To aelf developers, community members, and aelf believers, thank you so much for your wholehearted support over the last couple of years. Today we are excited to release our latest aelf roadmap, with the focal point on progressing our trustworthy, state-of-the-art, and safe blockchain technology. We deeply believe that in the imminent future, aelf will change the world to a better place by deploying its proven cross-chain technology, blockchain expertise, and infinite scalability so that everyone can embrace and experience blockchain technology.
In this brief report, we will be elaborating on three aspects of our future milestone — Technology, Operation, Product. All three aspects will shed light on how we are optimizing the technological infrastructure of aelf, advancing the state of our mainnet, and developing our holistic ecosystem. So here we go.
Technology: Continue to Optimize the Underlying Framework of aelf
aelf Enterprise is to Blockchain what Linus to Internet, without which innovation suffers, value eclipsed. The amount of sheer effort we devote to aelf Enterprise is proportional to scalability and value that can be brought to blockchain projects in the future. We will be optimizing aelf Enterprise’s underlying framework in the following aspects and functions.
Multilingual Contract Engine Solution
Applying WebAssembly technology to implement a multi-language contract engine, allowing developers to deploy a variety of modern common programming languages (Rust, C++, JavaScript, etc.) to develop smart contracts, providing developers a much more friendly and easy-to-use blockchain development platform.
Snapshot Function
aelf’s Snapshot historical data snapshot function can take a snapshot of the data status and block information on the current chain for synchronizing mainnet data. This function is more practical in DApp applications and can greatly reduce the amount of data, improving the efficiency of node synchronization and speeding up the synchronization rate of historical blocks.
aelf Parallel Computing Framework
The Actor model is used to execute transactions on the chain in parallel, so that more transactions can be executed at the same time in a unit of time, and the transaction execution ability of nodes is improved through the cluster expansion capability, so as to support high frequency transactions and improve the scalability of the blockchain.
Explore Decentralized Storage Protocols
In the future, aelf will deploy a side chain as the center for storing and retrieving all media resources on the aelf main network, creating an incentive for a decentralized file system, and distributing data to multiple storage nodes in the network through algorithm distribution and storage rewards. Developers and other users can find storage nodes that store application data on the decentralized file system network on the aelf mainnet, and finally make it possible for decentralized storage of application data.
aelf GraphQL
Introduce GraphQL to provide a more efficient node interface query mechanism, significantly enhancing interface query performance. GraphQL has high availability, consistency and high efficiency, can accurately return interface data and simple data query process, making sure that things are as flexible as possible for clients.
Operation: Progressing the State of aelf Mainnet
Aelf has been running smoothly ever since its mainnet launch in December 2020. This year, aelf will continue to perfect the functions of mainnet, enlarge the scale of the ecosystem, and significantly increase the value of aelf.
Q2: Introduce aelf NFT Standard Protocol
Launching the aelf official NFT standard protocol, which can be directly called by developers, lowering the entry barrier for developers to issue NFT assets, and at the same time, unifying NFT standards based on the aelf public chain, facilitating the circulation of NFT assets, and allowing NFT assets on the aelf chain multiplexing between different scenes or games becomes possible.
Q3: Kickstart Mainnet Token Swap
At this stage, aelf is going to initiate the token swap for exchanges, changing the ERC-20 version of ELF right to the mainet ELF. Mainnet ELF is mainly used for transaction fees, sidechain index fees, deposits for production nodes, and block rewards, etc. Users can also use ELF mainnet coins to experience aelf’s ecologically rich DApps.
Q3-Q4: Kickstart Mainnet Node Election
aelf is going to officially open the mainnet node application and voting, and ELF holders can vote for 17 production nodes on the chain. The way of voting on the chain is a critical step to improve the stability and decentralization of the aelf system, which can allocate more rights and incentives to the community, and promote the prosperity and sustainable development of the entire ecosystem.
Q4: Upgrade Side Chain Ecosystem Governance System: Side Chain Auction Platform
The launch of the sidechain auction platform is an imperative step for aelf to start the ecosystem construction of the mainnet. Later on, aelf will launch multiple exclusive side chains to support the operation of a single application, and realize the fair distribution of resources through side chain auctions. Bidders need to pay enough resource tokens to build their own side chains.
Product: Carry Out aelf Ecosystem, Holistically
Here is what our long-term product strategy looks like to achieve a well-rounded ecosystem.
aelf Universal Oracle Platform
The aelf universal oracle platform can submit various off-chain data to the chain through an off-chain data aggregation mechanism, which improves the efficiency of data aggregation while reducing the cost of data aggregation. In addition to providing data feed prices, the platform can also provide safe and accurate data sources for various quiz scenarios. Moreover, it can also be used as a general-purpose bridge to connect different blockchains (such as Ethereum) to realize the exchange of information between blockchains.
aelf <->Ethereum Two-Way Universal Cross-Chain Platform
aelf will focus on the heterogeneous chain cross-chain, launching a two-way universal multi-scenario cross-chain solution between aelf and Ethereum, realizing the cross-chain migration of assets such as ERC20, ERC721 and ERC1155. While sharing the huge traffic of the two public chains, it creates greater application value and potential.
The aelf Mainnet Serves as Layer 2 of Public Chains such as Ethereum
Considering that the current mainstream public chains such as Ethereum and other current mainstream public chains have limited TPS and other issues that hinder the ecological prosperity on the chain, aelf will be based on the general-purpose oracle platform and cross-chain platform, with its own transaction parallel execution framework, to expand to the platforms and public chains who find it difficult to further improve TPS.
For example, after the layer 2 platform for Ethereum is opened, the main execution for complex transactions will no longer be held on the EVM of Ethereum, instead it will be on the smart contract execution framework in the aelf main network that can execute transactions in parallel, and finally, through the aelf oracle machine, the network writes the transaction result into Ethereum through verifiable cross-chain mechanism, thereby reducing the time for waiting transaction result and greatly reducing the transaction fee.3
In addition, the layer 2 platform will also be able to connect on-chain and some legacy systems off the chain, introducing richer possibilities for the application of blockchain technology.
aelf Oracle Application: Gaming Platform
The Gaming platform is a customized scenario application designed based on the oracle platform. It can use market incentives to gather group wisdom and safely generate a series of more accurate, robust and unfiltered dynamic event predictions. Anyone can create, monitor or trade a prediction market on any topic based on the platform, such as hot topics of who will be the winner of the U.S. general election, and the World Cup match result, and etc.
There’s been a good revamping of the team in the first half of 2021. We believe that the best way to predict the future is to create the future, and so we’ve put together a team of new elites from various industries with distinctive skill sets to try to make that happen. Our new slogan that we recently just came up with can best crystallize what we are up to — Tomorrow is running on aelf.
