People occasionally ask for a concise summary of what is unique and special about Aeternity. These are the big hitters in my opinion. Please point out anything else I may have missed.
Aeternity is a groundbreaking blockchain platform that combines several state of the art solutions to the most notable failures of it’s predecessors of the past few years:
Scalability - Ethereum is not currently a globally scalable system, and will require risky protocol changes that affect the fundamentals of the system to become globally scalable. Aeternity offers faster transactions and instant verification by using a new consensus protocol and keeping smart contract state off the blockchain (state channels).
Integrated governance mechanism for consensus-based development of the protocol
Information gateways (Oracles) to interface with, and feed data from the real world (Potential catalyst to mass adoption - many cryptocurrencies are closed systems)
A more energy efficient (cookoo-cycle) mining algorithm that will can run on smart phones while they are charging overnight. This algorithm also changes the incentive behind mining to be more analogous to a lottery.
Decentralised prediction market integration, which is also leveraged as part of the governance mechanism
Mobile-first approach - part of the mass adoption strategy