Fetch.ai launches beta mainnet with Aquila release

• Developers can build more on the Fetch.ai network than ever before
• Enhanced Synergetic Contracts deliver collective super intelligence
• Fully enabled decentralized random beacon advances the unique consensus protocol

Introduction

In a major milestone release, Fetch.ai are happy to announce the on-time delivery of their beta mainnet, code-named Aquila. This key launch prepares the journey towards mainnet at the end of the year and focuses on enhancing our unique Synergetic Contracts and developing the powerful, game-changing Proof-of-Stake with unpermissioned Delegation (PoS-uD) consensus mechanism. As part of the beta release, significant advances are made to Fetch.ai’s artificial intelligence functionality, and in particular, components relating to machine learning.

Synergetic Contracts

Synergetic Contracts represent a substantial leap forward in smart contract technology. A smart contract is a computer protocol intended to digitally facilitate, verify, or enforce the negotiation or performance of a contract. They allow credible transactions to occur without the involvement of third parties.

Fetch.ai Synergetic Contracts support all the features of regular smart contracts, but have additional capabilities for solving collective problems. These features allow the contracts to be truly smart as many individuals can contribute, and be rewarded, for delivering parts of a solution to a larger optimization problem. This is a key component of the collective super intelligence at the heart of Fetch.ai.

Consensus

Major improvements have been made to our consensus mechanism and this progress represents an exciting milestone in the broader context of both the development of the smart ledger, and the future of Proof-of-Stake generally.

Aquila includes a significant update to our random beacon implementation and fully enables our decentralized random beacon. Miners on the network can now use the beacon to coordinate the block generation and this is a process which is both deterministic and verifiable (so that it can be trusted). The update also includes a series of improvements to the overall robustness of the random beacon implementation.

Further information on the public testnet will be rolled out shortly, so stay tuned!

Open Economic Framework (OEF)

Aquila advances the OEF, which is where our autonomous agents interact with the Fetch.ai platform. This includes updates to the API and other changes to the OEF Software Development Kit (SDK).

We’ve also added some examples in the documentation section of our website. These explain how you can easily create agents which talk to both the OEF and other agents while they simultaneously do other ‘work’. Examples of such ‘work’ include image processing or communicating with data sources. Remember, it’s your agent, so how you use it is up to you!

Get involved

Thanks to your input we have fixed a number of bugs in our Aquarius ledger release. We would really appreciate your help to review Aquila. Don’t forget, as part of our Technical Bounty program, we are awarding up to $10,000 for critical issues reported in our GitHub ledger repository.

Coming up

The launch of our beta mainnet is the latest milestone the Fetch.ai team have delivered on time against the roadmap published in February. The launch of the Fetch.ai mainnet at the end of the year is fast approaching and we’re hugely excited by the journey ahead.

For more information and support, check out our supporting documentation or join our developer Slack channel.