ICO Review — Ignis — First child chain of Ardor Blockchain platform.

Priyab Dash
Aug 9, 2017 · 6 min read

Summary

Introduction

Jelurida is building the unique parent-child chain architecture of Ardor, with a single security chain and multiple transactional chains, enables three fundamental advantages — reducing block-chain bloat, providing multiple transactional tokens, and hosting ready-to-use interconnected block-chains. Ignis is the first Ardor child chain and the crowd sale for Ignis is conducted to kickstart the Ardor project for 50 % of IGNIS — the token of Ignis.

Symbol: JLRDA

Crowdsale opening date: 5 Aug 2017

Crowdsale closing date: 14 Oct 2017

Platform for Fundraiser: NXT

Analysis

My View

I had personal interest in learning about NXT and Ardor and after reading the Jelurida whitepaper I got some great insights into the great features of NXT, Ardor and Ignis. I was surprised to find the rich set of features that have been developed into NXT platform. And the concept of Ardor to extend the features of NXT into child chains and also helps in developing a new way of child chain blocks where it bundles the whole transactions from child chains to the main Ardor chain block. Also, the whole concept of pruning older transactions and having backup nodes hopefully makes Ardor a more mature architecture.

Key Aspects

Problem

Over the course of the development of Nxt few problems were identified that were needed to address.

  • Single Token: All platform features, as well as the block generation process, require the use of the native token known as NXT.
  • Blockchain Bloat — All nodes need to be burdened with storing and reprocessing all transactions
  • Customization Issues — Cloning a blockchain is simple, but maintenance & customization of the blockchain is not simple which is a need for many businesses.

Solution

The Ardor platform is based on the stable codebase of NXT. Every existing function of the Nxt blockchain will be supported by Ardor. In addition, Ardor has a unique design composed of a single parent chain responsible for network security and processing, and multiple child chains responsible for the operational transactions such as creating assets, voting on polls, sending messages, etc.

Child chains transactions are reported to the parent chain using a new process called “bundling”. The bundlers package multiple child chain transactions into a single ChildChainBlock transaction on the parent chain. The bundlers pay the transaction fees in Ardor and receive the transaction fees in the child chain coin.

The first child chain of the Ardor platform is called “Ignis”. Unlike “side chains” and other blockchain-related technologies, the Ardor parent chain and child chains like Ignis are based on the same source code and share the same security guaranties.

Features

These are some of the key features of Ardor which are note worthy:

  • One parent chain with multiple child chains
  • ARDR token is the pos token that is used in the proof-of-stake consensus, and thus provides security for all child chains. Child chain tokens are used as transactional units of value in the child chains.
  • Asset Exchange, Monetary System, Aliases, Messaging, Digital Goods, Store, Voting System, Shuffling, Data, Cloud, Phasing, Account Control, Account Properties are all available on child chains with the option to restrict some features.
  • Accounts are global across all child chains, and an account can have balances in each of the existing child chain coins, as well as in Ardor.
  • Assets and MS currencies can be issued on any child chain, and are available for trading globally. Assets or MS currencies can optionally be restricted. And Asset dividends can be paid in any of the child chain coins.
  • Coin Exchange, allows trading of child chain coins to each other, and also to the parent chain coin (ARDR).
  • A transaction type to perform stock split or capital increase corporate actions.
  • Crowdfunding & pruning feature is available on all child chains
  • 256-bit transaction hashes (sha256 digests) are used instead as transaction identifiers.
  • A new process, “bundling”, is used to group child chain transactions into a parent chain transaction (“child chain block”), which is then included in the parent chain.
  • The new “Smart Phasing” feature allows the conditions for the execution of a phased transaction to be combined using AND, OR, and NOT Boolean operators, in a composite voting model.
  • While the Ardor platform can have multiple child chains with similar features, only the Ignis child chain will be created with no restrictions.

Tokensale

IGNIS and ARDR will be allocated to user accounts in the Ardor genesis block. Their distribution will be based on a one-time snapshot conducted over the Nxt blockchain, the “Ardor Genesis Snapshot”, to be performed at least two weeks after the end of the last round of the IGNIS crowdsale and shortly before the Ardor launch.

The total amount of IGNIS coins issued will be equal to half of the amount of NXT coins existing on the Nxt blockchain at the time of the Ardor Genesis Snapshot, plus 500 M (five hundred million).

Approximately half of the IGNIS coins will be reserved and distributed automatically to the NXT holders based on their account balances at the time of the Ardor Genesis Snapshot, at a ratio of 1 NXT : 0.5 IGNIS.

From the remaining 500 M IGNIS, 440 M will be offered to the general public in the IGNIS crowdsale (conducted using JLRDA IOU tokens, and 60 M will be kept by Jelurida.

Fund Allocation

The token sale itself will be conducted on the Nxt blockchain platform. JLRDA tokens are not transferable or tradable between accounts and for 1 JLRDA, the crowdsale participant will receive 1 IGNIS at the time of Ardor Genesis Snapshot. For 1 JLRDA token the participants in the IGNIS crowdsale will receive 1 IGNIS coin at the time of the Ardor Genesis Snapshot. The last batch of 100 M JLRDA tokens will be reduced by up to 20 M tokens allocated by Jelurida for promotional and marketing use.

Roadmap

Team

Kristina Kalcheva — Co-Founder, Managing Director, Legal Expert

Lior Yaffe — Co-Founder, Managing Director, Senior Developer

Petko Petkov — Co-Founder,Core Developer

Tomislav Gountchev- Lead Software Architect

Conclusion

Though some of the very good features and advantages that I have highlighted about NXT, Ardor and Ignis but somehow it seems history is repeating itself and whales have somehow been getting the maximum share of tokens in the Ignis ICO. Similar issues have been plaguing NXT ICO distribution few years back and that has been a major bone of contention for many users trying to get JLRDA tokens. One more thing to note is that JLRDA is an IOU and not tradable, they will be exchanged with Ignis token when Ardor goes live which is planned in November hence its speculative value will be relatively dependent on how the launch of Ardor goes. Also feature wise one of the major features that I am not clear about is Smart Contracts, though there is some feature set based on smart transaction but I feel they are limited and I may need to understand more if that is possible.

Despite all the above concerns the biggest positive about this ICO is that this is a real deal with a real technical proposition not another ERC20 token to be used in a phony Dapp.

Reference

Disclaimer: This is not investment or trading advice, always do your own independent research.

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CRYPT BYTES TECH

Articles on ICO, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain. If you like the blog then please help support the publication via https://www.patreon.com/cryptbytestech. You can join to chat with me at https://t.me/joinchat/E-6WAkQsiIyJ2tQ4423hrA.

Priyab Dash

Written by

CRYPT BYTES TECH

Articles on ICO, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain. If you like the blog then please help support the publication via https://www.patreon.com/cryptbytestech. You can join to chat with me at https://t.me/joinchat/E-6WAkQsiIyJ2tQ4423hrA.

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