches, unlike other blockchain platforms. With this, the public ledger could be partitioned into branches through distinct data repositories. It must be noted that this is not an entirely new concept. For example, GitHub also uses the technique to handle over ten million repositories in real time.
However, efficiency of the method relies on data usage and sundry factors. For handling enormous quantities of data by a single repository, the method falls flat. This brings us to the two other scalability strategies featured on AERGO.
#2 Scaling Out
This is one of the two revolutionary concepts employed by AERGO to scale huge amounts of data over a single repository. This will be achieved by using AERGO File System (AERGOFS), as described on the Whitepaper, serving as a storage layer of unlimited number of node blocks.
#3 Scaling Up
This is a simple and direct approach to scaling by optimizing the in-block nodes. As learnt from Blocko's Coinstack, AERGO will equip each node with an optimized storage engine to efficiently handle network stack.
Final Thoughts
From the foregoing, it can be seen that AERGO, envisaged as a blockchain operating system, possesses various functionalities to handle major obstacles to mainstream adoption of blockchain in business. The powerful features could eventually make the platform a one-stop marketplace for computing resources in the nearest future.
Truly, the whole project cannot be discussed in a single article like this. For more information about AERGO and its trendsetting structure and features, please drop your comment below. I will be happy to read and respond to your enquiries.