Ternio overview. Who? What? Why? How?
This article is meant to provide a quick, yet full overview over the whole project. Within a few minutes of reading you’ll know everything you need to know about Ternio.
“So what is it? Just give me the shortest summary you could possibly give me, but don’t leave anything important out.”
Okay, here you go: Ternio is a blockchain company based in America and TERN is the currency being used by their blockchain. The blockchain has it’s own name. It’s called Lexicon. They are the only third-party verified blockchain in the world that can handle over 1,000,000 transactions per second. Their aim is to become a much better version of Ethereum. Of course their blockchain can be used for many things, but their first main target is the digital advertising industry. They have already announced partnerships with RPM Ad Agency and Ignition-One. Multiple other companies are already in close contact with Ternio’s executives. The Ternio ICO has recently ended and TERN is already trading on a few exchanges. They are soon going to be listed on even more exchanges. Major ones, too. Presently TERN is still trading around ICO price (about 10cents per TERN). Major gains can be expected with a successful release. A testnet is already up and running. The mainnet is scheduled for Q3 2018. They are also planning to release a physical card, called the BLOCK CARD, that will allow users to hold and pay with their BLOCK CARD, just like they would with any other bank- or credit card.
“Wow, now that was fast.”
Yes, it was… and it was easy to understand, too, wasn’t it? I think it was, but there’s plenty of other information that may be interesting to know, so I’ll start again and add a litte more detail for the curious readers.
Here comes the long version:
Ternio is a blockchain company based in Atlanta, GA (USA). The ICO is already over. Since they are an American company, Ternio filed a reg-d form so that they are in compliance with all SEC rules and regulations regarding ICOs. That’s a first sign of credibility, but it’s by far not the end! For example they have a very ambitious and experienced team. Their executives are Daniel Gouldman, Ian Kane and Bryant Maroney. Following are a few pictures with background information on them.
Their team consists of very experienced people. For example they have guys from MIT, Lexis Nexis, HP, the U.S. military, Sysco, Bank of America and many more. Their cryptographer was actually a founding member of the Stellar blockchain. They also have a massive advisory team that consists of 10 brilliant experts from a wide range of fields. For example there is Patrick Sundberg (former VP of Goldman Sachs), Kyle Wang (former IBM consultant in Hyperledger), Jared Polites (a former FBI analyst and current Head of Marketing at Crypto Media Group) and David McGrath (Internationally known tech & media Executive in commercial partnerships and high growth strategy).
Ternio has developed Lexicon - “a blockchain framework that is capable of meeting all of the needs of every industry”.
Lexicon unites existing blockchains (Any application, infrastructure, company, or industry is able to utilize Lexicon while still holding to their cryptocurrency of choice). This is really important, because a single blockchain ledger cannot hold all of the world’s data and still be fully decentralized. This is not the case today, and will not be the case in the future. Trillions of data-points and terrabytes or data per second is not a feasible or reliable solution. By allowing different industries and use-cases to be able to run a simple to setup blockchain based on their needs, adoption and complete decentralization of data across all mediums is not a decade away but a few years.
Lexicon was originally a fork off of Hyperledger Fabric (IBM) that has then been built into their own blockchain. Lexicon handles extremely high transactions rates with relatively low latency. The framework is a combination of Lexicon Blockchain (data protocol) and Stellar Blockchain (payment protocol), which is why Ternio (TERN) is held in Stellar wallets. In regards to their consensus algorithm, they built their own asynchronous BFT (Byzantine Fault Tolerance) algorithm. Ternio looks forward to sharing more detailed information once patents have been formalized.
Nowadays there are a bunch of companies who claim to be able to handle hundreds of thousands, if not millions of transactions per second. Some use very different approaches, some use comparable approaches, but nobody in the world has a third-party verification. Nobody except for Ternio.
Ternio has been audited by a company called Nullbash. This makes Ternio the only third-party verified blockchain in the world to run over a million transactions per second. The report is publicly available on the Ternio website.
Here’s a little screenshot of Ternio’s reply to a question about their audit:
If you’re wondering how they have achieved this massive milestone and you’re looking for code on GitHub, I have to disappoint you. Ternio is a proprietary blockchain. They have filed patents for their technology, but they are not sharing anything until they have those patents. Why would you show your secret sauce if you had no patent? I know I definitely wouldn’t. They’re going to release parts of their code in the future. However, they went and got a third-party audit that proves they are legit. Some things are actually known though. For example that they have developed their own asynchronous BFT algorithm, like I have mentioned earlier. Something else that might be interesting is that there’s no mining of TERN. Ternio has previously disclosed that nodes will be run by trusted parties within the ad supply chain. This means that companies who partner with Ternio will not only be provided with the framework and user interface, but they will also be running the nodes.
Another huge difference to “comparable” projects, next to being the only third-party verified blockchain in the world to run over 1,000,000 TPS, is their initial target sector. While others are primarily aiming at banks and governments, Ternio will initially roll out in the high-transaction rate programmatic digital advertising industry (with plans to expand to other industries in the very near future). This is not only due to their expertise in this field, but also because a blockchain that can handle the programmatic digital advertising industry, will also be able to handle all other use-cases, such as banking and governments. Programmatic digital advertising has more transactions in one day than NASDAQ has in a year. If you can do this — you can do anything.
In January 2018 Ternio announced that they joined the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), Hyperledger, The Linux Foundation and AdLedger Consortium to establish and promote standards in blockchain in digital advertising.
If you have read the executives’ background information, you might have noticed that they are also the executives of another company called Ad3media, which is a successful standalone company that provides publishers with next generation video ad technology that maximizes ad revenue and prioritizes user experience. It will be the first company to integrate Ternio. Shortly after others will follow.
This takes us to our next point: partnerships. Which Industry Partnerships have been announced so far? In the past few weeks, Ternio has announced two very important partnerships with RPM Ad Agency and Ignition One (and actually a few more, too).
IgnitionOne is one of the largest independent marketing technology companies in the world, currently scoring over 600 million users monthly in 75 countries and powering more than $60 billion in revenue each year for leading brands, including General Motors, CenturyLink, La Quinta and Acer, as well as advertising agencies such as 360i, GroupM and Zenith Media.
RPM Advertising is a full-service marketing communications firm that specializes in building traffic for experiential and retail-focused brands. It will be piloting brands like Terlatto Wines and Majestic Hotel & Casino with Ternio at the time of launch.
They are also in discussions with multiple non-advertising related companies that want to leverage Ternio’s Lexicon blockchain due to the high TPS ability. These companies include P2P payments and marketplace trading.
The next step on our agenda is the BLOCK CARD.
The BLOCK CARD is another significant Ternio project. It’s a physical card that will allow users to upload Ternio, Bitcoin or Ethereum and pay with their BLOCK CARD, just like they would with any other bank- or credit card. For now, I’m going to provide a screenshot from the whitepaper (page 10), because it provides the necessary information.
Ternio has just hired an incredible UX designer who worked for Careerbuilder, Vonage and IBM and also did work for AT&T. She will be designing the smartphone app (targeting iPhone first) that will allow people to upload their TERN, BTC or ETH to the BLOCK CARD. The BTC and ETH people load onto the BLOCK CARD will automatically be exchanged for an equivalent amount of TERN, because that’s the currency the BLOCK CARD uses to make payments. Ternio is currently working with two large banks in this endeavor.
Now let’s talk about the price and exchanges.
Ternio has recently come out of ICO and is only trading on a few smaller exchanges (Stellarport and BitForex), which is why it’s price is still about the ICO price of 10cents per TERN. It’s still roughly the same +-10%, depending on market fluctuations. If you have missed the ICO, but you are interested in buying TERN, you still have a small window of opportunity to buy in at an amazing price, considering Ternio’s massive potential.
Ternio has already announced that they are soon going to be listed on two TOP 10 exchanges, as well as two more TOP 20 exchanges. As soon as this hidden gem get’s more public attention, the demand for TERN should increase drastically. A project like this, with ambitions to become better than Ethereum and over 1,000,000 TPS audited and verified, simply feels amazing to have in your portfolio. Personally speaking, holding a hand full of TERN is as close to a no-brainer as it gets. However, I’m not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. Please do your own research and make your own educated decision.
If Ternio actually becomes a much better version of Ethereum, then the token price will easily end up exceeding 100$ per TERN, which means that the current prices are basically like they are giving it away for free.
(If Ternio hit the marketcap Ethereum had at it’s peak in January 2018, the price of TERN would be roughly 400$.)
Did I hear something about TERN being given away for free?
Well, you actually kind of did, but I said the current prices are LIKE giving it away for free. However, there’s actually a way for you to grab a nice hand full of free TERN and do your own research at the same time. Next to the official Ternio Telegram channel, a Ternio Enthusiast Community (TEC) has been created by a hand full of enthusiastic investors (including myself). The TEC is the best place to get Ternio information and news, speculate price, and to have fun in a community of fellow investors. To celebrate the founding of the TEC, we are giving away 1000 TERN to whoever* holds the community high score in a Telegram Game called Cubo by the end of July 2018.
This is where you can find the TEC: https://t.me/TernioEnthusiastCommunity
Conclusion
There are a few projects out there who claim to be able to break certain speed barriers, but none of these projects have actual proof that they can achieve what they claim, except for Ternio. Ternio is the only blockchain company in the world, who has a third-party audit that verifies the groundbreaking achievement of over 1 million transactions per second. Therefore I highly recommend taking a closer look at it.
*TEC admins and Ternio employees are obviously ineligible for the prize, despite their best efforts to place on the leaderboard.