Aerum — Bethereum (+ Q/A summary)

A highly-scalable Ethereum compatible side-chain solution

Robert Herman
Bethereum
6 min readDec 10, 2018

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At Bethereum, we aim to put user-friendly betting in the hands of millions. While we still believe in Ethereum as a solid Blockchain foundation, Ethereum cannot cope with the performance, scalability, and cost-effectiveness requirements of our platform. This is why we’ve been experimenting with innovative Ethereum side-chain solutions for many weeks already.

We’re excited to announce a strategic partnership with Aerum.

100% compatible with Ethereum, the Aerum side-chain provides massive advantages over a pure Ethereum-based architecture, including:

• Large boost in transactions per second and transaction completion speed
• High potential for throughput and scalability increases (up to 100,000 tps)
• Virtually free on-chain transactions (cutting Ethereum gas costs to a minimum)
• Native support for token transfer with Ethereum, using cross-chain atomic swaps
• Delegate Proof of Stake consensus algorithm
• A number of ready-made modules ready for implementation (e.g., customisable wallets)
• All retaining full decentralisation (something many new Blockchains compromise on)

Aerum is headed by a team of true professionals and we’re confident we can count on their support to make Bethereum the most widely adopted, performing, engaging, and secure solution in the Blockchain gaming space.

Summary of the Q/A

Aerum’s Chief Blockchain Engineer Paddy O’Sullivan (Patrick) joined in our Telegram group to your questions about the Aerum technology!

What kind of partnership have Aerum & Bethereum?

Patrick: We will be technical partners, AERUM will provide an end to end infrastructure solution for the Bethereum platform which will allow costless transactions and a scalable high-speed network.

How both parties will benefit this partnership?

Robert: Developing a truly innovative blockchain-betting platform is hard, there are countless of technical limitations (on purely Ethereum-based infrastructure) we have to overcome and Aerum has proven to solve many of those! We’ll provide Aerum with the necessary user base to test out and further develop their infrastructure. As a matter of fact, running a social betting platform is hard, running it on the blockchain is even harder, I’m happy that Aerum is joining us on this journey!

You mentioned that the Aerum guys have already demoed their tech to your team, any chance they could share what exactly was demoed?

Patrick: We demonstrated various throughput metrics for our network to show how fast transactions can be executed/reach finality as well as other more practical tools such as our cross chain and intra chain swap tools.

Is the coin will be change?

Robert: The best part is, the fact that Aerum supports native Ethereum tokens through their atomic swaps, there is no need to switch to a different token!

I also played with Plasma cash on Loom, could you explain how different your tech is against Loom?

Patrick: I have a vague familiarity with the Loom project but that’s about as much as I know about it. I’d be happy to look into it more afterwards and give you a more direct answer, but in the mean time I can say that our consensus algorithm probably differs a lot, we implemented a cross chain solution, our consensus lives on the Ethereum mainnet which gives us an added benefit security wise as we make use of Ethereum’s hash power, so to take over our consensus you have to take control of the eth mainnet. as well as that we operate a randomised selection process every 1000 blocks making it near impossible for delegates to group together.

Does Bethereum want to move to a different blockchain, since Ethereum isn’t rolling out with new updates?

Martin: Ethereum still has the biggest dev / community support out of all chains. EOS looked promising, but they have ~50 teams working on things without too much coordination as far as we are aware.

There are other alternatives, but we still believe Ethereum is the right way to go — their main net has been around for a long time now, there IS progress in the development. A while back there was a meet up with Vlad Zamfir from Ethereum in Bratislava (where we are based) and it gave us a bit of insight in what they’re doing…

As to our own blockchain — it’s not the primary focus of what we intend to do. We’d rather work on the UI/UX aspects of blockchain betting, than building our own chain — that’s why we partnered with Aerum after all.

Personally, I think blockchain now is a “Linux”. Tech guys love it, command line and everything — but it’s not for the masses. What we are trying to be is the “Mac” among blockchain projects — harvest the power of the technology, but make it accessible to the non-developer/not tech savvy community.

We were familiar with the throughput issues with Ethereum — and we looked for a way to make up for it, without having to abandon the platform completely — and we believe Aerum is the way to go.

What happens to the Bether token then?

Robert: It stays the way it is :) we’re going to release a couple of articles about their cross-chain gateway and how the transfer to the side-chain is going to look like soon!

So currently my wallet coins are stored on Ethereum chain. Does anything need to happen for them to sit on Aerum side chain?

Martin: Only for the betting part — you’ll deposit your Bethers to the sidechain for betting, and withdraw them on them on the main ETH chain after you’re done. Trading will still happen on the ETH main net. And of course — there will be no sacrifice in terms of security — everything will still be equally decentralised & safe.

Will the deposit/withdrawal still be subject to main net gas? So the betting account will effectively have its own integrated wallet if I understand correctly?

Martin: Yes. You will basically also have to have a wallet on the sidechain — the private keys for your main net and side chain wallets won’t be the same.

Therefore, in cooperation with Aerum, we’re working on the Bethereum Wallet to store both these keys in one place. We’ll have a web version that will store them on your computer, and iOS / Android versions that will store them in your phone. So technically, you could import your main net private key into the wallet, and create the sidechain wallet through our UI.

The important thing to keep in mind — as per our whitepaper — we will offer two models for management of the private keys.

1. Completely decentralized — but at the cost of UX. You’ll need to confirm every bet entry via your Bethereum Wallet…

2. Decentralized, but we’ll approve entering the bets on your behalf (via some clever Smart Contract logic) — way nicer UX — you’ll only have to manipulate your wallet during depositing tokens.

Can we have more details on the Bethereum — Aerum token swap?

Robert: We’re still discussing the terms and yes, vesting of the tokens will be part of the agreement, no worries!

Thanks again for the amazing questions, we’ll follow up with some more in-depth articles about Aerum’s technology and how we’re going to work together to bring you the best blockchain-powered betting platform on the market!

Bethereum is a decentralised, social-betting platform based on Ethereum technology and Smart Contracts. Want to know more? Start here.

If you would like to ask us anything or interact with our forever growing community, join one of our Telegram groups in your language.

In addition, if you like what we are doing and would like to stay updated, signup for our newsletter.

Like what you see? Support the project and buy BETHER on Coinbene today!

Bethereum Team
Because life is a game

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