Continuing the aelf journey — What’s next?
If you’ve been following the aelf journey, you would have seen that the team has been busier than santas elves on Christmas Eve, busier than the elves in the battle of the five armies, busier than… well you get the picture. What I’m trying to say, is a lot has happened this year and continues to happen on a weekly basis. If you want to know a quick rundown of the last year, have a read of this piece I wrote earlier: aelf — Year in review.
Now you might be feeling a bit of a sting from the jokes the crypto market has been playing on us all in the last couple of weeks. I’m not going to ignore this, it is tough to see. But it is also not our focus, sure it would be nice to not have these dips, but thankfully our tech, marketing, business development and partnerships are not defined by overall market performance.
Aelf is a startup, in fact, we just recently celebrated our one year anniversaryand we have come so far in such a short time we are humbled by the steps we have taken. As we continue to grow we learn, not only from within, but also from our community and the blockchain world as a whole. Just as we are humbled by our steps so far, we are excited about where we will be with our future steps forward. So let’s take a look at what the next few months holds in store for us all, for aelf.
Technology
The first thing for us to look at is the revised roadmap which was released recently, showing us the major and minor technological milestones leading up to mainnet launch.As shown from this you can see that the majority of the system development will be completed by the end of this year (2018), with mainnet launch occuring in Q1, 2019.
How Far We’ve Come
Before we look at the specific technological developments in the next few months, let’s take a quick look at where aelf stands currently with their ecosystem.
In June, 2018, the aelf testnetwas officially launched. During the next 30 days, the performance was optimized with a special focus on the enhancement of the cluster nodes, database separation and parallel processing concepts.
At the start of August, 2018, the baseline results were released of 14,968 TPS. This was a good starting point for future optimization to occur. Although this will be suitable for many enterprise-size use cases, in order for mass adoption to occur, this result will need to be continually improved to ensure proper scaling can occur.
In September, 2018, we were proud to announce that our sidechain developmenthad been completed. This was one of the major milestones between the testnet and our mainnet launch, and is a vital component to the success of the aelf ecosystem.
By November, 2018, we had initiated live demonstrations of the aelf multi-chain system. Most notably, in San Fransisco, during an offline meetup, Core Developer, Guanglei Deng demonstrated the interoperability aspect of aelf. This was articulated with one side-chain smart contract being completed and triggering another smart contract on a completely separate smart contract on another independent sidechain. This also demonstrated the Smart Contract Deployment on Sidechains and the Mainchain indexing processes.
The next few steps
The above demonstrates our developers have been extremely busy and we are easily holding speed with the roadmap timeline. The development team are well into the creation of the block explorer and the new aelf wallet, amongst many other components.
The final two layers of the aelf blockchain to be completed are the network and the governance/security layers. The team are currently working on the voting and economic model. The main principal of this model has multiple aspects. This includes fair voting procedures, aligning miners’ interest to run the network instead of just gaining votes, ensuring sufficient compensation is given to token holders who stake and reasonable transaction fees for smart contract implementation.
These final two layers are expected to be completed within the next 5 weeks. An important next step is the code review and auditingprocesses. This will bring us into the first quarter of 2019 which will be when the mainnet will be launched. But this is not the end; it is definitely the biggest milestone for aelf to date, but this is just the first chapter for aelf. Post mainnet launch, the aelf developers will continue to optimize the ecosystemas apps are introduced and built onto it. They will also focus their efforts on creating additional features, upgrades and side elementswhich can be added onto the network and specific use cases. In addition to this, their experience will be utilized in the aiding of app developmenton aelf.
Market Expansion
In parallel to the advancements by our technology team, the global operations and marketing team have been hard at work expanding aelf into new markets. Aelf already has a strong presence in many existing markets including, but not limited to, China, South Korea, Singapore and Asia as a whole as well as USA. The aelf community has telegram community groups in 11 different languages. In November, 2018, the first retailers to accept ELF tokens was announced in the TokenDay eventin Singapore.
Vietnam
Aelf has already built up a thriving community in Vietnam but we continue to push through cultivate the incredibly active developer community that is already here. In the last 6 months, aelf has attended multiple events and are hosting a technical AMA with guest speakers from Kyber Network this week in telegram Vietnam.
Middle East
The Middle East represents a whole ecosystem of untapped potential. Blockchain technology is yet to take a stronghold and when it does, aelf wants to be on the front foot. Earlier this month, aelf announced a strategic partnership with Connect Global Strategies (CGS), to further this push into the Middle East and aid in connecting with local enterprises and businesses.
India
India holds almost 20% of the world population and has a very strong technological focus. As such, aelf has a clear interest in this market and has recently opened a telegram community to start improving our presence through-out the country.
Latin America
Similarly to India, Latin America is also very involved in blockchain technology and is a place of interest for blockchain development. They have a very active blockchain community and aelf is taking active steps to enter into this market.
USA
Although aelf has already established a clear presence in the United States. This is a market we are actively developing further and seeking to improve our footing. Guanglei Deng and myself recently attended multiple events in San Francisco and aelf will be attending more in the next few months. Not only are these blockchain focused events but like the Hiring Showcase event, they are also connecting with key talent and app developers from around the world.
Business Development
In the last few months, the business development team have increased their efforts at an exponential rate. In order for their work to reach maximum potential it was important that the aelf value proposition and mission statement was well developed and drives the aelf message clearly.
What is aelf: Cloud powered public blockchain for businesses
Objective: Aelf is the versatile business blockchain platform powered by cloud computing. Aelf is here to help businesses transform the way they deliver their services and how to collaborate by laying out the fundamental blockchain infrastructure. Aelf enables businesses to focus on building up their own DAPPS on their own chains with minimum effort. It also unleashes the opportunity for inter-business communication and collaboration through our effective cross-chain communication mechanism. By incorporating modern technologies such as cloud nodes and parallel processing, aelf is the blockchain system that achieves secure transactions at commercial scale
Value proposition to business:
- Provides public or private, application-specific sidechain solutions to accommodate multiple business needs
- Through the use of bespoke sidechains, aelf facilitates inter-business collaboration and communication
- Enterprise-suited performance and speed for commercial application
With these components clearly defined, the business development team have been equipped to approach any business in any country we believe can benefit from the aelf ecosystem. Active discussions are currently taking place with many SME’s and Large enterprises in multiple countries including USA, the United Arab Emirates, and South East Asia.
Summary
Hopefully you can see how efficiently aelf is expanding our image and vision through-out the world with a three pronged approach. Our teams are simultaneously working on the aelf technology, community development/market impression, and business developmenton multiple fronts. As we get closer to mainnet launch, you can expect more announcements, more activity and more partnerships to follow. And in the mix of all this we have to fit some Christmas and New Year celebrations! The aelf ecosystem will soon have visual elements like the block explorer and the aelf wallet, and the range of applications running on the aelf testnet, and then mainnet will continue to grow.
This is just the first chapter, after mainnet launch we focus on application development, ecosystem support systems and side features, and as always, mainstream adoption. Although I say the market doesn’t directly affect our development and growth, I do want to take this moment to say it is our community that is a key ingredient in bringing us to where we are today, and continue moving us forward. Let’s continue this movement, band together and grow as a family. At aelf, we are not focused on creating a program or some software, we are focused on developing an ecosystem, educating and equipping the public, and providing a platform on which to drive enterprises and startups into the future. Together, let’s make a difference!
