A Blockchain Ecosystem to put on your radar Pt. 2!
Friday the 20th and 21st of September marked the first-ever Aeternity Universe One Conference, organized by the Aeternity ecosystem, at the Paralelni Polis (Institute of Crypto Anarchy) in Prague. Two Community “Nodes” of the Caribbean Blockchain Network (Ruben and me, Fernando) received the opportunity to visit and document this conference. This article is the second of two articles which will cover what we have experienced during the two days of this conference.
for the Pt. 1 of this article click here
But first, what is Aeternity?
The Aeternity project was first founded in the 1st quarter of 2017, by Yanislav Malahov. Shortly after that, in the second quarter of 2017, the core development of the Aeternity blockchain started.
Aeternity offers solutions to the scalability problem at the protocol level (first layer), through the implementation of so-called “state-channels (similar to the solution applied as the lightning network)”, allowing for smart contracts to be executed off-chain, thus resulting in cheaper and faster transactions between nodes. Alongside state channels, Aeternity also offers other solutions for e.x. governance through the utilization of DPOS (delegated proof of stake) allowing people network participants to take part in decision making. Also, there is a naming system inherent in the system which allows for user-friendly blockchain identities instead of an arbitrary number of random characters. Finally (not entirely) the Aeternity blockchain allows for the use of oracles, which can be utilized to connect real-world data with smart contracts, paving the way for a plethora of use cases and services (e.x. information services, prediction markets, etc.).
Of course, there are many more features to the Aeternity blockchain e.g. mobile compatibility, low transaction costs, but for more detailed information on the exact specifics, I advise you to check out their website or their forum.
Entrepreneurs Track
Day one
The first day of the entrepreneurs’ track started with a keynote from Yanislav Malahov where he talked about the beginning of Aeternity, how and where it all started. Also, he further explained about how and what kind of developers were hired. Next, he noted how Aeternity is amongst the only projects left from the 2016 token sale wave. The big milestones on Aeternity’s roadmap e.g. the lima hardfork the virtual machine FATE, decentralized governance were also mentioned. Finally, the speech was closed with the following quote:
“love what you do and do it for the benefit of humanity”
The talk that followed after the keynote speech was that of Aeternity Cofounder and CEO of Aeternity Ventures, Nikola Stojanow, and Luka Sučić, the director of investments at Aeternity Ventures, in which they talked about the Aeternity ecosystem, particularly Aeternity Ventures and the Starfleet program. Aeventures is an investment company that focuses on startups that use the technology built in the Aeternity ecosystem, with the intent to increase the success of these projects. They mentioned that so far the company was able to fund projects with around 5.6 million dollars in investments.
Furthermore, in 2018, the company initiated the Starfleet program, in which they invested up to 200 thousand dollars (per team) in 7 teams. Also in March 2019, the program was able to fund 4 teams for an amount of 100 thousand dollars per team.
The speakers also talked about the plans of the Starfleet program to increase the number of investments and help launch them on the main net by the end of 2020. The idea is to fund 2–4 teams with up to 3 million dollars, applications are open now, in Malta. The team also discussed to expand to program out into India in the first quarter of 2020. They also mentioned where the program is/will be running e.g. Germany, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Malta, India, Kenya, and Latin America.
After the talk given by Aeventures, Pablo Coirolo, CEO of Aeternity America’s came to give a speech about what he is doing. He talked about the terraforming model, which is, as he put in his own words: “a new way to launch an ecosystem”, creating all of the necessary elements for the ecosystem to thrive. A model in which communities, businesses, developers and government are integrated. Out of this model they have created three use cases, lighthouse projects so to speak e.g. cannabis production, a gaming academy and a concept called liquid democracy.
There were many talks after this presentation in the form of individual talks and discussion panels, talking about building communities, regulation, and many other interesting topics (see documented videos on the Aeternity youtube page). We used the rest of the day to network with people and talk about their ideas and projects.
Day Two
Most of the second day we spent on interviewing the different project creators and leaders of the different projects built in the Aerternity ecosystem. We interviewed business leaders and even a developer (contributor) to the Aeternity ecosystem.
One of the first projects we interviewed was Pablo Coirolo from the Aeternity Americas, in our interview he went more into detail about the projects they have been working on in Uruguay i.e cannabis production, gaming, and liquid democracy.
Cannabis Production and blockchain
The cannabis industry in Uruguay has been growing steadfastly since the government legalized the consumption and production of cannabis in 2013. This project the focus is on the traceability of cannabis from the seed to the end product. A project like this is important, especially for the pharmaceutical industry since it will help with ensuring that pharmaceutical companies are getting the exact species they need. Furthermore, IoTs’ and blockchain technology is used in this project, on the one hand, IoT and sensors are used to identify service providers (people who come along and provide services of care to the plant), on the other hand, blockchain is used to register the provided services. Also, oracles are used to provide information services (think about, irrigation temperatures) while IoTs’ are used to record that information.
E-gaming Academy
Another project is a gaming platform (gaming academy) in which gaming is professionalized. The company behind the project will provide a physical space (arena), in which gaming combats will be held before and during soccer matches.
Liquid Democracy
In this project Aeternity Americas is working together with the digital political party in Uruguay, in order to create a so-called “liquid democracy” platform, where it becomes possible for people to hold, party representatives that have to vote in parliament, accountable for their votes through the transparency provided by the blockchain, on votes and proposals by parliament, party members and also the people.
Alongside Aeternity Americas, we managed to interview many more interesting projects e.g. RideSafe, Sonemas, Aeternityhub Africa, Dorium and many more.
We will be releasing all of these interviews over the coming 4 weeks on Tuesday and Thursday, visit our youtube playlist to see them.
Concluding remarks
The Aeternity ecosystem to me seems to be a project that you should keep an eye on. I have witnessed the ICO hype with the onset of the Ethereum blockchain, and have experienced (hypocritically also supported) some of the ICO projects on the Ethereum platform.
What I have seen was that many of those projects were not solving any real-world issues (of course this is a generalization based on my own experience), as a result, there were loads of empty promises and thus failed projects.
On the other hand, after having visited the Aeternity Universe One conference, and talked with the pioneers that are utilizing the platform to build their projects, I realized that many of the people in the ecosystem seemed to be very values-driven and have been working on their projects prior to doing any form of ICO, and the fact that Aeternity is kind of bootstrapping projects through AeVentures and the Starfleet program, gives me the impression that this ecosystem has the potential to grow beyond quick money-making schemes to an ecosystem in which it’s players are implementing real world use cases to solve some of the real world problems we are facing today.
