Alacris and Nervos Partner to Make Blockchain Development Practical
Alacris, a Boston-based blockchain project created by LegiLogic, and Nervos Network, a public permissionless blockchain network, announce their partnership in efforts to create layer 2 solutions to reduce the complexity of application development using blockchain and an opportunity for wider use of the technology and distributed application development.
Blockchain creates a “distributed ledger” that allows direct and secure transactions between two parties without the need for a third party. However, there have been many complexities with the technology that have stalled its use by the masses, including the limited number and slow pace of transactions that can be processed at a time; vulnerability of security from developers who are not experienced in blockchain; overall question of governance and use of such a distributed platform; and interoperability which allows one blockchain to talk to another.
Alacris, started in early 2018 by Co-Founders Chris Swenor, CEO, and François-René Rideau, Chief Architect, created the Alacris Operating System as a solution to many problems limiting the potential of blockchains. They recently secured their first round of funding at about $1 million and recently released a demonstration of fast payment and work on the project thus far. However, they go beyond what other Layer 2 protocols currently being built on top of these blockchains, fixing scaling and interoperability. The Alacris Operating System will allow anyone the ability to build applications on top of the blockchain already taking care of the complex issues Blockchain brings with it for inexperienced engineers and developers.
“Alacris focuses on providing the right level of abstraction for developers and in particular, has formal verification at the core of the platform so developers don’t have to worry about security. This is a big deal if done correctly,” said Kevin Wang, Nervos Network Co-Founder. “We were impressed by the Alacris team’s vision and technical background when we first met.”
Nervos Network, founded in early 2018, was started by a group of software engineers and developers. The company has offices located in China and the United States, focusing on a layered blockchain architecture to solve problems of security, decentralization and performance within blockchain technology. As of July, the project raised $28 million in funding and most notably created Nervos CKB (Common Knowledge Base), a layer 1 platform, their own Blockchain that focus on security and decentralization with best-in-class support for layer 2 technologies for scalability.
“From the moment we met the team at Nervos, we thought they were great people, with whom we share common values and a common vision of how blockchain is going to evolve” Rideau said. “So, we were disappointed that we were working on different and somewhat competing projects. As we stayed in contact, we realized that we still liked each other a lot, but that our projects were actually complementary rather than opposing each other, and we were so glad when that mutual appreciation became a partnership.”
Originally, Alacris sought Nervos’ help to secure funding despite both working on what seemed like competing projects. However, the more they interacted, they realized a partnership would be more beneficial and Nervos offered to be one of its funding partners where they will work together on multiple levels including business, research and development, interoperability between both products and a mutually shared vision of blockchain’s future.
“On the business side, Nervos has already helped us a lot in closing our latest round of investments and we are building together a research foundation to advance our common vision of blockchain,” Rideau said. “On the technical side, we are talking to each other to make sure that our products will interoperate, and are each ready to modify our designs to work better with the other’s. In the long run, we might even share some code at some point, though we currently are using different toolchains (we use OCaml, they use Rust).”
Alacris is a Layer 2 Operating System for the blockchain. We provide unlimited scalability, formalized security, automatic fraud detection and recovery, as well as bridges to layer 1 protocols. Abstracting away all infrastructure concerns from the DApp developers so they can focus on building the applications. Developed by LegiLogic in 2018, Alacris is located in Boston. For more information, contact Amy Lynch, communications, at amy@alacris.io or call (956) 244–2879.
