Powered by ARK: ARK’s Blockchain Technology Adopted By nOS

Katie Phillips
ARK.io | Blog
Published in
6 min readJul 30, 2019

Today we announce the first bridgechain to officially be accepted into the Powered by ARK program — nOS! Migrating to a new mainnet built on ARK, nOS is adopting ARK’s blockchain technology to power a truly decentralized operating system.

Over the past few months we have been making great advances in development, and now are at a place and time to start realizing the vision laid out long ago. We have been working tirelessly to improve our outreach, scale our development, drive adoption of our blockchain, and onboard new bridgechains into the ARK Ecosystem.

A large component of this strategy is to increase the number and velocity of projects building on our platform. That’s why we’re excited to reveal nOS as the first bridgechain to be formally accepted into the Powered by ARK program, and to be announced as an official ARK partner.

Introducing nOS

nOS is an all-in-one platform that allows both decentralized and centralized applications to grow their user base, increase their revenue potential and expand their reach by utilizing the new business models that decentralized blockchain technology can offer.

Launching in Q4 2019/Q1 2020, the new nOS mainnet will run on the ARK Core blockchain framework.

Here’s a short video (and a little longer exclusive podcast) of nOS founder Dean van Dugteren explaining a little more about nOS, why they chose to build on ARK, and what the partnership means to them.

Listen to an exclusive podcast with nOS founder Dean van Dugteren

Why nOS Chose to Migrate to an ARK Blockchain

nOS was originally issued as a NEO NEP-5 smart contract token. As their project grew and evolved they began to look for a blockchain solution that would not only help them improve the speed, flexibility, and scalability of their platform but one that would also allow them to fully realize the vision of nOS.

After an extensive research and evaluation process, ARK’s blockchain technology was selected by nOS to lay the foundation for their new mainnet.

By migrating to a dedicated ARK based blockchain, nOS will now able to overcome some of the limitations associated with relying on smart contracts exclusively. They’re able to implement block rewards systems, are able to update with ease (something which is difficult to achieve with smart contracts), and are no longer reliant on the performance of a public blockchain. While the nOS blockchain is powered by ARK technologies, creators can still choose to deploy apps to the platform that are powered by any blockchain such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, NEO, and EOS.

nOS’s founder Dean van Dugteren, as a big advocate of our technology, describes ARK’s blockchain as:

“By far the best solution for web developers to build a blockchain.”

Impressed by the ease of use and ability to customize the framework to meet their specific needs, nOS initially selected ARK for their mainnet due to our:

  • Open-source codebase
  • Interoperability
  • Scalability
  • Modular design
  • Plug-in framework
  • Typescript core
  • Ability to create custom transactions quickly and easily with the Generic Transaction Interface (GTI)

But it’s not just ARK’s intuitive and innovative features that impressed nOS. After working together with the ARK development team as they began to build their mainnet from the ground up, nOS quickly became a supporter of not just ARK’s technology, but our team and our vision for the ecosystem.

After forming such strong and collaborative relationships during the migration process, we decided that nOS would be the perfect candidate to be the first bridgechain formally inducted into the Powered by ARK program.

What is Powered by ARK?

Since the launch of the ARK Deployer, the number of bridgechains in the ecosystem has grown. Now a project can independently create an ARK bridgechain as a foundation for their platform (or application) in just a matter of minutes.

But these new bridgechains can often operate in isolation. Not only does that mean that they’re missing out on valuable help and support from the ARK team and community, but in the long term, it could also lead to a fragmented ecosystem. That’s why we’ve created the Powered by ARK program.

The Powered by ARK program is our new initiative designed to allow all projects building with our blockchain technology to form relationships and build stronger ties to the ecosystem. Once accepted, bridgechains in the PBA program will be able to directly interface and collaborate with ARK, the community, and other bridgechains — strengthening the ecosystem and helping to maximize the success of all parties.

As the first bridgechain to be officially accepted into the PBA program, nOS will play a key role in the initiative and will pave the way for other bridgechains to be accepted into the program in the coming months.

More information on the PBA program, what it entails and how to join will be released in the next few days. Stay tuned to our Slack, blog or social channels to learn more.

Driving Adoption

With adoption a huge priority for us at ARK we’re focusing on building partnerships at all levels, with startups, SMEs and even enterprises, but for the latter at least, this won’t happen overnight.

Dynamic and progressive projects such as nOS help us to refine the migration process, they enable us to learn more about the pain points and challenges that projects face during migration and what’s important to them. It also allows us to start building credibility and capture real-life examples of projects utilizing our technology.

Social proof is a powerful tool for the enterprise audience, especially in such a new and volatile industry. Ultimately the more credible projects we bring into the ecosystem, the stronger our value proposition, experience, and authority.

That’s why nOS both selecting and advocating our technology is a hugely positive step for us and only one of the reasons that we see them as an integral component of the overall ARK Ecosystem, but there are more …

A True Partnership

More than a bridgechain, we’ve been working with nOS over the last few months to build an incredibly productive partnership, both from a strategic and technical standpoint. nOS Founder and CEO Dean van Dugteren has been working closely with the ARK team across a number of areas of development, offering feedback, contributions, and ideas to help improve the ARK Ecosystem.

It’s this kind of collaboration that makes nOS an indispensable member of the ecosystem; leading not just to the acceptance of nOS as a member of the Powered by ARK program, but also to the decision to elevate nOS to the position of an official ARK partner.

As the partnership continues to evolve, we’re excited to continue to work together with nOS on many more projects in the future. In the short term, we’re exploring how the upcoming ARK Marketplace can benefit from the native features and installable modules being built by the nOS team and are confident this will enable us to strengthen the ecosystem.

What’s Next?

As the first bridgechain accepted into the Powered by ARK program, we’ve been working closely with nOS for a few months now to support them in their journey to rebuild their mainnet on ARK and enlist them into the PBA program, but this is just the start. We’re also in varying stages of enrolling many other applicants into the PBA program, from initial conversations to supporting other bridgechains as they undertake their build or migration. In short, the number of projects turning to ARK is growing, fast.

Stay tuned to our Slack and social channels over the next few months as we reveal the next bridgechains to officially be inducted into the PBA program.

In the meantime, you can learn more about nOS by visiting: https://nos.io.

If you’re a project looking to migrate to a flexible blockchain, or a bridgechain interested in joining the PBA program, get in touch with us on Slack or by emailing info@ark.io.

Read our new whitepaper, Follow us on social media ( Twitter |Facebook|Reddit ), join our community ( Slack | Discord ) and stay tuned to our blog on Medium and on Steemit.

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