Aion: Matt’s article on Libra in Forbes Crypto, Weekly Community AMAs with special guests, Aion continues its mini-interview series

Published in

Paradigm

12 min readSep 25, 2019

Biweekly update 11th September — 25th September

Dear Aion followers, we have a lot of interesting news to share with you, as the team has worked fingers to the bone on the social side these weeks.
Have you wondered will Libra ever launch? Another Aion thought-leadership article by Matt Spoke was published in Forbes Crypto last week. Such a sapid reading! Check it out in our report below.
Aion continues its mini-interview series with Jeff Disher (Lead Engineer) and Aman Alam (Developer Relations). Jeff Tchadjeu from August, a boutique digital agency that’s obsessed with blockchain, creative design and all things digital, answered community questions in last week’s AMA on Aion official subreddit. Minh Tran (Aion Tech & Ops Lead, Unity project manager) will answer community questions in this week’s AMA. Don’t miss a chance to ask your question! Post your questions in the Reddit thread throughout the week and upvote your favorites! As for upcoming events, Matt Spoke will be speaking at JAX London about integrating blockchain in Java applications on October 7th-10th.
The Aion community continually grows, and the ecosystem continues to flourish! Aion Connect is live, and there are many projects build on Aion. Developers have been working extremely hard over the period of the last two weeks, so many updates appeared. VeriTX joins Microsoft for Startups Program. Surcle and InfraTrac join VeriTX ecosystem. Satya gives a sneak peek of one-click debugging with IntelliJ. BalanceNow to be digital asset custodian for Newton Canadian no-fee crypto brokerage.
For those who are little behind of times, the team updated the Aion Improvement Proposal (AIP) process. Check it out on Aion Github. Latest AIPs for technical review and discussion are in our report below.
Aion followers, get ready for Aion migration to Unity consensus. Exciting times are coming!

Development

GitHub metrics:

Developer activity (from Coinlib.io):

Showcases paused until the end of November:

Aion Improvement Proposals

Aion updates the Aion Improvement Proposal (AIP) process:

An AIP is an Aion Improvement Proposal. An AIP can be proposed by anyone in the Aion community. The proposal is a document which provides a concise overview to the Aion community of a new process, functionality, standard or convention. The document should be thorough, technically precise and provide a clear motivation for the proposal. Proposal are submitted by one or more authors, these authors are responsible for the creation, modifications, socialization and most importantly — consensus building around the proposal.

Check it out on Aion Github.

Latest AIPs for technical review and discussion:

Aion-Unity Engineering Specification Aion releases draft paper of staking mechanics.

Social encounters

Will Libra Ever Launch?

by Matt Spoke in Forbes

Of all the companies in the world that could successfully launch a cryptocurrency, Facebook would be a good bet: it’s used across the globe, it has more users than the populations of several large countries, and it has experience managing responsibilities — like personal identity — normally reserved for governments.

But despite having all the elements the blockchain industry has been missing for wide scale adoption, Facebook is missing the most critical one: trust. And that may well be what will ultimately doom Facebook’s cryptocurrency, Libra, in the end — not the technology.

Facebook seemed to recognize early on in this process that it had a trust problem: in order to launch Libra, the company knew they couldn’t go it alone.

So Facebook built an arm’s length organization with other companies — the Libra Association — to serve as the central authority over the currency. Uber, Paypal, Mastercard, Stripe and other household names all joined. Presumably, Facebook hoped having these companies participating would give the cryptocurrency the patina of independence and decentralized governance.

But so far, Facebook is the only company to have formally committed or put money into Libra as far as we know.

The Libra partners are arguably doing the smart thing here — by jumping into the crypto space with a global giant, they get to hang out in the back and watch how it all goes down. Letting Facebook lead in the initial battle — including in the funding and in the engineering — and take the slings and arrows first allows these companies to sit back and watch whether this war can be won — and decide if they really want to join on the front lines. If they decide later they are all in, they’re well positioned.

But for Facebook’s Libra to actually have a shot at launching — and surviving — a couple things need to happen:

The Libra Association needs to successfully convince either current partners, or new partners, to step up and be much more integral participants in Libra than they are currently — Libra has to be viewed as something bigger than just Facebook.
To that point, the presumptive leader of Libra — David Marcus — is an employee of Calibra, a Facebook subsidiary, rather than working for the Libra Association he’s championing. He should either work for the Libra Association itself, or allow someone from that organization to hold the spotlight and speak neutrally about its intentions.
The group needs to better represent the diversity of the global reach Libra could have. This project can’t just be a bunch of California tech bros in hoodies trying to determine policies for people thousands of miles away — both geographically and philosophically.

If Facebook remains the primary leader and force, it will become, to use blockchain lingo, the central point of failure. Originally built to connect the world, today Facebook is best known for the chaos it has caused: data breaches, election interference, “fake news” and violent content. Facebook’s current reputation makes getting regulatory approval for Libra — something Facebook’s David Marcus promised would happen prior to launch — very complicated, if not impossible. We’re already starting to see some early negative results for Facebook, with yesterday’s news about France’s Finance Minister coming out against Libra and vowing to fight for the EU to block the launch the new cryptocurrency.

(This is not to say that we don’t need massive financial reform and new products in the world. We do. Too many people, many already poor, have been left further behind financially because of today’s financial system. I believe that blockchain technology is part of the solution to make this happen. And frankly, I applaud the companies who are finally jumping into the crypto space — many of us have been here for years and are thrilled to have others see the light that this really is the future.)

But it is hard to seriously believe that Facebook — a company where one person is the chairman, CEO, and controls 60 percent of the voting shares — will be successful at deploying a technology founded on the principle of decentralization. The entire idea of Libra is actually antithetical to Facebook’s culture.

So while the world needs to monitor and examine Libra, it is equally important to ask what will happen if Libra isn’t successful. Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Twitter, has gone the opposite direction of Facebook and is supporting the “too decentralized to fail” Bitcoin network. Others are opting to leverage Ethereum, Aion or Ripple to name a few — rather than trying to build their own.

Time will tell who’s right. That much we can trust.

Aion continues its mini-interview series:

Jeff Disher (Lead Engineer):

Aman Alam (Developer Relations):

Marcus (Accounting & Finance):

Ayush (Aion Dev) answering questions about ABIs:

Yao Sun answering questions about the ARRT team and Unity:

• What does the ARRT team do?

• What is Unity?

• Why is Unity more favorable than other consensus methods?

• Does Unity change anything for current AION miners?

AVM interviews with Jeff Disher:

Reddit:

Weekly Community AMA — Week ending September 20 — Special Guest Jeff Tchadjeu (August):

Jeff Tchadjeu leads the team at August, a boutique digital agency that’s obsessed with blockchain, creative design and all things digital. Aside from managing the team, he also helps with project management and drives strategy/biz dev. Prior to August, Jeff held several positions in Sales, Operations and Product with mostly technology companies and has also founded a few companies.

While the August team takes on traditional web projects, a large portion of them have been in the blockchain space. This includes:

Cranberry, a loyalty program for AION miners with the plan to incentivize other stakeholders in the future. Cranberry has been launched for several months now and has awarded more than 150,000 PLAT and almost 100,000 AION to miners that make up the Aion community
Kokun, an easy way for Aion token holders to send and receive AION and AIP tokens. Kokun also makes it easier for dApp developers to sign transactions and facilitate payments in their dApps by simply copying a line of code
Aion Surf, a zero-fee Aion mining pool with a special focus on impacting visual appeal and user experience. August’s goal was to make mining more easily accessible to prospective miners as well as raise the standard of what miners should expect in terms of UX/UI.

Weekly Community AMA — Week ending September 27 — Special Guest Minh Tran (Tech & Ops Lead):

Minh Tran leads Operations and Technology for the Foundation and has been with Aion for almost a year. In his current role, his primary focus is implementing operational best practices to ensure software excellence in all of Aion’s technical outputs, including change and release management and adding structure to testing, development, and operational readiness activities. Minh has also streamlined the Foundation’s IT spend by cutting expenses by two-thirds this year and implementing checks and balances to control it going forward.

On top of his work on operations, Minh is also managing key initiatives like the Unity Consensus release. As the Unity project manager, he is responsible for overseeing all the different moving parts and work-streams and bringing them all together into one concerted effort.

Although a 20+ year industry veteran working mostly for big banks and large organizations, he has happily traded in that enterprise structure for the chaos of start-ups. Minh is also a technology co-founder and he continues to consult in application, data sciences, and infrastructure technology. When his hands aren’t on a keyboard or a whiteboard, Minh is dedicated to family, sports, food and travel of any kind.

Upcoming events:

October 7th-10th: Matt Spoke to speak at JAX London about integrating blockchain in Java applications.

Finance

Token holders and the number of transactions dynamics (from Aion Explorer):

There is a stable slight grows in the number of token-holders these weeks.

Information from Coinmarketcap.com:

Roadmap

Phase 2: Denali

Aion Virtual Machine (AVM) Version 1

This AVM is a custom-built, lightweight, performant, and stable VM that leverages key characteristics of the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), providing concurrency and robustness within a blockchain-specific context. The AVM is responsible for running applications on top of Aion. The AVM will include its own scripting language.

Aion Scripting Language

The Aion scripting language is used for writing chain logic that runs on Aion-Everest and potentially any connecting/participating network. The Aion language is compiled into AVM bytecode and executed by the AVM. The Aion language provides the following features: Defensive programming, Blockchain runtime environment, Blockchain context injection, Security.

Proof-of-Intelligence Consensus Algorithm

An economic measure to deter denial of service attacks by requiring participants, solvers in Aion-Everest, to perform artificial intelligence (AI) computation. The intent is to motivate the creation of AI-specific or specialized hardware that could be used for machine learning and neural network training in the future.

2019:

Phase 3: Everest 2019

Participating Network Bridging
The generic bridge protocol is designed to enable the atomic movement of value and data between heterogeneous networks. This will enable the development of cross-blockchain contract logic and free-floating token supplies.
Complete Validator Nomination
The Hybrid DPoS / PoI consensus mechanism aims to achieve high performance while providing a fair and decentralized validator set. This is achieved through a token staking system and partly through a novel verification algorithm based on concepts used in modern neural networks called Proof-of- Intelligence.
Aion Virtual Machine (AVM) Version 2

Aion release milestones:

• Q4: Unity Consensus (PoW/PoS hybrid)

Partnerships and team members

Now Hiring:

Aion HQ (Toronto)

Ecosystem

VeriTX joins Microsoft for Startups Program:

Surcle joins VeriTX ecosystem:

InfraTrac joins VeriTX ecosystem:

Satya gives a sneak peek of one-click debugging with IntelliJ:

Understanding Risepic, the MakerDAO of Skills by Alessandro Mario Lagana Toschi. Risepic: A DAO for learning.

Newton Crypto to Move Customer Assets to an Independent Third-party Custodian: BalanceNow to be digital asset custodian for Newton Canadian no-fee crypto brokerage.

Crypto Traders Need To Grow Up Before Crypto Markets Can Grow — As blockchain technology matures, cryptocurrency traders must mature with it — or get left behind by Joseph P. DiPasquale.

Projects Building on Aion:

• SPRXS

• Digital Liquidity Factory

Centrys:

• THÉO (theoproject.io) (with Syná wallets)

• Agora (beta.agora.theoproject.io)

• Spiro (centrys.io/enterprise)

Community dApps:

• BondWithFriends

• AionRoulette

Ecosystem builders:

Rumors

Twitter:

Matt and Sam get a selfie with US Presidential hopeful Andrew Yang in NYC:

Reddit discussions:

Any update on upcoming staking?

Questions about AION and price.

“Forget about existing money and existing banks. And create a system of accounts which will displace money… We can’t take money out of the hands of governments by force we can introduce something that they can’t stop” — FA Hayek in 1984.

Other:

Check out Unity Consensus Feedback Form.

Social media metrics

Aion Community Commitment: a few initiatives that will involve participation from everyone and enable two-way communication.

Social media activity:

Social media dynamics:

There is a slight fluctuation in the number of subscribers of Aion social media channels.

Twitter — Average number of retweets is 15–30 for one post.

Facebook — 10–15 likes per publication.

Reddit — Threads with 2–10 comments. The community is quite active discussing latest news, development, mining, token price and possible partnerships.

The graph above shows the dynamics of changes in the number of Aion Reddit subscribers, Twitter followers and Facebook likes. The information is taken from Coingecko.com.

Aion Community — unofficial community-run Telegram channel for humor, memes, and trading discussion.

Developer Subreddit — r/AIONgineering.

Discord — Active discussions on the latest updates and mining.

Aion forum — Discussions on mining, news, network statistics etc. Popular topics:

Global Telegram Channels:

Korea — Kakao chat

Russia — @AionNetworkRU

Poland — @Aion_Poland

Spanish — @AionNetworkES

Kenya — @AionKenya

Netherlands/Belgium — @AionBenelux

India @Aion_India

See also the community-built Aion Telegram Bot and Aion Newsfeed — feed of Aion’s YouTube, Blog, and Twitter posts and project updates.

This is not financial advice.

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