AERUM vs. the Competition: Innovation in the Making

5 min readOct 1, 2018

Cryptocurrencies saw an unprecedented boost of attention following their unparalleled price rally in late 2017 and the beginning of 2018. While the bull run definitely got the world’s attention, it also caused a spike in the popularity of digital currencies’ underlying technology — the distributed ledger, or blockchain as it’s more commonly referred to.

Companies and even governments around the world are realizing the untapped potential of distributed ledger technologies and are starting to explore the applications. It’s easy to see where they are coming from. Yet another failure of a conventional financial system took place a couple months back when VISA’s (one of the world’s largest leading payment solution providers) network crashed. For a short time millions of people across the entire EU, Ireland, and even the US were left without access to their money. Ironically, the issue was caused by a simple system failure.

Then along comes blockchain. Its decentralized nature means that events like the above can’t happen or, at least, they can’t happen under similar circumstances. Unlike centralized systems, Blockchains are far more challenging to hack as they provide exponentially higher level of security. And the results speak for themselves — Bitcoin has never gone down.

With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

It turns out that Uncle Ben’s dying words to Peter Parker are the perfect line for a lot of occasions, including this one.

While blockchain technology provides for a lot more advantages compared to conventional, centralized systems, there are also quite a few shortcomings in existing solutions. This is fairly easy to understand as the technology is still rather nascent.

Nevertheless, there are crippling issues which need to be taken care of if blockchain is truly to see widespread adoption and real, everyday usage. The majority of existing solutions fail to, or are completely incapable of, scaling properly; they can handle an incredibly insufficient amount of transactions per second, have high transaction costs, and many more.

Bitcoin, for instance, which has established itself as the father of all cryptocurrencies, can only carry out 7 TPS. One can see how this can be an issue if, let’s say, several million people throughout the entire world began using it altogether (like VISA’s network). As it stands, blockchain provides nearly unlimited potential, but in real life is extremely limited.

AERUM: On a Quest To Resolve

AERUM attempts to solve all of the above and many other issues which are of critical importance for the field. The project introduces a blockchain-based infrastructure which is specifically designated for building Decentralized Applications (dApps). It guarantees fast and free transactions for the end-user, complete decentralization, on-demand scalability, and dramatically increased throughput.

AERUM is a public, permision-less blockchain and it’s already capable of splendid performance even within one network. It boasts a superior infrastructure and user-centric features including wallets, integration software, as well as a tried-and-tested blockchain client which is based on Go Ethereum’s codebase.

Some of the network’s highlights include, but are definitely not limited to:

True decentralization
On-demand scalability: from 500 to 100,000+ TPS.
5 second transaction time
2 second block time
Free transactions for the end-user
ATMOS- A delegated Cross-Chain Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism
Mobile, web, and desktop multi-wallet connecting AERUM to Ethereum through Atomic Swaps.

In other words, AERUM does what others can’t. So, naturally, let’s have a look at how it compares to the leading competitors in the field.

Ethereum: The Big Daddy of Blockchains

Ethereum is, undoubtedly, the established leader and it offers a well-developed blockchain platform for building and running dApps. While it has its shortcomings, denying its merit would be unreasonable.

This network is capable of handling around 12 TPS and their cost is only bound to increase with more users. It takes advantage of the Proof of Work (PoW) consensus algorithm. The block interval time is about 20 seconds and, just like AERUM, it’s coded with Solidity.

It’s worth noting, though, that AERUM doesn’t intend to compete with Ethereum — it complements it, providing a more reliable and highly scalable solution for businesses across a variety of verticals. It’s linked to Ethereum, making it incredibly easy to onboard. Furthermore, its token is based on Ethereum which guarantees the easy launch of both centralized and decentralized exchanges.

Wanchain

Wanchain provides a financial solution which attempts to achieve interoperability between different blockchain networks while maintaining the cross-chain transaction details. However, at the current state, despite having fairly low transaction costs, it can only carry out around 20 TPS. Its block interval is around 10 seconds and it is using the Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus algorithm.

Bitcoin

Using Bitcoin Script as its coding language, Bitcoin is the first network to allow decentralized, peer-to-peer borderless transactions without the involvement of an intermediary. It takes advantage of the PoW algorithm but, unfortunately, its network does face some serious scalability issues. It can only handle around 7 TPS and it has comparatively high transaction costs. The block interval is also very large, sitting at around 10 minutes. It doesn’t support dApps either.

EdenChain

EdenChain looks a lot like the blockchain which JP Morgan is currently working on — Quorum. It’s built on top of Hyperledger and it comprises a permissioned, corporate type of blockchain. That’s an excellent model, though more suited for those looking for a closed or centrally administered ecosystem.

QuarkChain

QuarkChain is another notable competitor which is a Decred-type solution based on two layers and powered by the PoW algorithm. It requires a fairly complex and rather fragile infrastructure. It’s quite complicated and relatively slow when it comes to cross-shard transactions. The finality for smart contract execution from the point of view of other shard points is uncertain. The chain has a lower hash rate which dampens its security, rendering it susceptible to the so-called 51% attack.

The AERUM Solution

AERUM addresses these issues of speed, scaleability, and security that a lot of the existing solutions struggle with.

Currently in beta, we expect the soft launch of our mainnet later in September. We are also in the middle of the private round of our token sale — here’s how you can participate. Additionally, if you want to take part in the Whitelist Pre-Sale which starts on October 15th, you can sign up for the list on our official website.

More information about AERUM can be found on our Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube pages. You can also join the live discussion on our official Telegram group.

As always, let us know what you think in the comments below!