This is my first post on Medium. Seems to be a really easy to use platform. This is what a blockchain should be like too. Easy to use.
Annihilat.io is a startup project that was born out of demand for a faster blockchain that can execute code. We first intended to design a decentralized gaming platform and we simply failed to find a suitable technology.
Everything fast, like Lisk, BitShares, didn’t have smart contracts built in. And the only network with smart contracts, Ethereum, was too slow to be useful.
Of course we could wait for Ethereum to go live with PoS, at that stage hoping it to be faster. But we decided why wait? Let’s make our own blockchain which is both fast and smart.
At the time, Bitshares was the fastest consensus and we chose to rely on it when developing our own code.
We agreed not to reinvent the wheel and simply port Solidity language into it, which proved very expedient, considering that every smart contract writer is already familiar with it. Still, porting EVM into BitShares looked like a daunting task. But the right decision was just around the corner. We thought to ourselves — why not create our own VM? And so we did. Today we are 1/4 way there and the development is persistently moving forward on a daily basis.
I can imagine many experts saying that this is a crazy and useless idea to make another Solidity-based blockchain. There already exist two of them (i.e. ETC and ETH). Looks like the world doesn’t need another Ethereum.
I don’t see it this way. Every day, we face with the problems that Ethereum can’t solve at the moment. If we need these solutions, the other startups might need them too.
You’re probably wondering: “What exactly do you want to improve besides speed?”
In fact, quite a few things. But let me just cite one case in point. It is rather evident that Ethereum owes its popularity to the rise of ICOs. A vast majority of tokens is created with Ethereum smart contracts. Another means of creating assets is BitShares — a multi-asset platform with the not-so-flexible assets. Both networks have their advantages but none of them is perfect for creating assets and making transactions. To put it simply, Bitshares lacks flexibility and Ethereum lacks the speed.
We don’t want to make revolutionary statements. What we want to do is take tiny features from both blockchains, combine them, and make them better, one by one.
It is quite possible that by the time we are done developing, there would already exist an operational network with similar features. We can’t guarantee it won’t happen, but we will do our best to become the first.
There is a plethora of decentralization that are only starting to develop, e.g. the decentralization of financial transactions, registrars and accounting ledgers. Many people believe we have passed the point of no return. Fiat by definition is an unbacked currency. Crypto is more transparent than cash. Governments have no justification for banning cryptocurrencies and even if they attempt to ban one, it can only be temporary.
Cryptocurrencies have outgrown jurisdictions. No state can fight it. Bitcoin ban may soon be an economical disadvantage for any state imposing it. The only winning strategy for the authorities is to adapt.
Today the blockchain protocols are in urgent need for improvement. But to ensure success, we should step back for a moment and see the big picture.
The crypto world is changing and spreading like wildfire, and predicting the direction of the community attention is quite hard. But we are positive that in the short run everyone is looking towards decentralization of exchanges and blockchain inter-operability. We know we need to prepare ourselves for the world where inter-chain transactions are commonplace and where the centralized exchanges which represent third party risks are replaced by atomic swaps and fast decentralized order-books.
These changes are inevitable, which means that our protocol should be fully armed to offer the necessary tools for making things easier and more user-friendly. Having a clear-cut direction is the first step to introducing the right improvements. The next step is building the right team.
We know that the product is only as good as the team. It is no secret that finding good developers is a challenging enough task when you need only ten of them. But if you need a hundred, it becomes a real uphill struggle, considering that you can’t afford a security hole in the protocol. You need experienced architects and programmers who are committed to the project.
Interestingly enough, this task goes along the lines of another task that we deem very special — the fundraising. Many projects take off after raising huge sums of money and then try to complete what they planned in WP. In such projects the roadmap milestones will never be met on time and the dates of execution will always be shifted by months and sometimes even never achieved.
This project is going to be built from the ground up with a granular financing approach. It is a type of the reverse ICO which allows to raise the funds in stages. If all goes well, we can choose to fund the next stage ourselves or attract the investors on a public auction. What we propose is the Initial Development Offering (IDO) with a twist instead of a common ICO. Intrigued by the twist? Learn more about the idea here.
Hopefully using this approach in marketing to the developers will give us an edge over our competitors and make the contribution offer more attractive. I anticipate that finding the necessary number of developers will be achievable once we advertise this offer to the developer community.
Finding the necessary talent is also important if you want to get cutting-edge development ideas and see them skillfully implemented.
Tezos has raised more than 200 million. Yes, the idea of the self-governed protocol is very appealing. But on the other hand, relying solely on the crowd for decision-making, as in the case with the Bitshares-governed solution, proves to be very flawed.
I believe that the protocol-level decisions must be made by the developers, or the people who truly understand how a protocol works. By making IDO our funding approach, we give the initial stake to the developers who will be able to make weighted decisions on how the protocol should be designed.
An update in August 2018 — So far, we’ve been able to consolidate the foundation for all the proposed ideas and already started to build further up. We’ve gathered a team of brilliant developers and continue to expand and accumulate new ideas.
